Part two in a series of lessons God taught Brother Andrew.
“I stood up. I took a stride forward. And in that moment, there was a sharp wrench in my lame leg. I thought with horror that I had turned my crippled ankle. Gingerly I put the foot on the ground. I could stand on it alright. What on earth had happened?”
In 1949, Andrew was shot in the ankle while fighting in the Dutch East Indies. The wound put him out of the war.
Andrew had already been living as a cripple for three and a half years. This was one of the problems he had laid before God when he felt the call to become a missionary. “How could I be a missionary when I can’t even walk a city block without pain?”
But none of Andrew’s fears were bigger than God. In the first part of this series, The Predetermined “Yes“, we saw that God didn’t cater to Andrew’s excuses. Rather He asked him to simply say “yes” and trust He would make a way.
Andrew accepted this daunting challenge. He said, “Whenever, wherever, however you want me, I’ll go. And I’ll begin this very minute. Lord, as I stand up from this place, and as I take my first step forward, will you consider that this is a step of obedience to You? I’ll call it the Step of Yes.”
The Step That Changed Everything
With these words still hanging in the air Andrew stood and took a step. “The step of yes”. What happened when he did?
He thought he had twisted his ankle but he could walk on it well enough.
“Slowly and very cautiously, I began to walk home, and as I walked, one verse of scripture kept popping into my mind: “Going they were healed.”
I couldn’t remember at first where it came from. Then I remembered the story of the ten lepers, and how on their way to see the priest as Christ had commanded, the miracle happened. “Going, they were healed.”
Could it be? Could it possibly be that I too had been healed?”
The Power of Faith
God took Andrew’s “step of yes” and used it. He took a man’s faith and began to show His faithfulness. The story Brother Andrew remembered is found in Luke xvii.
“While He was on the way to Jerusalem, He was passing between Samaria and Galilee. As He entered a village, ten leprous men who stood at a distance met Him; and they raised their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
And as they were going, they were cleansed. Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan.
Then Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine—where are they? Was no one found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?” And He said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has made you well.” (Luke xvii. 11 -19, NASB)
Jesus told the man that his faith had made him well. It is a phrase that we find Jesus repeat on multiple different occasions when men and women were healed.
Wait, wasn’t God the one who had made the leper well?
First Faith, Then Faithfulness
In the same way that Andrew’s faith had to come before he saw God’s faithfulness, the leper had to believe before he was healed. Andrew’s “step of yes” and the leper’s obedience in going to the priests both demonstrated faith.
First came faith and then the show of His faithfulness. This is and always has been God’s pattern.
If the order was reversed neither would work – men’s faith would not be faith, nor would God be seen as faithful. In Romans viii. 24-25 Paul says, “hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.” (NKJV) In the same way we can’t trust God, or have faith in Him, to do something that He has already done.
But if He hasn’t yet done it, or if we do not yet know He has done it, we are given the opportunity to trust Him to do it. Likewise, God needs men to trust Him if He is going to show that He is trustworthy. He asks men to have faith in Him so He can prove Himself faithful.
God employs men’s faith as the means of showing His faithfulness. This is why He desires for us to act in obedience to His words – to step out in faith. He beckons for us to trust Him. He desires to work in and through us. Our God is saying, “step out in faith, say “yes” to Me, then you may see what I will do!”
The Lame Went Walking
“I was due at a Sunday evening service in a village six kilometers away. Normally, I would have ridden my bicycle, but tonight was different. Tonight, I was going to walk all the way to the meeting.
I did too. When it came time to go home, a friend offered me a ride on his motorbike.
“Not tonight, thank you. I think I’ll walk.”
He couldn’t believe it. Nor, later, could my family believe that I had actually been to the service; they had seen my bicycle leaning against the wall and assumed that I had changed my mind.
The next day, at the chocolate factory, I walked each employee back to his post at the end of our interview, instead of sitting rooted to my chair as I had done in the past. Halfway through the morning my ankle started to itch, and as I was rubbing the old scar, two stitches came through the skin. By the end of the week the incision, which had never healed properly at last closed.
The following week, I made formal application for admission to the WEC Missionary Training College in Glasgow. A month later the reply came. Dependant on space opening up in the men’s dormitory, I could start my studies in May, 1953.”
God had stepped in and played His hand. He met Andrew’s faith with perfect faithfulness and He was only just getting started.
In Christ
Quiana
*All quotes and excerpts were taken from Brother Andrew’s book, God’s Smuggler.
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