“All on a one-pound note?”
“Worse than that. When you get back to
school after four weeks, you’re expected to pay back the pound!”
I laughed. “Sounds like we’ll be passing
the hat all the time.”
“Oh no, you’re not aloud to take up
collections! Never. You’re not to mention money at any of your meetings. All of
your needs have to be met without any manipulation on your part – or the
experiment is a failure.”*
When Andrew had learned that the WEC missionary training school
sent their students out without financial support he instantly began to
question if that was where he should go. Memories of the missionaries who had
held meetings in Witte, the town where he had grown up, flooded his thoughts.
These men had claimed to live by faith but the people of Witte knew that they
lived not by faith, but by the collections they took up. They called such men
‘hint missionaries’ for, though they never came right out and asked for money,
they were always hinting at it. The way those men lived seemed grubby and undignified
to Andrew. If Christ were a King, such ambassadors did not give a good report of
His treasury. Andrew thought that the only solution to the hints and
collections was to have financial support secured ahead of time. This is why he
was hesitant to join a school that sent their students out without provision. But
God had asked him to obey without question (see The Predetermined "Yes") so he had laid down this qualm along with the rest. He was resigned to obey even
if that meant living as a ‘hint missionary’.
Now Andrew wondered if, perhaps,
there was still another way of getting provision. Perhaps a man truly could
live by faith – faith that was placed, not in the offering plate, but in God
Himself. The idea was soon to be put to the test as Andrew and four other guys
set out to live and minister, for a month, on a total of just five pounds. Five
pounds that would have to be repaid. The assignment was an interesting one to
be sure!
*“I tried to reconstruct
where our funds came from during those four weeks and it was hard to. It seems
that what we needed was always just there. Sometimes a letter would arrive from
one of the boy’s parents with a little money. Sometimes we would get a cheque
in the mail from a church we had visited days or weeks earlier. The notes that
came with these gifts were always interesting.
“I know you don’t need money or you would
have mentioned it,” someone would write, “but God just wouldn’t let me get to
sleep tonight until I had put this in an envelope for you.”
Contributions frequently came in the form
of produce. In one little town, in the highlands of Scotland, we were given six
hundred eggs. We had eggs for breakfast, eggs for lunch, and eggs as hors
d’oeuvres before a dinner of eggs with an egg-white meringue for dessert. It
was weeks before we could look a chicken in the eye.
…There were times before the end of the
tour, however, when it looked as though the experiment was failing. One weekend
we were holding meetings in Edinburgh. We had attracted a large group of young
people the first day and were casting about for a way to get them to come back
the next. Suddenly, without consulting anyone, one of the team members stood up
and made an announcement.
“Before the meeting tomorrow evening,” he
said, “we’d like you all to have tea with us here at four o’clock. How many
think they can make it?”
A couple dozen hands went up and we were
committed.
At first, instead of being delighted, the
rest of us were horrified. All of us knew that we had no tea, no cake, no bread
and butter, and exactly five cups. Nor did we have money to buy these things:
our last penny had gone to rent the hall. This was going to be a real test of
God’s care.
For a while it looked as though He was going
to provide everything through the young people themselves. After the meeting
several of them came forward and said they would like to help. One offered
milk; another, half a pound of tea; another, sugar. One girl even offered to
bring dishes. Our tea was rapidly taking shape. But there was one thing still
missing – the cake. Without cake, these Scottish boys and girls wouldn’t
consider tea tea.
So that night in our evening prayer time,
we put the matter before God. “Lord, we’ve got ourselves into a spot. From
somewhere we’ve got to get a cake. Will You help us?”
That night as we rolled up in our blankets
on the floor of the hall, we played guessing games: How was God going to give
us that cake? Among the five of us, we guessed everything imaginable, or so we
thought.
Morning arrived. We half expected a
heavenly messenger to come to our door bearing a cake. But no one came. The
morning mail arrived. We ripped open the two letters, hoping for money. There
was none. A woman from a nearby church came by to see if she could help.
