Yes I Am 40 - A Faith Illustration

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 40

A FAITH ILLUSTRATION

I learned the speaking of the word of faith as a regular principle of life through my friend Rees Howells. I listened to him in his daily talks on how the men of God in the Bible came to the point of speaking that word of faith. It gradually soaked into me that this was not some occasional, rather exotic way of handling life’s challenges, but the normal one. I saw it in the men of the Bible, and supremely in the life of Jesus Himself. Moses announced the ten plagues to Pharaoh one by one, crossed the Red Sea, got water from the rock, assured the people of daily manna... each by some specific word, such as "Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord which He will show you today; for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace" - when the Israelites were terrified by the chariots of Pharaoh pursuing them. Joshua, when the priests blew the trumpet, commanded the army around Jericho: "Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city"; David declared to Goliath, "This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand"; Elijah told Ahab, "There shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word."

Those great Bible examples could seem out of reach to us ordinary twentieth-century folk. But I observed Rees Howells at his Bible College put faith into present-day action. And I have since seen multitudes of instances of this during my years in the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

I had, as a young man, joined C. T. Studd in the heart of Africa, after my army years in World War I and a time at Cambridge. I had been attracted by his new venture, then called the Heart of Africa Mission, because it was founded on the principle that God alone would be the supplier of all needs... according to His promises, with no appeals made to man, and no needs mentioned except to God. The Crusade has remained wholly faithful to this principle these sixty-eight years of its existence. Pauline and I lived like this with C. T. Studd and our fellow workers in the Belgian Congo, and experienced God’s faithfulness.

Meanwhile, back in Britain I had become a close friend of Rees Howells, and the first link between us was his sense of oneness in spirit with C. T. Studd, whom he had never met. From Rees Howells I learned not just an almost unnoticed walk of faith regarding the daily supplies coming from God, but a principle of faith to be definitely applied to every challenging circumstance of life, the way Jesus plainly acted in meeting every variety of need.

My Waterloo came when C. T. Studd in the heart of Africa was "glorified" (the way we always speak of the "death" of God’s servants), going to the Lord in 1931 with "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" as his last words. He had commissioned Pauline and me to return to the home base in England and carry on the Crusade with the thirty-five workers in the Congo, and just we two at home. That first month at home we received $500 for those workers for a month! And it was precisely then, at the bottom of a dry well, as it were, that I looked up to the glimmer of light at the top and was challenged to put into practice on my own what I had learned from others.

I am writing this not from any special interest in the incident, but because it illustrates what we are talking about how to use the word of faith. The way we then did it is the way I and so many others still do it today. Not one iota of difference. That is why I mention it in detail: as an example of practicing the faith way as the only way - the only workable way - of living, applicable to every detail of our lives. For though learned, perhaps, in a crisis, it is then to be practiced in all our daily situations.

There were four of us together one day at the house which was our London headquarters in 1931. There was Pauline and I, one missionary recruit, and one missionary on furlough. What did we do? First we faced our negatives. Things were at the collapsing point: Trouble had arisen and many had left us. The Depression had hit and money was practically nonexistent. We had plenty of advice to "give up" - close the small mission, or offer it to others. (This situation was of the same kind that we are all confronted with at times, with pressing, even disastrous negatives: What shall I do about this mountain, this hopeless situation, this impossible person?)

Well, I had learned the first step from Rees Howells. Not calling on God and asking Him for deliverance; nor listening to man - but listening to God. In other words, not what we think about it, but what has He to say to us about it. "What’s up, God?" This is revolutionary (and has remained so) because it reverses prayer. It is not we talking to Him and bringing Him our needs, but giving Him the chance to talk to us.

For us at that time it certainly was the difference between collapse and continuing. We listened. But how does God talk to us, or we hear His voice? We have already gone into that: by knowing our inner spirit-union, then catching on to what comes to our minds as what He is saying to us. On that occasion, a thought came to us fully suitable to our special calling. We remembered that our founder, when he first went alone as a pioneer to the heart of Africa, wrote that God had spoken to him on board ship "in strange fashion" and said to him, "This journey is not only for the heart of Africa but for the whole unevangelized world." He had added, when he wrote this home to his wife, "To human reason it sounds ridiculous, but faith laughs at impossibilities and cries, ‘It shall be done!’"

Well, that was certainly absurd to us. Our thirty-five in the Congo were almost at starving level, and here God was coming back to us through our founder and saying, "Not only for the heart of Africa but for the whole unevangelized world." But we knew it was the word of the Lord in all this impossibility, and we accepted it. For C. T. Studd had said specifically: "Faith laughs at impossibilities," and this was where he and Rees Howells talked the same language - faith!

