Sacrifice

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 first principle: sacrifice:

"A wise masterbuilder! 'If any man build on this foundation gold, silver, precious stones . . .' We had a wise masterbuilder in the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade. He laid a good foundation and passed from this life with one triumphant word on his lips -- 'Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!' It was the testimony of the Spirit to a life well lived and a work well done. Over fifty years have now gone since this W.E.C. building was begun and more than thirty years since C.T. Studd was 'glorified'. To the four main foundation stones we gave four titles -- Sacrifice, Faith, Holiness, Fellowship. What have we built on them these thirty-odd years? God alone can be the judge of that, we can do a bit of examination. Failures? Yes. Weaknesses? Yes. But we too are bold to affirm the witness in our hearts and in the work that we have not intentionally built these years with a different kind of material. We are going to look at these foundation stones one by one, examine their meaning and quality, and see if they still seem to be in place.

"The first we have called SACRIFICE. It is a glowing term and stirs the heart of anyone with a vision and worthwhile purpose. But it is really the vision and purpose that matters. Given that, glorious enough and challenging enough, the world's history bears witness that no sacrifice is then too great to attain it. The God of glory appeared to Abraham (Acts 7:2). What matters then if a whole lifetime is spent as a stranger and pilgrim in a tent? Jesus 'for the joy set before Him' endured the cross. The exceeding and eternal weight of coming glory made Paul call his afflictions light and temporary. C.T. Studd was our Paul. See him in his bamboo house in the heart of Africa. He had 'seen' Jesus, he had 'seen' every African lost without Him, and had heard the call to give them all the chance of receiving Him. What then did the conveniences of life mean to him? One room is enough. A bed with strips of goathide for spring; a board he could stretch across his knees for holding his Bible and for early morning translation work; a shelf on one side with a row of well-marked Bibles, and on the other side a table full of missionary gadgets. Nearby, a handmade desk and chair where hours were spent each day on translation. Meals? they must fit in where they could. If there was building, he must be there to ensure that the poles were put in upright, for Christian beginners must learn that right living included right workmanship. If there was a meeting, a group of seekers or visitors from the villages, no meal must interfere with their instructions, and that might take three hours.

"The days at the headquarters station were filled from 2 a.m. when he awoke to be alone with God and hear from His Word, to the evening meeting with the missionaries. The weekends were spent at this out-church or that. He was carried through the forest at night, when walking and cycling were beyond his strength, so as not to waste the hours of the day. Then, as the crowds heard of his arrival through their drum telegraph, he would sing, pray, preach and teach as long as they stayed.

"A few months before God took him, he said farewell to his daughter, Pauline, who with her husband [Norman Grubb] was taking over the home end of the work. They sat by his bedside until about 3 a.m., knowing they would not see him on earth again. As they were about to part, he said, 'Pauline, I would like to give you something before you go.' He looked about him at his table of gadgets, at the few boxes behind his bed placed on poles to keep them from the termites, where he kept his clothes and few possessions, and then up at the grass roof from which hung various articles not in immediate use but carefully preserved, banjos for leading the singing, pans, kettles and so on; and then he quietly said, 'But really I have nothing to give you, because I gave it all to Jesus long ago.' This was the man whose brother had just occupied the Mansion House as London's Lord Mayor, the man who had been called a fool for Christ all these years for giving away his inheritance in one day, a sum equivalent to £100,000 in the values of today, but whose regret was that he had not more to sacrifice for Jesus.

"This was where we first learned sacrifice in W.E.C., and equally from his wife, Mother Studd, as we called her, back in London. Sixteen years she was parted from her husband. When he first responded to the call of God to go to the heart of Africa, she was on her sick-bed semi-invalided with an enlarged heart. Even his close friends had gone so far as to tell him that they did not think it was even Christian to leave his wife in that condition. His answer had been to sit down on that last night in London and write on a postcard what became the motto of the Crusade: 'If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.' She rose from her sick-bed by faith, after she heard how God had delivered her husband on the journey out from dangerous fevers, and he had written urging her also to 'trust Doctor Jesus.' She became so immersed in the activities of spreading the news of the baby mission, challenging young people to go out, and the increasing responsibilities of the Home base, that she and he saw each other once only for two weeks, when she was able to make a short journey, but at her age and in her condition a very difficult one, to visit him in the heart of Africa.

