Part four in a series of lessons God taught Brother Andrew.
“You’re going to like this, Andy,” said Mr. Dinnen. “It’s an exercise in trust. The rules are simple. Each student on your team is given a one-pound bank note. With that you go on a missionary tour through Scotland. You’re expected to pay your own transportation, your own lodging, your food, any advertising you want to do, the renting of halls, providing refreshments…”
“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.”
“Hint Missionaries”
When Andrew first learned the WEC missionary training school sent their students out without financial support he questioned 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 said they lived not by faith, but by the collections they took up. They called such men “hint missionaries”. 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 was why he had hesitated to join a school that sent their students out without provision.
However, God had asked him to obey without question (see The Predetermined “Yes”) so he’d laid down this qualm along with the rest. He was resigned to obey God, even if that meant living as a “hint missionary”.
A Better Way
Now Andrew wondered if, perhaps, there was another way of getting provision. Perhaps a man truly could live by faith – faith placed, not in the offering plate, but in God Himself.
The idea was soon put to the test as Andrew and four other students set out to live and minister, for a month, on a total of just five pounds.
Five pounds which would have to be repaid. The assignment was an interesting one to be sure!
Balancing the Books – Faith Edition
“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 Part We Play
The experiment was a success and through it the five students learned that God could be trusted. 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 – 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 in the outcome of the experiment?
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 -in case God didn’t come through. Andrew had known that wasn’t the way faith was meant to work, now he knew why.
In the last part of this series, 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 – in the collection basket and the generosity of their hearers. The other group of students had faith – in the tithe they held onto just in case of an emergency. Both were cases of 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 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 By Prayer Alone, we saw Hudson put faith to the test in an experiment similar to Andrew’s. Though still in England, near to his family and friends, Hudson decided not to mention his needs to anyone other than God.
When his bank account was getting low, Hudson 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, ESV)
In Christ
Quiana
* All quotes and excerpts were taken from Brother Andrew’s book, God’s Smuggler.
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