So the next thought that came to us - His mind in our mind (We were not doing any official praying, not on our knees. We were sitting talking, and this was our prayer!) - was, What does "faith" mean when it comes to a matter not of theory but of action? That led us to the Bible, which was always our foundation - the Bible interpreted to us by the Spirit. It seemed practical to us to turn to the experience of Joshua, for he was Moses’ successor… and in a minute way we were successors to our Moses, C. T. Studd. So we read Joshua chapter one, and that was where God’s mind speaking through our minds put us right into focus, put us right along the lines Rees Howells had always talked about and showed us in his own life. We read how God spoke to Joshua and told him to pick up the torch that Moses had laid down and go forward into the promised land, crossing the Jordan River.

Well, that was still theory to us. Exhortation wasn’t what we needed. It was how to get into action. So we read further. That interview with God closed with verse 9. Then the paragraph mark: change of subject. And here was our key illumination - a lifelong one to me. We read that Joshua called together the officers of his army and told them to make practical preparations - commissariat, food, etc. - for Joshua said, "Within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan." That was what struck us. By what authority did Joshua name "three days" and then say with total confidence that they would then cross the flooded river? God had not said that to him.

.....calling on God as though at a distance and He not too willing to help 

 Then we saw. We got into focus how Joshua and all such men spoke their words of faith. They named their needs. They, not God. "What things soever ye desire." This was the secret. The hidden key. This life is not to be we men pathetically depending on God, calling on God as though at a distance and not too willing to help. It is God’s marvelous plan of entrusting Himself to man, joining Himself to man as man. It is man speaking as God. It is union in action, just like with Moses, Elijah, and the rest. It was Joshua who, as a military commander, calculated the days needed for preparation and then fixed a timetable by the word of faith. He had got it! He understood that God had entrusted His own plans and the power for their fulfillment to His anointed agents - which we all are. You define what you need and how much you need. Then you say so. That’s all. You say it is coming. That it is there already in your sight. "Within three days ye shall pass over."

It is always our speaking our word of faith which puts a person into action. But this is not human action. It is God-action, Spirit-action, and the river will dry up and the people cross. So we see that all hangs on this spoken word of faith, and that’s all; because it really is God the Father speaking His word by His son or daughter, through whom the Spirit then moves into manifestation. Do we see this?

We did that morning. We sat together and spoke that word. We calculated our "three days" to be that God would start sending new recruits, the first of a great army, to fill gaps in the Congo as well as going to other lands. (We took no note of the needs of the existing workers, for we knew that was God’s normal business.) We named "ten," and that as the first token of a world-wide advance to begin in the Congo. They would come in a year, by the first anniversary of C. T.’s glorification. We said it, named the number, and the day - July 16, 1932 - and used that scripture we have already quoted in Mark 11:24. We believed we had received, as it says.

Next day as we gathered, one of us asked the Lord to remember and send the ten. The Spirit rebuked us. Do you ask for what you’ve got? If you got it yesterday, shouldn’t you give thanks? So for the rest of that year - no man knowing what was happening - we thanked, watched, and often laughed, as the ten came: called (with Bible-school training), financed, and commissioned to the Congo where they all went. The last one, Ivor Davies, was given the name Kumi in Africa, which means "ten." The last £200 needed for his passage there came three days before the anniversary. We were in Belfast, in a prayer conference which began five days before, watching each mail, and the telegram came from Pauline in London: "200 pounds for the ten, Hallelujah." We heard later that it had come from two old ladies whom we had never met. So thank God for old ladies!

The next year we moved on to fifteen, the next twenty-five, the next fifty, the next seventy-five - and they came. There would be no point in giving further details, for we are looking at principles. But I thank God that the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, coupled with the Christian Literature Crusade (which was born out of it), together have some 1500 workers, establishing the gospel in over forty fields. Thank God, today thousands around the world have confessed Christ and are themselves now forming national churches, spreading the gospel witness. The whole company of Crusaders are still living with enthusiasm on the promises of God, applying these same principles of faith to all kinds of advances. Millions of dollars now come in annually... when it was but five thousand that first year. I do not mean to disregard the fact that there have been failures en route. And trials. For some there has been the glory of martyrdom, as they have laid down their lives for Christ. There are objectives of faith not yet in the visible; but on the whole, we have seen overwhelming evidences of the truth of God’s word-that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

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Ambition as a godly force.

Ambition? Just reading a bit of CT Studd,Cricketer and Pioneer by Norman P Grubb. He was meticulous,nay scientific in his ambition to be the best cricketer.He was the best all-round cricketer and he and his brothers featured inscribed on the very first urn that held the ashes. We "get" what we go for. When I was 13 I was zapped by the Holy Spirit and took the zap into school, preaching to the whole school. But I could see there was something fundamentally wrong in our 2 level message, that didn't relate to scripture...and the "shelving" of the 3rd feast until after we die or Jesus comes back, rendering Christianity effectively useless on earth, was to me an abomination to the Name that is higher than any other Name.

