Recently I was called a Pollyanna. I was hurt and I turned to my Heavenly Father in prayer for comfort. He pointed out that this dear brother had just paid me the sweetest compliment that he possibly could have. He reminded me of what Jesus said in Luke 18:17 Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein. How does a child receive the kingdom of God? With childish faith. We need to have faith like a little child if we want to please God.
Without faith it is impossible to please God. Hebrews 11:6 When a sinner is saved he repents of his sin to God and places his faith in what Jesus did for him on the cross of Calvary. Without this childlike faith there is no salvation. You either trust what Jesus did or you don't there is no middle ground. Doubt is the opposite of faith. Faith leaves no room for doubt. Many children have faith in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny but they will be disappointed. Faith in Jesus will never fail you for Jesus never fails.
You must have this child like faith in Jesus in order to follow Him. The first place He went when He started His ministry was to John the Baptist for Baptist baptism. If you are going to follow Him you must be baptized by His church. No one else has that authority. With childlike faith you trust that He has preserved His church for over 2000 years, and by following Jesus in baptism you too can be a part of His church. A beloved son in whom God is well pleased. Remember without faith it is impossible to please God.
The missionary must have this child like faith in order to take his family and move to a strange land. One of the earliest memories I have as a child is of my parents counting out what appeared to me to be a large mountain of money on our little kitchen table in the small cabin where we lived in Terrebonne, Oregon. They had just sold our car, a 49 ford, and had emtpied their savings account and were counting up the money they had in order to see if they had the $1,100 to pay our passage to Japan. As it turned out they had enough to pay for our tickets to Japan, bus fair to Seattle and one night in a hotel before the ship left and not a whole lot more, but my father had already gone to China as a missionary at the height of the depression when none of the mission boards were able to send out any new missionaries, and he already knew his Father in heaven would supply his every need.
Growing up as a missionarie's kid in Japan I had an opportunity to learn many lessons about faith first hand. After completing the second grade at a U.S. military dependents' school, I met a little Dutch girl who lived about three blocks from our house. After that she spent almost every waking hour at our house. You see, her parents were very rich but there wasn't anyone home at her house except a maid, butler, cook and gardener and none of them really wanted a little girl around. Her father was at work he was the president of the Shell Oil Company in Japan and her mother had bridge club and many other activities that kept her busy at the Country and Athletic Club. So if she hadn't found us she would have been all alone.
When it came time for us children to return to school Evelyn, the little girl, had a fit. She stamped her foot and told my dad he would send us kids to her school as she wasn't about to lose her newfound friends. My dad laughed at that. The school she went to, Yokohama International School, was for the children of foreign dignitaries. It had very high standards and was sure to be very expensive, but at her continued insistence my dad decided to check into it. It turned out to cost $200 a year less per student then as the military dependents' school that we had been attending so you can guess where we went.
I had only attended Yokohama International School a little while when my english teacher, Miss Lotta, told the class that; because we were the children of very rich parents, and had been born with a silver spoon in our mouth, we had a greater responsibility to the rest of the world and needed to learn to look out for the need of those that were less fortunate than we were.
That night I climbed up in my father's lap, looked him in the face and asked, "Are we rich dad?" He looked at me and smiled and without hesitation said, "Yes, son we are very rich." Well I had no trouble believing that, here I was growing up in Japan, going to school with very rich classmates and my teacher had just finished telling the class how rich we were. It was years later when I found out the whole truth about my wealth. You see, anyone who is born again is born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They have a Father who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and is always ready to take care of their every need. You will never find a true child of The King standing on a street corner panhandling. Remember that the next time you hear a so-called TV evangelist begging for money.
All the time I was growing up I never heard my parents discuss finances. I do remember my father giving money to other missionaries whose monthly check hadn't arrived on time. When I asked him about it he told me that he always gave them the money and did not loan it to them because that way if they didn't pay it back they would still be his friends, and if they did pay it back it was like found money. You can imagine my surprise when sent to call my father to supper I found him on his knees talking about money. He had received a bill for property taxes and the taxes on our property in Japan had gone up from $1,200 to over $8,000 and he did not have that much in the emergency account in the bank. He told God he needed the money or we would lose the property we were living on, the church building was built on and we hoped to build a school for pastors on someday.
The next day I got the mail out of the mail box. It was a large business size envelope. I held it up so the sunlight shown through it and I could see the blue safety paper of a check inside. I ran to my dad's study holding it up in the air. "Dad, dad," I yelled, "The money for the taxes has come." "Lets take a look," he replied. He took the letter from my hand and began to read. Soon the tears were flowing down his face and I began to think maybe this wasn't the money for the taxes. After a while my father spoke, "Son, a dear saint has gone to be with her heavenly Father. She left us a large sum of money from the sale of her property. The Lord must know of more needs that we don't know about yet because there is a lot more here than we need to pay the taxes. Then he showed me the post mark on the envelope where the letter was mailed almost a month earlier and at least two weeks before he knew he needed so much to pay his taxes. Our heavenly Father is preparing for our needs long before we even know we have them.
When a church sends out a missionary they need to do so with child-like faith that God will supply all the missionary's needs. This is God's responsibility and not the sending church's responsibility. The lack of understanding of this simple fact has kept untold numbers of workers off the mission field. It has caused churches to give up Jesus's leadership for an organization where some man takes over a place that belongs to Christ in directing His missionaries all because they lack the child like faith to see that it is God's power and that alone that takes care of the missionary. The sending church's part in sending out a missionary is all about authority. The sending church gives the missionary his authority to preach the gospel to the lost and the authority to baptize repentant sinners who then become members of the sending church until they are organized into a church by the authority of the sending church.
When a church votes to send out a missionary, the thing for the members to ponder in their hearts and pray for leadership of the Holy Spirit is the fitness of the man to be sent, and not the financial fitness of the church that is sending him. To base your vote against sending out a missionary on your doubt of God's ability to care for that missionary when He has clearly said that He takes care of all the needs of His children is to call God a lair; a very dangerous thing to do.
It is true that churches often acquire a legal obligation to provide return passage from the mission field in the event the missionary has legal or health problems. This can easily be taken care of by raising the amount of a return ticket and depositing it in a special bank account only to be used for that purpose and the legal obligation has been taken care of.
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. It's our own understanding that gets us in trouble every time. A man takes accounting or gets a business degree, maybe he simply has many years experience in business and this is where he places his trust, but as for me I will trust in the Lord. He has never let me down and He never will. I have his Word on it.
WILL YOU TAKE A POSITIVE STAND FOR LANDMARK DOCTRINES, HISTORIC BAPTIST INDEPENDENCE AND DIRECT MISSION PRACTICE? THEN SIGN UP FOR A SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS PAPER AND SPREAD THE TRUTH AS IT IS IN THE WORD OF GOD.