Faith

The following is taken from the booklet The Four Pillars of WEC by Norman Grubb, which describes the four basic principles of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade and applies equally to our own lives. This is the second principle: Faith:

"An understanding of the principle of FAITH--the second pillar--and the right application of it, lies at the root of all that we call service for Christ. Hebrews 11 gathers up all that had ever been done in God's name from the dawn of history to the time of the writer, and with the obvious implication that nothing is ever done by any other means, labels it 'by faith.'

"We had better be sure, then, that W.E.C. from its beginning to the present day is 'by faith'. The writer of that chapter was making plain to his harassed Hebrew readers that faith is the only key to spiritual continuity and spiritual conquest; the chapter also makes plain that the forms faith takes and what it reproduces in each individual life obviously vary with every contemporary situation.

"While we are concerned, therefore, with the form faith has taken and how faith has expressed itself in our special calling, we equally appreciate and recognize all the other forms of faith in the calling of all others of God's servants.

"Faith to us is what the Hebrews writer defined in 12:2 as 'looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith'. God is in us, God is in our circumstances, and as we feel the pressure and challenge of them, the point is, how is He expressing that faith in attitude and action by us?

"C.T. Studd had the simplest of simple faith. In years gone by when as a young man he gave all his money away in one day, with the last gift of £2,000 he had cracked one of his little jokes. He wrote to General Booth of the Salvation Army, 'Henceforth our bank is in Heaven. You see we are rather afraid--notwithstanding the great earthly safety of Messrs Coutts and Company and the Bank of England--we are, I say, rather afraid that they may both break on the Judgement Day. It seems to us that Heaven is the safest bank, and it is so handy; we have no trouble about cheques or rates of exchange, and just "ask and receive, that your joy may be full".' For the next thirty years, he proved God's faithfulness financially. There were periods of poverty, and he was always under the fire of criticism from disapproving relatives and Christians who felt he had gone too far, though there were equally some who always stood faithfully with him. But such a walk, out on a limb with God, undoubtedly prepared him for this last and greatest summons to faith--what he called the coping-stone of his life, the founding of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

"Past fifty years of age, told by the doctor he would die if he attempted to go to the heart of Africa, his wife an invalid, with no church backing, yet having heard a plain call of God to go, what was he to do? The small committee which had been formed to back him, had resigned when they received the doctor's report. He was speaking next day at a meeting in Birmingham, and the chairman, Dr. J.H. Jowett, was telling the audience that he was sailing for Africa in a couple of weeks. Sitting listening to the chairman's remarks, he wondered what to say, for he had not a penny piece! Then the light broke. A voice said to him in his heart, 'Are you going to the heart of Africa? ' 'How can I, Lord, without the money?' 'Haven't you yet learned that when I give a commission, I give the provision also?' It was like the sun shining through the clouds, and C.T. got up and spoke as one about to sail. Next day in Manchester someone gave him a £10 note. With that he went to the Bibby Line offices and booked a ticket for Africa. Here was the deposit--the rest would follow! Of course it did: a £300 gift from a businessman in Cardiff.

"There was much more than an individual incident in this. C.T. did not then know that this was to be the founding of a mission and the establishment of the principle of faith in God alone for its finances. But on that basis he went out and on that basis the baby mission was started. I never knew C.T. to move from that principle of single-eyed faith in all his eighteen years in Africa. Money just did not bother him. If we looked after God's interests, he said, He would look after ours: and if He did not, well, the greatest honour anyhow would be to die for Jesus. As he wrote later: 'If a man joins our mission, he comes out on God. God is his father, to God he looks for supplies whether in money or kind. If God sends much, he is rather cast down thinking God is afraid to trust him to suffer in patience. If God sends little, he thanks God and takes courage that after all he may be in the apostolic succession. If he has nothing, then he shouts Hallelujah, for he knows he has come to the very entrance of the heavenly kingdom where there is neither eating or drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy, and loving service forever.' Right at our foundation, therefore, we had single-eyed faith for material needs lived out consistently by our founder.

