Part three in a series of lessons God taught Brother Andrew.
“The building itself was a tall, two -story house on the corner. A low stone wall ran around the property. I could see the stump-ends of iron railings in it, the fence itself had no doubt been melted for scrap during the war. Over the entrance, on a wooden archway, were the words “Have Faith in God.”
This I knew was the main purpose of the two- year course at Glasgow: to help the student learn all he could about the nature of faith. To learn from books. To learn from others. To learn from one’s own encounters. With fresh enthusiasm, I walked under the arch and up the white pebbled path to the door.”
It was September of 1953 when Andrew arrived in Glasgow, Scotland. He had come all the way from Holland to learn about faith. It was a subject God had already begun to train him in and the words of the sign that stood over the path summarized what his next lesson would be.
“Have Faith In God“
Often, we become so concentrated on the first two words of that admonition that we neglect the second two without even realizing we are. We strive to have faith, meanwhile forgetting the God our faith is meant to be in. This mistake renders faith useless.
We have not only to have faith but to have faith in the right thing. Hebrew xi.6 tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. But it does not stop at that, it goes on to say, “he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (NKJV)
We are not only to believe but to believe in something very specific. Rather, in someone, very specific. The object of faith is of equal importance as the presence of faith. It is only when the two are coupled together that faith works.
In the first part of this series, The Predetermined “Yes”, we talked about the connection between faith and trust. The two terms are synonymous.
In terms of trust we understand that one does not just trust, but they must trust in something. The object on which the trust is placed is as important as the trust itself. The object of our trust will directly determine the outcome of the trust.
Saved by a Parachute
When you jump out of an airplane, it is of the utmost importance that you trust in a parachute to carry you safely to the ground. A parachute will do it, when no other object can.
You must trust the parachute for it to save you. You must put it on, do up the buckles, and once you jump you must pull the string which causes it to open. If you did not do these things the parachute would be unable to save you.
You must trust the parachute to be saved.
So, you could rightly say it was your trust in the parachute which saved you. However, your trust alone did not save you but the combination of trust and what it was placed in. If you had put your trust in a bed sheet it would not have saved you. Not even if you had unfolded it, tied its ends around your wrists, and waved it over your head while you were falling.
The parachute cannot to its job without being trusted, but the bed sheet cannot do the parachute’s job no matter how much it is trusted. In this, we see that the trust, if it is to work, can not be separated from the object that is worthy of trust.
In the same way, the command to have faith cannot be separated from God Himself.
Welcome to Missionary Training School
“The real purpose of this training,” Mr. Dinnen said, “Is to teach our students that they can trust God to do what He has said He would do. We don’t go from here into the traditional missionary fields, but into new territory. Our graduates are on their own. They cannot be effective if they are afraid, or if they doubt that God really means what He says in His word. So here we teach not so much ideas as trusting. I hope this is what you are looking for in a school, Andrew.”
“Yes, sir. Exactly.”
“As for finances – you know of course, Andy, that we charge no tuition. That’s because we have no paid staff. The teachers, the people who run things in London, myself – none of us receive a salary. Room and board and other physical costs for the year come only to ninety pounds – a little over two hundred and fifty dollars. It’s as low as this because the students do the cooking, cleaning, everything themselves. But we do request the ninety pounds in advance. Now, I understand that you will not be able to do this.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, it’s also possible to pay in installments, thirty pounds at the start of each session. But for your sake and for ours we like to insist that the installments be paid on time.”
“Yes, sir. I altogether agree.”
I did agree too. This was going to be my first experiment in trusting God for the material needs of life. I had thirty pounds I had brought from Holland for the first semester’s fee. After that I really looked forward to seeing how God was going to supply the money.
But during the first few weeks, something kept happening that bothered me. At mealtimes the students would frequently discuss inadequate funds. Sometimes after a whole night in prayer for a certain need, only half of the request would be granted, or three quarters of it. If an old peoples’ home, for example, where the students conducted services, needed ten blankets, the students would perhaps receive enough to buy six. The Bible said that we were workers in God’s vineyard. Was this the way the Lord of the vineyard payed His hired men?
…I could not understand why this bothered me so. Was I greedy? I didn’t think so. We had always been poor, and I had never worried about it. What was it then?
I realized that the question was not one of money at all. What I was really worried about was a relationship. When I was working at the chocolate factory, I trusted Mr. Ringers to pay me in full and on time. Surely, I said to myself, if an ordinary factory worker could be financially secure, so could one of God’s workers.”
Is God Trustworthy?
In other words, is God worthy of our trust?
In the illustration of the bedsheet and the parachute, we saw it was of great importance that the object in which trust was placed was trustworthy. The trust itself can not equip an object to save you, it can only enable an object that is already equipped to do so.
The Christian’s trust or faith is meant to be placed in God. Thus, the Christian must know if He is worthy of trust. How do we know that?
How do we know that a parachute is worthy of our trust? Or that a person is?
In relationships, trust comes with knowledge of the person you are trusting. As you get to know someone you see their character and it is in their good character that you place your trust. Or because of bad character that you withhold it.
In the same way, we know that we can trust a parachute because we know about the parachute. We know how it works and why.
Trust doesn’t just appear, it is built with knowledge. The same is true of faith.
God doesn’t expect us to blindly have faith in Him just because He said to. Rather, He has set about building our faith. He has set about making Himself known.
To gain faith in God, we must gain a knowledge of Him.
Getting to Know the King
“If I was going to give my life as a servant of the King, I had to know that King. What was He like? In what way could I trust Him? In the same way that I trusted a set of impersonal laws? Or could I trust Him as a living leader, as a very present commander in battle? The question was central. Because if He were a King in name only, I would rather go back to the chocolate factory than continue on this way. I would remain a Christian, but I would know that my religion was only a set of principles, excellent and to be followed, but hardly demanding devotion. If, on the other hand, I were to discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He committed and cared and loved and led. That would be something quite different. That was the kind of a King I would follow into any battle.”
It is here that the question of God’s character becomes of the utmost importance. We not only need to have faith in God, we need to know the God we have faith in.
Leonard Ravenhill once said, “My goal is God Himself. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing but Himself. The person of my God.”
Faith is not an attribute on its own. It is not something we give God in order to purchase His promises. Rather it is simply trust in God Himself. That trust, like any trust, comes through a knowledge of Him. The more we know God the more faith we will have in Him.
“Somehow, sitting there in the moonlight that September night in Glasgow, I knew that my probing into God’s nature was going to begin with this issue of money. That night I knelt in front of the window and made a covenant with Him.
“Lord,” I said, “I need to know that I can trust You in the practical things. I thank You for letting me earn the fees for the first semester. I ask You now to supply the rest of them. If I have to be so much as a day late in paying, I shall know that I am supposed to go back to the chocolate factory.”
It was a childish prayer, petulant and demanding. But then I was still a child in the Christian life. The remarkable thing is that God honoured my prayer. But not without first testing me in some rather amusing ways.”
In Christ
Quiana
* All quotes and excerpts were taken from Brother Andrew’s book, God’s Smuggler.
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