 Out of my heat, in 85 the Spirit birthed the song "How You bless our lives" and the words "I want to lift your Name even higher." That's been my ambition and God is answering it. The song got into UK Songbooks.

It little matters to me, (as it didn't with CT Studd when he boldly proclaimed over Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade in Congo that it was for the world though only he and a handful were there), that so few understand the things I say.

 A few do. 

A few understand that Jesus is big enough to make His Life work here and now. The others as Paul used to say, are commended because they at least preach Jesus. 

But I preach a Jesus that not only saves, and secondly anoints with power,but thirdly according to Galations 2:20 comes to LIVE OUR LIFE as us NOW. And if that means I have few friends on Earth, then so be it...for this really is the foundation that St Paul was preaching, and it is backed up by the Lord with the Melchizedek order seeming to follow me wherever I go. 

The Name 

that is higher 

than any other Name

When I am in a meeting I expect the Melchizedek order to be there, and if it isn't, Havant Church,Emsworth Church,the Nugues in Normandy,the Franke's in Germany,Exeter University Christian Union who were to make me its President,The President's school in Kenya,my own school and our Amersham Baptist Church (now New Life) can all testify that I will punch holes in religious roofs until the Presence falls. (And when Simon the religious man invited Jesus back to his house, there were so many people ,some friends broke a hole in his roof to let their crippled friend down at the feet of Jesus) .

Ambition breaks through.

Hudson Taylor's Holy Spirit Lineage- Part Two: CT Studd and the Cambridge Seven

Pictures: CT Studd's boyhood house Tedworth House in Wiltshire and inset- his African house in the Congo.

C. T Studd
Continuing from The Cambridge Seven—just two years later in England:
On 4th February 1885, a wet winter's night in London, a large crowd was making its way into Exeter Hall on the Strand. Inside, the hall was rapidly filling with men and women of all ages and ranks. Well-dressed ladies in silks and jewelry whose carriages would be waiting afterwards to carry them back to Belgravia or Mayfair, mingled with flower girls [remember Eliza Doolittle?] and working women in plain dark dresses who had found their way on foot from the East End slums. Small young city men were sitting besides drab shopmen who, on superficial glance, might have seemed more at home in a gallery of a music hall.
On the platform were forty Cambridge undergraduates. Above their heads hung a large map of China, stretching from one side of the hall to the other. On the table lay a small pile of Chinese New Testaments. [Who do you suppose translated them?] At the stroke of the hour the Chairman entered, followed by seven young men, slightly older than the undergraduates but all, from their dress and bearing evidently men of education and position. After prayer, a hymn, and some introductory remarks, the seven young men, whom the world had already dubbed The Camebridge Seven, each rose and told the crowded hall why they were leaving England, the next day, to serve as missionaries in inland China.
One by one they spoke-Stanley Smith of Repton and St Johns [Repton and Eton were the top prep schools in England; Trinity Hall was the living quarters of the upper-crust of British society attending Cambridge University], a former stroke oar of the Cambridge boat [a high-ranking member of the Cambridge rowing crew]; Montagu Beauchamp, of Trinity, a baronette's son; D.E. Hoste, till lately a gunner subaltern son of a major-general; WW Cassels of Repton and St. John's, a Church of England curate; Cecil Polhill-Turner, an old Etonian, who had resigned his commission in the Queen's Bays to join the others; his brother Arthur Polehill- Turner of Eton and Trinity Hall. And lastly, C. T Studd, the Eton, Cambridge and England cricketer, acknowledged as the most brilliant player of the day. One by one they told how in the past year or eighteen months God had called them to renounce their careers and give themselves for Christian service overseas.The Cambridge Seven struck with force the consciousness of a generation which set more store
on social position and athletic ability. In this different age the story of how the Seven was formed, and the prayers of Harold Schofield overwhelmingly answered, is still relevant. Any account of God's working on the human soul is timeless. But the
Cambridge Seven provide particular evidence on the Christian's growth and grace and on God's calling to a life work whether athome or overseas. And if China is again a closed land, though now without its Christian witness, other lands are open and fields at home are waiting. The Cambridge Seven emerged when British universities had been stirred to the depths by the work of DL Moody the American evangelist.
That seventy years later,in similar circumstances, God may call forth similar bands is the prayer of many.'
The first member of the Studd family to surrender his life to Christ was C.T. Studd's father. This happened when he heard D.L. Moody, the famous American gospel preacher, speak in England. Subsequently, Mr. Studd invited godly men to visit his home with the purpose of their winning his sons to Christ. After his conversion, Mr. Studd moved furniture in his house (which was actually a mansion on the Studd estate) to make room for evangelistic meetings to be held there. The previously-mentioned book, The Cambridge Seven, tells that glorious story. It also tells how, along with C.T, these other men who were in their late teens and early twenties came to the decision to renounce their wealth and elite social position