"W.E.C. in these fifty years has constantly reaffirmed this to be God's way for us as a Crusade. Our primary reason is Jesus' own words. It is striking that He linked absolute dependence on Himself not with spiritual, but with material faith. In Matthew 6:19-34 He said in effect: Have no treasure but One, no guide but One, no Master but One. Be single-hearted, single-eyed, single-serving. And then He said in effect: if you have a singleness of that quality, then take no thought for material needs--what you eat, drink or wear. The world is concerned with that. You be concerned with the advancement of the kingdom of God, and all these material needs will be added. Therefore the evidence, to our thinking of a whole-hearted, whole-minded, whole-bodied faith, is not that we say we trust Him for our visible and daily material needs. In other words, it is not a genuine faith if in general terms we say we trust Him wholly, but when it comes to the practical application of that faith, to specific material needs, we mingle our dependence upon God with dependence on man. Therefore to us, here is the acid test of our 100% faith. If we really mean to trust Him only, then we trust Him only for our material supply as a mission and missionaries. To us a spiritual principle is at stake. To deviate one iota is to deviate from the 100% stand, the absoluteness of allegiance to which God calls His people on every level: Absolute holiness, love, consecration, yes, absolute faith.

"We well know that such a stand has the appearance of foolishness. There are many evidences that those who feel free to make their needs known to men ('Ask the Lord and tell His people') seem to get many advantages from it, for there are many Christians who will give generously if they have an opportunity of knowing what to give to. God guides others that way. We only say that for us the position of total faith is the only honest response we can give to the Saviour's words.

"But, if there are often material disadvantages in less complete and adequate equipment, smaller finances for the spread of the work, financial problems in the upkeep of families, and so forth, there are to us very real advantages.

"It gives a constant testimony to the faithfulness of God which we can share with all believers. It honours God and His promises to the Crusade now over fifty years old with a thousand and more workers on fields, and home bases fed, clothed, many fields opened and entered, stations established, furloughs provided for, millions reached with the Word of God. At the home bases, starting from 1931, we were led to take the position that we would not use mission funds for domestic expenses and that the home base workers would not take allowances. We had no particular Biblical injunction when we did that, but few in number in those days and in a period of extreme financial shortage, it came to us as a means by which we could share the sacrifice and faith of our missionaries on the field. We were then a handful in the one home base in Britain.

"Since that time the same principle has been adopted whenever W.E.C. has home base activities: in the ten main home bases now in many countries: in the area of regional headquarters which are extensions of the home base activities in some countries like Britain, North America and Australia: in our missionaries' children's homes in Britain and North America: in our training centres in Britain and Australia. This means that hundreds of mouths have been fed daily by the hand of the Father for over thirty years, tens of thousands of meals have been provided, including the nourishing food for the children, and never once has a need been made known to man. We do not know of one meal missed by all these hundreds all these years, except where any have been called to a definite time of fasting and prayer. The nearest we know was when in the early days of London Headquarters, there was nothing in the house for a week and no money. We had all our meals in the dining room in the basement. We were then a company of about twelve, and there lived with us an old lady who had been lady's maid in past years to C.T. Studd's mother and now made her home with us; and she was the one among us who kind of scoffed at these 'ideas of faith'. She acted as cook to the household. We decided that, with no prospect of meals, we would meet each mealtime in the prayer room upstairs and have a faith-praise meeting. But as each meal hour came round, the bell rang downstairs, and when we went down, there was bread and cheese and tea on the table. To this day we do not know, but we suppose the old lady provided it. We had additional cause for praise anyhow, because the Lord's prayer says, 'Give us this day our daily bread', and we had bread and cheese! We have never since been so near the edge as that!

"We have surely seen the quiet miracle of God before our eyes, like the dew, like the manna, never failing. What stories could be told of financial deliverances in these home bases, at the missionaries' children's homes, and by individual workers--hundreds and hundreds of them.

"This principle of faith has been held as firmly by all on the fields. What God sends in for support goes out monthly from the home base and is divided among the workers. What friends send personally goes out personally. But the Mission is the channel, not the source of supply to the missionaries. God is the source, and the proof of that is through the years from many fields the word we get is never the grumble, the request for more, the complaint of shortage, but the thankfulness for what God sends, much or little, and the expressions of faith in Him for supply, when special needs are mentioned.