“Cake,” was on the tip of all our tongues, but we swallowed the word and shook
our heads.
“Everything,” we assured her, “is in God’s
hands.”
The tea had been announced for four
o’clock in the afternoon. At three the tables were set, but still we had no
cake. Three -thirty came. We put the water on to boil. Three-forty-five. It was
then that the doorbell rang.
All of us together ran to the big front
entrance, and there was the postman. In his hand was a large box.
“Hello lads,” said the postman. “Got
something for you that feels like a food package.” He handed the box to one of the
boys. “The delivery day is over, actually,” he said, “but I hate to leave a
perishable package overnight.”
We thanked him profusely, and the minute
he closed the door the boy solemnly handed me the box. “It’s for you, Andrew.
From a Mrs. Hopkins in London.”
I took the package and carefully unwrapped
it. Off came the twine. Off came the brown outside paper. Inside, there was no
note – only a large white box. Deep in my soul I knew that I could afford the
drama of lifting the lid slowly. As I did, there, in perfect condition, to be
admired by five sets of wondering eyes, was an enormous, glistening, moist,
chocolate cake.”
The experiment was a success and through it the five students
learned that God could be trusted. That He could be trusted in practical
ways. They learned that God was faithful. But that wasn’t all that they learned.
They also had a part to play in the game and that part was to have faith.
*“We stuck fast to two rules: we never
mentioned a need aloud, and we gave away a tithe of whatever came to us as soon
as we got it – within twenty -four hours if possible.
Another team that set out from the school
at the same time as we did was not so strict about tithing. They set aside
their ten percent, but they did not give it away immediately, “in case we run
into an emergency.”, they reasoned. Of course, they had emergencies! So did we,
every day. But they ended their month owing money to hotels, lecture halls, and
markets all over Scotland, while we came back to school almost ten pounds
ahead. Fast as we could give the money away, God was always swifter, and we
ended with money to send to the WEC work overseas.”
The only difference between the two groups, was that Andrew’s
group obeyed two rules while the other group did not. The rules were simple – mention
your needs to no one but God and give away tithe as soon as it comes to you.
What made these rules so important that they could effect outcome of the
experiment in such a way? It all had to do with faith…
“All of your needs have to
be met without any manipulation on your part – or the experiment is a failure.”
Mr. Dinnen had told Andrew. Andrew knew
exactly what Mr. Dinnen meant by manipulation. He had seen it firsthand. The
hints of the missionaries who had visited Witte had revealed even to a little
boy that they weren’t truly trusting God. They claimed to be but all the while they
were asking for the help of others. They had an insurance policy in place just in
case God didn’t come through. Andrew had known that, that wasn’t the way faith
was meant to work but now he knew why.
In last week’s post, The Question of His Character, we discussed that
it is not enough to have faith – you must have faith in the right thing. The ‘hint
missionaries’ had faith but it was placed in the collection basket and the
generosity of their hearers rather than in God. The other group fully intended
to tithe but they held onto that ten percent just in case they should run into
an emergency. This too was misplaced faith. As Andrew said, emergencies came. They
came for both groups. The difference was that the one group turned to their tithe
money to help them while the other turned to God.
When Hudson Taylor was preparing to go to China as a missionary.
He knew that he would have no one to rely on there except for God Himself. There
would be no one else to tell his needs to, no insurance policy to fall back on.
Every need would have to be filled by God alone. In February 26th
post, By Prayer Alone, Hudson put this kind of faith to the test in an
experiment similar to Andrew's. Though still in England, near to his family and
friends, Hudson decided that he would not mention his needs to anyone other
than God. When his bank account was getting low, Andrew prayed about it. When
he gave away his last coin and had no way of buying food only two options
remained – Hudson would either go hungry or God would provide. It was faith
without insurance policies. Faith without doubt.
"But let him ask in faith, with no doubting,
for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed
by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive
anything from the Lord;" (James i.6-7)
to be continued
In
Christ
quiana
* Quotes, excerpts, and facts have been taken
from Brother Andrew's book God's Smuggler
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