"What has this meant to the rest of us in W.E.C. -- the more than 1,000 of us as we now are? Imitation? Accusations of extremism and fanaticism? Neither indeed. C.T. Studd has been to us as Paul to the Corinthians, 'Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.' We have seen a principle of the Spirit. The principle which is the very nature of God who is love. Love is by its nature self-giving. 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' If, therefore, God has now come to live and walk in His redeemed people; if redemption means that God through Christ has ousted from humanity the false indwelling spirit of self-love which Adam received when he partook of the wrong tree and which every child inherits, being born 'a nucleus of self-centredness'; if He has replaced that spirit of error with the Spirit of truth who is the Spirit of self-giving, then self-giving, self-sacrifice, is the normal characteristic of the child of God. It is not the nature of the human, but the nature of the Divine One expressing Himself through the human.

"This means, as the Bible shows, that every life is a specifically commissioned life. We are all priests, 'a royal priesthood'; and a priest is 'ordained for men in things pertaining to God'. He is a specific intercessor, for intercession is the chief ministry of the priest; it is the chief ministry of the Great High Priest, who now fulfils His priesthood in and through the priests whom He indwells. This means that in every redeemed life there is a specific calling to an intercessory ministry. Intercession is much more than it is loosely regarded to mean--a kind of intense form of prayer. It is a calling to a direct involvement. Here is a situation with which God confronts me--a need in my home, my church, my city, my country, my world. Such callings are as varied as are the different lives we live. I am to give myself (the self-giving God in me) to meet it. I am to accept what that involves me in--vicarious participation. I become a substitute for those whom I am called to be an intercessor. I bear and accept what comes to me in unpleasantness and suffering through Satan in those for whom I intercede. I respond with the patience, love, service, faith and faithfulness which can be an unveiling of Christ to them and draw them to Him.

"Intercession starts with a commitment accepted--the 'by faith Abraham', 'by faith Moses', 'by faith so and so', who deliberately moved into the situations of their calling. It continues with the position of faith which continually affirms without sight and against appearance that God is going to do this thing through me--save the souls, provide the needs, build the church, spread the gospel through an area. There is burden and suffering in it. We feel and carry the need, the sin, the sight of Satan in control where God should be, the darkness, opposition, prejudice, hate. We persist maybe through years, believing yet not seeing; faith is a fight, a labour often. We believe--and then, as James says, doubts assault us and we temporarily become 'double minded', and have to reaffirm faith again. Abraham 'through faith and patience' (endurance) received the promises; and there were those who 'died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them'. This is the intercessory work of a priest-believer. This is what involves sacrifice of the type of C.T. and Mother Studd. This is us being corns of wheat sown into the ground and dying (dying to any escape from accepting our commission and its cost in involvement--time, money, activities, prayer, physical discomforts, human separations); but 'if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.'

"Since the days of our founder, each of us as recruits in the Crusade have understood and faced the implications of this word Sacrifice. We have regarded it as Paul did: 'I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: we are fools for Christ's sake , we are weak, we are despised: we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place . . . we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things.' We have expected and accepted that God would drain out all there is of us in our calling, identified with Him who 'poured out His soul unto death . . . and made intercession for the transgressors'. We have taken that seriously and sought to impress this seriousness on our younger generation of recruits. 'A living sacrifice'. 'Don't join with us unless you count it your honour to pay the ultimate price of your calling--life, health, possessions, loved ones. The standard of Jesus is, 'Whosoever he be that forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple'. That might mean a life laid down quickly, or, what is more likely, thirty, forty or fifty years of service keeping at it in your sphere of self-giving for those to whom you are sent, until you 'retire upwards'.