"We know it sounds foolish. In the U.S.A. especially, the requirement of most missions is for new workers to get promises of support from churches or individuals, and not to go to the field until they have, and some are held up a year or two as a consequence. But we do not believe it glorifies God that these young people, and sometimes missionaries on furlough as well, have to go the rounds begging, and so we do not make this a requirement.

"It is right that the churches should take responsibility for missionaries, and we are thankful when God does raise up such support. But to us it is more important that all workers should maintain their dependence on God alone, and on the various fields should share together what God sends in through the Mission channels for their support, be it from North America, from Britain, from Europe or any other of the home bases. The fact that what is sent personally each receives personally keeps the door open for personal faith for specific needs, and for many hidden ministries of sharing one with another, according to 2 Cor. 8:14, 15.

"Faith in God alone, and neither in man nor churches, in another respect lays a strong foundation beneath us. World conditions are variable, economic slumps come and go, and what affects the world's economy affects the churches also. If our trust is in them for our supplies, then when they are in a recession, so are we. If they have to curtail their giving, we have to reduce our work and workers in a like proportion. But if our position is squarely that when God calls He supplies, and if we practised this genuinely through the years, so that in a test we do not suddenly try to apply a principle we have not been living by, then rough times financially, disturbed world conditions, the church in an economic blizzard, are the very chance for faith. As C.T. Studd said, 'The W.E.C. will die when God dies and that will take a long time!' But faith is not a stunt; it is a way of life. You cannot suddenly turn it on like a tap. It is a river, and you can shoot the rapids only if you have become an experienced navigator of the waters.

"If may sound crude, but often we have said outright to church audiences, 'Thank you for what you give, and it is your privilege and duty to see that the Gospel gets to the world. But don't think that we missionaries depend on you. Our source of supply is not the body, but the Head of the church. If you cannot or do not give, our God is able of these very stones to raise up givers for the mission field.' And we jokingly add, 'It is often hard work to pull money horizontally out of you. We prefer the vertical method--from the One who "giveth to all men liberally!"'

"World War II was a great opportunity for such a stand of faith. War means three things: new workers are not available because the Services demand them: money is short because Christian givers have their attention more directed to getting the Gospel to the servicemen: and new advances cannot be made into new lands.

"As the news came over the radio in London with the voice of Neville Chamberlain declaring war on Germany, we gathered in our Headquarters, about thirty of us, and praised God. Dark times are the special occasions in which God is seen as God. He is behind the devil himself, directing his activities to His own ends, and the fiercer the test the greater the victory. When Satan makes an especial assault, we can take it for granted that God has directed it to produce a special enlargement of His purposes. Is not Communism the greatest evidence of this? Has it not been God's scourge, like the Assyrians and Babylonians of old, to purify His church? Is not the visible outcome an enormous quickening of faith throughout the free world, a new era of the Spirit--a startling contrast to the contemptuous shouldering aside of a Bible faith as an anachronism by the liberals of the early years of the century? And in God's time, as after Israel's seventy years of exile in Babylon, God will blow upon Communism and liberate its slaves to their day of faith, or else Himself return in glory.

"So we stood and praised, and we said that just because a World War inhibited missionary advances, we should yet see that this attack of Satan through Hitler and Mussolini would only open the doors of worldwide evangelization wider; and as for ourselves, just because neither men, money nor areas of advance would be humanly available, God would send us all these. So He did by the end of the War--with about two hundred new workers, a doubled income, and two new lands entered. And as for greater worldwide advances, there has never been such an intensive seeking out and completing of the task of worldwide evangelization right down to the remotest tribe and uttermost parts, by dozens of missionary agencies new and old, as in this post World War II era. Faith is in its element in foul weather. 'In hopeless circumstances hopefully believed.' So if faith honours God, it also puts sinews into man; as great liners have stabilizers for foul weather, so faith gives the apparently frail ship of God its even keel in the stormy ocean of a chaotic world.

"The life of faith, however, has an uncomfortable shock for comfort-loving flesh. The history of the early church, the testimony of the apostles, gives no ground for equating earthly prosperity with Christian discipleship; and we have learned through these years that a life of faith by no means gives over abundance or even simply an abundance. It is much more of a shoestring walk. Those who have not actually walked this way but have theoretical ideas about it seem surprised and suspect that a person lacks faith, if all that is needed does not pour in as a continuous stream. The truth is that the true reward of faith is not material supplies, but Christ as its treasure both in ourselves and transmitted to others. This is the abundance and superabundance we seek, and which the New Testament promises. To us this is both Scriptural and logical. 'My kingdom is not of this world!': 'choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season': 'esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt': 'strangers and pilgrims'.

"Indeed we think that the renunciation of the life of faith and the replacement of it by earthly security in the great Christian denominations and agencies is the worm at the roots of spiritual decline in the history of the church. In each new movement of the Spirit the start is with sacrifice, daring, earthly insecurity, poverty, suffering. All the various reform movements through history, and all the present established and prosperous denominations started like that.

"At least one way of preserving this is by living by faith, for you then only get what God sends, and that is never too much, yet enough. It keeps us on God and off this world. But once we begin to demand some rights from this world, even from the Lord's people, we can soon begin to feel that we should have more and better, and then our original standards of sacrifice, faith and simplicity are replaced by earthly security and prosperity. Whatever others may think about it, for ourselves as a missionary Crusade we seek to run that extra mile with Paul which he claimed as his privilege in a standard chapter for W.E.C. -- 1 Cor. 9. He said in effect, 'Others may, I cannot', as, among other things, he jealously safeguarded himself from being a direct, financial burden on the churches to which he ministered.

"The most heartening event in our recent W.E.C. history has been the maintenance of this strict faith standard at the beginning of this our third generation. We recently held our first Leaders' Conference at our Kilcreggan Conference Centre in Scotland, attended for a month by some sixty of our leaders from all the home bases and many fields. Here there was one unanimous voice in reaffirming these W.E.C. 'old paths' of which I am now writing. When on one occasion some suggestions were made, which were misunderstood but might be interpreted as deviating from the principle of making needs known to God alone, there was a disturbance almost to the point of revolt, at any suggestion of whittling down the position of absolute faith.

"Simplicity of living has also, we believe, its salutary witness on the fields. It is always difficult for a foreign missionary on a primitive field to give any impression except of fabulous wealth, when even the possession of a shirt or a cooking utensil or electric torch is riches untold. That day is passing except in the remotest places. But simplicity of equipment and clothing and home does build a bridge between missionary and people, as they gradually come to realise that the missionary 's standard of living is way behind that which he left at home, and nowadays way below the more educated wage-earner among their own people. We saw evidence of this in the attitude of our Congo African brethren during the disturbed era of receiving their independence. Because there has been such a closeness of brotherhood between missionary and African, and because they had learned that the missionary had with him only the simple necessities of life sufficient to preserve health in a climate and with a diet to which he is unaccustomed, and that his real possessions are the treasure of Christ living in the converts, they have not shown greed and covetousness and demands to take over whatever they can lay their hands on. Church affairs and property were already in the church's hands; but where a missionary left his home temporarily during the danger period, it has been a happy experience when the African Christian leaders have said that they would guard the home or live in it to preserve the goods of the missionary until he returns.

"The difference in standards of living, where sufficient money and supplies have been available for missionaries almost to reproduce their home standards on the field, have had adverse effects on many fields: but the life of faith, thank God, has never made that possible among us.

"There is one danger worth mentioning of the reverse kind: that the connection between the life of faith and scraping the bottom of the barrel, may produce a wrong kind of poverty-complex. It is true that the standard is, 'having food and raiment, let us therewith be content.' But we can expect the Lord to provide all our needs according to Phil. 4:19, and we can confidently boast in and demonstrate a Father who does supply the necessities for life and ministry. As for the luxuries, we do not seek them.

"This negative attitude can effect our contacts also. We can have an inferiority complex about meeting people. We think we cannot mingle with the more prosperous or more highly-placed in this world. We feel we are more fit to minister to simple villagers, bush people, or the uneducated. A different example was set us by Mrs. C.T., our Mother Studd, when she was the first honorary secretary of the Mission. In offering hospitality, indeed her very presence and manner of dressing would give the impression of one who had plenty at her disposal, and she could mingle with any level of society. The consequence was that, both in Britain and in her world deputation tours, not only was she able to witness to and win to Christ people with plenty of this world's goods and stay with them in their homes, but she made lifelong friends and supporters of the Mission from among the nobility of England and families who have household names among America's great industrialists.

"Edith Moules whom God used to found and develop the leprosy work of the Crusade, now in six countries, had the same viewpoint. She felt we were wrong in stressing the poverty line too much, and that God could and would provide all that we need. On that basis she built her medical ministry in the Congo from nothing. She first told Mr. Studd of her all night wrestling with God, like Jacob at Peniel, when she sought to escape a call to the sufferers from leprosy but could not, and in telling him she probably had it in mind that he would offer to finance her start; but his simple word to her was, 'You have the same God as I. Go ahead!' Like any other crusader, she launched out from scratch; but as the work developed, it was according to her faith. In dress, in manner of life, though no one could surpass her in her outpoured devotion to the leprosy people, she showed that she believed in a wealthy Father, and she always had good supplies for the work and surplus to share with others.

"This aspect of the life of faith is especially important these days, when standards of living and education are rising everywhere. The important mission fields are becoming not so much the remoter villages which can best be catered for by the nationals themselves, but the students, the technicians, the politicians, the professional business classes and the city inhabitants. We expect and accept simplicity of living, but we also hold our heads high as children of the Father who is 'rich unto all that call upon Him.' If the promises are really as good to us as hard cash. it is right to act as those who have all we need and more.

"Nor must we people of faith forget that to give is more blessed than to receive, and in crudest terms the way to get is to give. 'Give and it shall be given unto you'. Generous sharing is a blessed characteristic of this faith family. Many, both fields and individuals, faithfully tithe what God sends, and share with others outside our ranks. Indeed we have this example set us by many outside our W.E.C. family. A notable example is Christ's Home, near our U.S.A. Headquarters at Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. These friends live as we do on the promises of God without appeal to man and have extensive ministry among difficult children. How much they have given us of food, fruit, vegetables, clothing, furniture through the years. They are outstanding examples of people of faith who seem busier loading gifts on others than receiving them themselves.

"Criticisms are sometimes levelled at 'Faith Missions' by members of older denominational missions on the fields on the ground that there are times when they have to take pity on the poverty of faith missionaries and help them out. We do not believe this to be a criticism founded on fact. We know through the years the careful and faithful walk of the crusaders in making their needs known to God alone. I think it may be sometimes that good friends of other missions see in their kindness where they could add to the comfort or diet of our workers. Perhaps through their own churches or societies they have ampler supplies. So they share from the love of their hearts, and then sometimes others, maybe not themselves, interpret such help as if of necessity they had come to the rescue of starving Weccers! The stories then run around at home that the older denominational missions have to help the faith missionaries out.

"A rumour once went around Scotland that a W.E.C. missionary had been found starved to death in the heart of Africa! Another was to the effect that a skeleton had been found in South America with a W.E.C. badge on it! When C.T. heard these rumours he answered that he had not yet known of one of our number who was given the privilege of starving to death for Jesus! Sometimes the older established missions have given us as younger brethren great help, both in getting permission from the government for our entry into a country, and in giving us medical help in their hospitals and maternity wards. We record this most thankfully. There is, generally speaking, a lovely spirit of brotherly co-operation on the mission fields.

"Another important product of the faith life is a basic independence of man as the reverse side of a total dependence upon God. Each person remains inviolably as an individual before God. To a certain point, individual independence is voluntarily surrendered to make communal interdependence a possibility. Team work demands team loyalty, team discipline, team leadership. But that is only a relative horizontal relationship, never to rival the absolute vertical relationship between the individual and God; and living by faith preserves the sacredness of the latter. It is never a master-man relationship among us. At most it is elder brother and younger brother. It is never, 'Do this'. It is always, 'It would help if you would do this', or 'Would you feel it to be God's will for you to do this?'

"Money is power. He who controls finances, controls lives. If down underneath, the heart reliance of a servant of God is on his board or denomination for his livelihood and daily bread, then there is bound to creep in a human subservience. If down at the grass roots God alone is the provider, ultimate allegiance is rendered only to Him. It puts a freshness into mission relationships--not the dullness of compulsory duty, but the spontaneity of freely rendered service. It is a preservative against the danger of mission magnification. If the Society is our life-centre and life-security, we shall magnify the organization and seek its prosperity. If God is our life-centre, we shall not make too much of any human organization, ours or others, for we shall only boast of one real membership--in the universal church of Christ. Healthy, humbling, liberating, like breathing pure mountain air or surveying the scenery from the summit, is this individual faith-life in a community. Yet paradoxically by the same law by which an individual loses his soul to find it, so a Society which makes no demands for human allegiance binds its members in as strong a corporate loyalty as the steel cable made of a thousand strands which twisted together, bears the great suspension bridge. Dictatorship has an illusion of the strength of which democracy has the reality.

"All God's ways through history are God through a man. 'There was a man sent from God.' 'Come now and I will send thee.' 'Go in this thy might.' 'The man Christ Jesus.' The man may become part of a team or form a team: Jesus and His disciples; Paul and his traveling companions. But still the ways of God never change; the teams of churches are formed of individual members with individual commissions which they fulfil in team fellowship, and the team must never be allowed to stifle the individual. W.E.C. did not start as a Mission. It was one man sent by God, who went out in defiance of a group of men who, in concern for his health and his wife's health, tried to stop him and resigned when they could not. The Mission was a product of the man, not the man the product of the Mission. And so it has been through our history.

"C.T. Studd would not even visit one of his own mission stations unless invited, because he so stood for the lordship of the Spirit in the workers and their liberty to be led by Him. Some even accused him of indifference towards the larger commission of the Crusade to world evangelization because of his total concentration on his own God-given calling to the Congolese. But not so; he was being true to a profound principle of the Spirit. The W.E.C. was to be God-in-action by whom He chose and where He chose, and let man keep his interfering hands off. God had picked him up and thrust him into Congo, but at the same time had told him that through his obedience of faith He would reach not only Congo, but the world. Very well then, leave God to find His own men and thrust them out in the same way to other fields. Let men and committees keep clear of trying to manage and engineer these things. This is what we mean by the independence of faith. We have since retained it as a saying among us: 'You are the W.E.C' 'I am the W.E.C.', meaning by that, if God has called me to world evangelization and I walk with Him alone, then if all others fade away around me, I go on. I am the W.E.C. There is something like an iron bar that will not bend in the heart of every man of Faith. That is the pattern for every crusader. 'Should such a man as I flee?' 'I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.' Good words, Nehemiah. An independent interdependence--that is the paradox of the man of faith.

"Living by faith is, we believe, the main safeguard in a Christian organization against worldly security, worldly prosperity and complacency, against man pleasing and man domination. It is the main preservative against the creeping paralysis of control by bureaucracy, which debases an instrument of the Spirit from a living organism to a mechanical organization.

"But the way of Faith is also the only unfettered unconquerable principle of advance. If with God's plan God's supply can be taken for granted, we need have only one concern--what is His plan? That is plain enough in all the biographies of the men of faith in the Bible. Once they had heard God's voice, the very principle of faith demanded that they act independently of visible human resources. They must call the things that be not as though they are. For faith is an absolute, what Paul calls faith unfeigned, and Jesus calls the single eye.

"If it is faith in God, and God is the invisible source of all that is visible, and both creates and manipulates His visible creation to His own ends, then unfeigned faith in God confines the believer to God. It shuts the door on reliance upon what are only God's creatures or on changing human events of which God is in ultimate control. The man of faith breathes the fresh air of eternity away up above the fogs and mists of time. He moves in the freedom of the heavenlies 'far above' the prince of the power of the air. The consequences are obvious. The human spirit, in union with God's Spirit, in disunion with any other kind of spirit, leaps out in the vision and commission of the Eternal. What it sees, it declares with the word of faith--against all appearances. What it declares, it sets about doing--without the human resources to do it with. It is the absurdity of faith, the foolishness of God which is wiser than men, the weakness of God which is stronger than men.

"C.T. Studd's declaration en route to Africa in 1910 has always been the thrill and pattern of faith for us in W.E.C. Nobody backed him. A notable evangelical clergyman, fearful that young people with more zeal than sense would follow such a fanatic, preached a sermon warning against 'the wildcat schemes of Studd'. To which C.T. replied in one of his inimitable doggerel rhymes (published later in a small book called Quaint Rhymes of a Quondam Cricketer) by a poem on 'The Wildcat Schemes of God': Abraham going out not knowing whither he went, and Moses taking two million people into a waste and howling wilderness.

"There in that boat, alone, with just the money for his fare and that's all, he wrote that statement of faith: 'As I left Liverpool, on retiring to my cabin the first night, God spoke to me in a very strange fashion. He said, "This trip is not merely for the Sudan, it is for the whole unevangelized world". To human reason the thing was ridiculous, but faith in Jesus laughs at impossibilities.'

"For himself, he acted it out by never leaving the people of his adoption, the Congolese of the heart of Africa, until he was 'glorified', breathing out his last hallelujahs [on earth]. He completed his part in that heavenly vision by all means--preaching, living, travelling, translating--that the commission should be carried out in depth as well as breadth, Christ really living in African bodies and not just on African lips. For the W.E.C. worldwide he never doubted that others would be God's agents in the fulfilment of the worldwide commission, as it has been. It is obvious that such a commission could never have been answered by such a man in such a condition--except by faith.

"These are the advances of the Spirit in the world of flesh spelled out to all in Hebrews 11 by the one phrase: 'by faith'. It is a wonderful adventure--to face the impossible: to sit down in all the weakness of a few insignificant humans: to talk, and while talking, listen for God's talking, sorting out the facts and seeking His ways: to come to a conviction that this is His word: to translate that word into the prayer of faith and then into the affirmation of faith: to get into action based on that certainty of faith: to add patience to faith, till we see the substance that was hoped for, in our case in our missionary calling, not bricks and mortar, not institutes of learning or healing, not finances, not even co-workers but Christ revealed, Christ formed and Christ living in men and women of many nations.

"By this means--by faith--the progress of God's supply is unstoppable. It is out beyond world events and world resources.

"At the death of C.T. Studd in 1931, we had our greatest chance, as the next generation, of proving for ourselves that the God of Studd is our God also. How thankful we are that we were stripped at that time almost as he was on his first journey. Adverse circumstances had brought us almost to the disappearance of the Mission, except for the small but solid body of crusaders, thirty-five in number in the Congo, with two representatives at the London Headquarters. That was all. Funds for the workers through Mission channels that month were £50 for the thirty-five and the overheads! We were advised by godly friends that this might be the indication to close down, with the two founders gone, both C.T. and Mother Studd. Was it? The crux of the matter was one simple question. Did God give C.T. a world commission? All we had to offer in answer was faith. He believed it, we believed it, the workers in Congo believed it. By faith, out of weakness made strong: by faith, plus nothing, with plenty of minuses to shake it.

"The rest was easy, though learned and applied in stages in those early days. First hearing God's voice. Yes, the commission was to the world. Next, how? In the first stage by workers and money sufficient for them to get to their fields. How obtained? By faith. What did that mean? Doing some believing according to the immediate circumstances and needs, just as the men of the Bible believed God for practical deliverances. We interpreted that to mean that we were free to fill in the amount of a blank cheque from heaven, so long as it appeared to us to be the next step; but only a next step, not the whole journey in one stride. To us that was ten new workers called, prepared, and with their passage and equipment money by the first anniversary of Mr. Studd's going--about nine months from that date.

"It does not seem much now, but it was a great stretch of faith to us in our weakness of that day. We did it. We gathered, four of us. We stated our faith according to Mark 11:24, 'What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.' We received by faith. Then we began watching daily, weekly, going about our ordinary missionary responsibilities, but not in any way seeking to obtain what we had already received. All we did in that respect was daily to affirm our faith and thank Him that ten were on their way, and in our magazine to affirm the same fact of faith and ask readers to watch what God would do. The ten came, the last one within ten days of the time limit, and the last sum of money needed (£200) within three days. This meant the confirmation in our beginning days that we were in God's way of faith.

"We followed this by fifteen the next year, twenty-five the next, fifty the next, seventy-five the next. But by this time we were spreading to many new fields. There were arrangements with governments to be made, and other factors in opening new fields which caused us to be slower in the outgoing than in the intaking of the new recruits. Faith is not functioning by a set principle, but going on with a Person, the Person in His activities. So the projects of faith may vary at any time; and with this rapid increase in numbers, we no longer felt the urge to ask for annual quotas, but to respond to the call for faith in other directions. The flow of workers was now in a steady stream, until today, as we have said, the Crusaders (W.E.C. and C.L.C. [Christian Literature Crusade]) number over 1,000 in the fields and home bases, with about another 100 in training and testing.

"The fields were opened by faith. An outstanding instance, besides the Congo, Columbia and Ivory Coast fields already mentioned, was Alec Thorne entering Spanish Guinea, West Africa, without official permission. There were all the incidents, sometimes humorous but with plenty of tension in them, by which God gave him favour with the officials and established him and his successors, now with their chain of Okak churches and national evangelists. Bessie Fricker (now Brierley) was another instance: entering Portuguese Guinea, alone, on the basis of God's word to her and despite the headshakings of the fearful, and thus provided W.E.C. with another of its mottoes: 'The woman is the man to do it!' And now there is the missionary staff, the young churches, the national evangelists living by faith and the leprosy ministry. [Alec and Dora Thorne's story is told in greater detail in Norman Grubb's book After C. T. Studd in the chapter amusingly titled "Mouse Challenges Lion" while Bessie and Leslie Brierley's story is told in Going for God by Betty Macindoe. Both are wonderful examples of how God uses ordinary people to accomplish His extraordinary purposes.]

"But every field is in its own way a victory of faith. God has kept us on a shoestring, so that every fresh advance has to be by faith; and conversely, if it had not been for God teaching us the way of faith, most of the advances would not have been contemplated.

"But always our main objective of faith is the spiritual rather than the material: the national churches brought to the birth, the national evangelists trained, the national leadership in charge, Christ living His life in the national brethren and through them in others, the reproduced becoming reproducers. W.E.C. has no part in eternal history, it is a convenience of time; but Christ in Africans, Indians, Latin Americans as in ourselves, and Christ in others through them--this is eternity begun in time: and for this we live.

"By God's grace the pulses of faith beat as strong as ever in our hearts. Get down to details, and every life story in W.E.C. is a story of faith, with its pressures, exploits, failures, victories, and onward movings in the heavenly vision. Each home base can bear its own testimony as in the beginnings of the North American Home Base with Alfred Ruscoe and the Australian with Arthur Davidson [Alfred Ruscoe's story is told in his autobiography: The Lame Take the Prey.]

"The launch of the Christian Literature Crusade with Ken Adams and his co-workers in war days in England is a story on its own [told in detail in two books: Leap of Faith by Norman Grubb and The Foolishness of God by Ken Adams], when no books were available and no bookshops permitted to be opened: the taking of the seven-storey Ludgate Hill book-centre in London, an absurdity of faith when the workers were only a handful: the advance into twenty-eight fields: the building by faith of the £30,000 office and book-centre at Fort Washington, U.S.A. the increase from £350 worth of books disseminated in 1941 to £500,000 in 1965.

"The wonderful deliverance and provisions of faith in the start and development of the Glasgow Missionary Training College with Francis and Elsie Rowbotham, is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Crusade, the story now told in the new booklet 'Would You Believe It'.

"Enough has been said to underline the fact that faith has no roof over it, however high the walls may be; and by our God we leap over walls. Faith knows no stoppage except when God says No, and faith's human discouragements are its food (as believing Caleb said of the giants who terrified the other ten spies: 'Neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us'). When man says No, that is exactly the time to find out (stirred into action by that No) whether God says Yes; and if He does, faith in us says Amen (2 Cor. 1:20), and forward we go. Faith is the victory, not because there is anything in faith, but only because it is, by the operation of the Spirit within us, the means of recognition and affirmation and appropriation of the living God in action through the members of His body."