The three cricketing brothers J.E.K., C.T, G.B.
Captains of Cambridge University, 1882-3-4
RH picture The Cambridge Seven


and become missionaries.
It surprised me to read that these men didn't go to the same place, but were sent to different and remote places away from other English-speaking people. Their stories tell where they went and how they lived. Those stories are unbelievable!
C.T. went to China with Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission and was married there. His wife was a member of the Salvation Army in China. They became the parents of four girls who were all born in China. Because of ill health, C.T. left China and went back to London. After that he spent a time in India, where he became so ill with asthma that he had to sleep sitting up.
Called to Africa
When he returned to England, C.T. spent quite a bit of time traveling and speaking. On a trip to Liverpool, he saw the following notice outside a church: "Cannibals want missionaries." Upon seeing it, he made the following response: "Why, they certainly do, for more reasons than one." After that, at the age of 50 and in ill health, he packed up and went to Africa. First he took a bicycle and one other person and went there to make an assessment of the conditions in the area of the country where he was interested in locating. He chose the Belgian Congo as the region where he wanted to begin his missionary conquest. He came back to England for 18 months, and then returned to the heart of Africa and lived there for the rest of his life-15 years
until he died. He never returned to England.
When C.T. was planning to leave for Africa he was backed by a committee of businessmen. But when his doctor intimated that if he ventured into central Africa, he would die, the committee withdrew their support. C.T. responded, "Gentlemen,
God has called me to go, and I will go. I will blaze the trail and become a stepping stone that younger men may follow" So he went and gave his life. He loved Africa, and its people, and loved him in return.

On the ship headed for Africa, God gave C.T. the vision that he was going, 'Not just for Africa, but for whole unevangelised world." You can read the whole story in Norman Grubb's biography, "CT Studd, Cricketer and Pioneer."

The Cost
A new committee was formed in London that not only supported C.T. but also kept the mission organized. However, C.T. Studd was the mission. Sadly in time the members of the committee became troubled by some of his practices
(You can get the story from a little out-of-print book called After C. T Studd.) Their first concern came when they learned that fellow missionaries brought morphine to C.T, which he used to relieve the pain he suffered from multiple physical maladies. Secondly, they disapproved of a little booklet C.T. authored. This blistering tract was entitled "The DCD." The name of the booklet was adapted from the well-known Army war cry "We don't care a damn for anything but King and country" to "We don't care a damn for anything but Jesus." A group of young Christian men signed a pact that this would be their heartbeat: they would care nothing for anything but Christ and His work. They named themselves "The DCDs."
People in England, church people and so forth, were horrified that C.T. would use the word damn. They also questioned his strict handling of the natives. As one should understand, he was stern with them regarding their sin. C.Us perspective was that he was living and working in the Congo and the folks at home were totally unknowledgeable about the conditions on the field. He was dealing with a very primitive and undisciplined people. Sin, particularly adultery, was practiced by everyone. It wasn't just that it was rampant—it was a way of life, and it was C.Us responsibility to deal with it. If a man called any woman, she had to submit to his desire at that moment. One of the ways he dealt with their ever-present transgressions was to delay baptism for new converts. Because the committee back in England disagreed both with C.Us theology and his practices, they came very close to cutting ties with him completely.
Norman Grubb and Pauline, Norman's wife and C.Us youngest daughter, were serving the mission from London. They were aware of the intentions of the mission board, and were very disturbed about it. They wanted to meet with C.T. one more time and apprise him of the state of affairs on the home front. About that time a letter arrived from C.T. In it he casually mentioned his desire to see them again. They took this suggestion as permission to immediately visit Studd in the Congo. (The trip took months.) When they arrived, he was shocked to see them. He asked quite sternly, "What are you doing here?" They answered that he had written that he had wanted to see them. Their real reason for going was to discuss the news of the committee. The following is a story Norman loved to tell. I don't know if this is in a book or not.
The committee sent representatives to Africa to personally tell C.T. that he was fired. But they didn't know exactly where he was located. They got very close they actually had their camp across the river from where C.T. lived. He and the others knew the committee representatives were on their way. One of the missionaries' prized possessions was canned food that they called "tin." Studd had in his possession a highly esteemed tin of sausages. I guess they were like our Vienna sausages. In anticipation of the coming mission delegation, Studd chose to serve the treasured sausages to the visitors. In spite of the fact that the Londoners never arrived, C.T. and company had their feast anyway.
Norman's favorite part of the story was C.T. saying grace: "Father, thank you for this and that, but thank you especially for the sausages." Norman would laugh and laugh when he told that part of the story. He loved it that C.T. would think that way when he knew the committee reps were on their way to the Belgian Congo to discharge him from the very mission he had founded. CT's friends in the heart of Africa 1926

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