"Pat Symes going to Columbia, South America, as a young man in 1933, knowing it to be the most fanatical of the Republics in their adherence to Romanism, embraced all that it involved with open eyes. He had already tasted of sacrifice for Christ among the Indians of the Amazon. To reach one or two hearts in the early years meant travail, prayer, tears, persecution. Hit by a stone when speaking in the open air, as a hot-blooded young Australian, he took his belt off and chased his tormentor; but the inner Spirit of meekness spoke with another voice, and that night he told his little band of fellow workers that his had been a reaction of the flesh and that never again was he to retaliate, but be a follower of Him who 'when He was reviled, reviled not again'. One of their co-workers, then a single girl, Nesta Keri Evans (now Wood), was kept hidden for a week by a bakeress behind a curtain from an angry mob. Pat felt that the only way to reap the harvest he had come out for, was to stick at it--build, build, build in the Spirit by the preaching and teaching of the Word--and he took no proper furlough for fifteen years. His co-workers have been of the same spirit. In more recent years, in the fires of open persecution, living always in danger of assault, one worker, Willie Easton, spent a night in jail stripped and shamefully treated. Another, Ralph Hines, was thrown into the Magdalena River to drown. Many of the national Christians were driven from their homes, some martyred, some raped--in one case the Christian family bringing up as one of their own the little one conceived in shame. Pat and his co-workers are still there; but today there are the numerous churches, the village congregations, the national pastors and evangelists, the Bible School filled and refilled, the printing press, the maternity home. This has been 'Sacrifice'.

"Sam Staniford, who recently went to be with the Lord, had his fifteen years with C.T. Studd in the Congo, in charge of the most promising mission centre of Wamba with its many outchurches. He began to lose the sight of both eyes--double cataract, though only a young man. Brought home by his wife, it appeared like the end of his missionary career, and they thought so too. But, after the operation had restored some sight, God spoke. They came one day with a cheque of £80 in their hands. Sta (pronounced Star, to call him by his African name) told how the Lord had said to him, 'Did you not tell Me when I called you for Africa that you would give your life for Africa? Why have you gone back on your word?' 'Because of my eyes, Lord.' 'But you said you would give your life. It is not a question of your eyes.' That settled it. The cheque was the amount they had saved (for a missionary has not much to save from) to start a new life at home. It was now to be used to send another worker forward. As for themselves, they would prepare to return.

"But just then we had accepted the challenge of entering a number of new West African fields, and we had asked God for a mature leader to head up the advance. Here he was. So Sta set out for the Ivory Coast, to enter a tribe with a reputation for poisoning--the Gouros. The French were reluctant to give permission, but at last it was granted. Not long after came three-fold 'disaster'. Sta's wife contracted yellow fever, although it was not a district where it was prevalent. In a few days she was dead, with only Sta and his companion, Fred Chapman, to bury the body. A short while later one of Sta's eyes gave out. Then within a few weeks Sta was involved in a car accident, the car overturning in the deep ditch so often at the side of these roads. If a trader had not happened to pass by, he would have bled to death with the deep gash across his head. When recovered, he was left with the hearing of one ear gone, and only about half sight in the one remaining eye. We suggested his return home after such a series of shocks. His answer was, 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.' My dear wife has done the dying; I am remaining here to gather the fruit.'

"Years followed. Recruits joined him and the work was established. In World War II, after the fall of France, it seemed that Ivory Coast, then a French colony, would be under German control through the Vichy Government, and financial supply from Britain would be cut off. There remained one chance of the missionary staff of about sixteen escaping--if they dashed to the coast and caught the last ship. Sta sent round a message telling all of this last chance and to take it if they wanted to, but adding that any who remained would have an opportunity to see how God 'can provide a table in the wilderness'. All stayed. God's method of supply when no other method of getting anything through was available, was a contact with a trader who offered to get money into the country, if we would entrust it to him. There was no guarantee, but we took the risk, and he got it there.

"Again the years passed. The Spirit of God broke through, souls were being saved, churches formed, translation work progressing, the Bible School training and sending out its first pastors and evangelists. Sta became mentally slower. Plainly the blow in the car accident had done some damage. But he could at least live out there and do some teaching and preaching, cared for by his second wife, Frances, whom he married there, and who was also chief translator. He always had an aptitude for mathematics, being originally destined for a mathematical career, so when he could do nothing else, he handled the finances, until a stroke brought him home and within a year he was with the Lord. But the harvest was well above ground!

