WATER OF LIFE

Great Men of Faith

Last week, I had the honor and pleasure to meet, Neil Verwey, an 85 year old Christian missionary and founder of Japan Mission. His sermon was in Japanese, and I only understood about a third of it, so I felt it necessary to buy his autobiography: Half a Century in Japan.

In his autobiography he mentioned Hudson Taylor, a famous missionary to China in 1855, as an inspiration for acts of great faith. The next day after finishing Verwey’s book I put it away in my bookshelf leaving it up to God if He wanted to show me more on this subject. The very next day, by an act of grace, I stumbled on Taylor’s autobiography (and I wasn’t in a bookstore or library). Is God trying to tell me something? I guess I’m attracted to these men and their stories because they have the same spiritual gifts of apostleship and faith that I do.

Recently, I prayed for understanding, wisdom, and faith in relying on God to provide for our needs—to give Him complete and total control and responsibility for all our needs (financial, etc). In both books, I was amazed at the reliance on God for finances. Verwey took many leaps of faith, like signing year contracts for radio and newspaper evangelism projects before God had provided the money. One time someone made a donation to the mission just in the nick of time, another time someone in the office opened a package and cash fell out onto the floor.

Taylor started out by learning to rely on God for food and rent money. After much resistance, God convicted Taylor to give his last coin to a homeless family, and immediately he felt a rush of joy and peace from the Holy Spirit. “He who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord: I asked Him not to let my loan be a long one,” said Hudson. The next day an anonymous person sent him money (four times the amount) in the mail. Taylor proclaimed, “How glad the merchants of Hull would be if they could lend their money at such a rate! I then and there determined that a bank which could not break should have my savings or earnings as the case might be—a determination I have not yet learned to regret.” I love Taylor’s idea that God is the best bank for our money.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Christianity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.