"Every missionary society can tell such tales. Dr. Wilfred Morris and his wife, Nancy, founders of our work in India, were always more absorbed in the spiritual than in the physical. They have lived as no ordinary doctor would live. In earlier years they gave themselves to the hard life of village itinerary and dispensary work, thus establishing the W.E.C. work in northern India. Then when they could have returned to a practice in England, they went back to an even harder condition. They lived with Indians as Indians in fellowship with Brother Bakht Singh and the many Indian assembles God has raised up through him in the south, ministering the Word to them. This ministry has proved of such value and so acceptable to the young churches that several other W.E.C. workers now give most of their time to it. High up in the foothills of the Himalayas, facing the distant ranges of the eternal snows, in the nearest permitted area for foreigners to the Tibetan border, 'Doc and Nancy' turned a large, rambling house into a small hospital and dispensary. To it the hill people came from miles around, always hearing of the great Healer of souls. Not much fruit is yet visible in these northern areas of India; but the sacrificial living, the self-giving love is, in the true apostolic succession, 'death worketh in us, but life in you,' the true fulfillment of what we mean by this word Sacrifice.

"These are men, but the mission fields of the world are dotted over with women who are sacrifice incarnate. Are there any soldiers of Jesus to equal the single women, who often have renounced marriage in earlier years to be true to their calling and thus 'attend upon the Lord without distraction.' Of all missionary crusaders I take my hat off to them. Jean Buchan of India jokes about her wooden leg, 'Eben-ezer', having lost her own leg through blood-poisoning during her first term on the field. She had already turned down her attractive, godly suitor, because he had not a missionary call. When she returned on furlough last time , now limping and greying, once again he appealed to her to remain with him. Once again she chose India.

"Muriel Harman of the Congo, was another--forty years there. The story of her martyrdom is in 'This is No Accident'. Her great love was to be out in the villages with the Gospel, yet as a nurse she has returned dozens of times to see her fellow-missionaries through their confinements. No dangers at the time of Congo's transition to independence could move Miss Harmon and Mrs Harrison, widow of that pattern missionary Crusader, Jack Harrison, who was C.T. Studd's successor, from their remote station and village ministry in the forests, though they went through at least one unpleasant experience. Instead of returning home, they were writing home that this was the chance for single women, for sometimes in the villages heathen Africans would say, 'If you were men, we would beat you up, but being women, we accept you.' Muriel Harman went back to the very place where they had been mistreated, this time to a loving welcome and acceptance.

"I hope the point is clear enough--that what we call 'Sacrifice' is nothing else than God, who is Self-giving love, continuing His saving ministry through the members of His earthly body: and love always is expressed in Sacrifice. He lives that quality of life in ten thousand different forms through ten thousand different people, and that is true of the homelands just as much as on the fields. 'Mother Scholes' has been to us the pattern missionary parent. Jack Scholes, our Congo Field Leader, was her only child, and she a widow. She gave him gladly over forty years ago, and really lived her life in him in distant Congo. When he came on furlough, she used to say that her greatest sorrow would be if he did not return to the field! Gradually blinded, finally dying of cancer, she gave him to the end, though Jack and his wife, Jessie, were able to be with her and nurse her in the final days.

"Another couple we well know, represent us in North England. They are both past retiring age, but for years the wife has continued with a daily job, just to have the money to give to missionaries.

"Such instances, at home and on the fields, are only illustrations of dozens of others. It seems invidious to mention some and not others, but they give point to what we are saying. There are those, and many, whose homes are almost hotels for W.E.C. missionaries. In all the home base countries round the world there are friends, 'overtimers' we call them, in whose homes a bed is always ready, often through some of the family sleeping in make-shift ways, with the meals, the fellowship, the gathering of interested neighbours, the talk on the Lord and the work into the early hours, despite the fact that the breadwinner has to get up early to go to his job. There are those who run Prayer Batteries for years, where the friends gather weekly, and they seem to know more of the movements of the missionaries and the news of the fields than we ourselves!

"Intercessors all. Not by man, neither by man's choice. But the Great Intercessor has been carrying on His intercessory work, the Head through the body, in infinite variety but by the same Spirit. 'He saved others; Himself He cannot save.' The point for us in W.E.C. and why we name Sacrifice as our first pillar, is that when we know why we do a thing, we do it more effectively: 'that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.' We can fight intelligently when we know our weapons and our objectives. Therefore a crusader can be a more effective crusader when he intelligently grasps the principle behind this one word Sacrifice, the principle we here call intercesson--that the intercessor accepts the divine compulsion to give himself on behalf of and in the place of those for whom he intercedes, and that in doing so, really God doing it in him, he fulfils the law of spiritual harvest which is as sure as the law of natural harvest: that the corn of wheat dies to bear much fruit, and the world gets the fruit. A fulfilled intercession is as sure of gaining its end as was the cross of being followed by the resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost."