Trusting God to Provide
Luke: I'm here with Uncle Howard, and we're talking about his life as a missionary and doing God's work. Uncle Howard, you wrote in Chapter 8 of your book about a time when you just lost it with the Lord because you and Aunty Pam were really struggling and it looked like there wasn't a lot of hope. So can you tell us the story?
Discovering the Faith Life
Howard: This is the beginning of the most important thing that we've ever learned in our lives, and that is the faith life. We've heard people speak about the faith life. We've heard people preach about the faith life. But we never really understood what that was all about.
We joined a mission that was a faith mission, and a faith mission was a mission where you never made your needs known, and God undertook every step of the way for financial things, health-wise, and all sorts of things.
But I think we came down to earth with a very, very big bump because we had not understood. You're not just going to get things on the plate, you're going to have to trust God with all your might. Now that doesn't just come overnight, I can assure you now.
Facing Financial Challenges
In our case, we went to Bible School. We had all the money set aside. We had worked for it. We'd saved every cent we had, and we even got rid of all our furniture. We gave it all back to the Lord, and now we expected the Lord just to give it back to us, you see. But it didn't work like that.
We had to do our third year in Glasgow. We had no money for the flight. We had to sell the Mini to pay for our tickets to go to Glasgow, and we had a little bit of money so that we could pay for some of the expenses that came. All our money was gone.
And unfortunately, at that stage, no money was being able to be sent out of South Africa to missionaries or outside the country. There was a lockdown. It was difficult, very difficult for missionaries and people working overseas. They couldn't get the money out of the country.
Anyway, it wasn't so bad. We seemed to tick it over and we thought, well, the Lord is working out His purpose in our life and we're not going to question it.
Now we had to go back to England and spend almost a year there in. We had to do our candidates course. After the candidates course, we had to go to language study because we were called to Congo. So that meant French study in Belgium.
Trusting God's Faithfulness
By that time, we didn't have a cent left in our bank account. And oh, now the drama started. The little baby was on the way, no money. That night is the night where I learned the biggest lesson I've ever learned in my whole life on the faith life.
I went to bed, and I couldn't sleep. And just before I went to sleep, I said, "Lord,” I said, “is that fair? You wanted us to serve You. All this we gave up for You. All that money we had saved to pay, we put into the work so that others might benefit by it and all that, and now we haven't even got the money to welcome our own little girl into the world, Lord, that's not fair."
And I was angry. I really was angry with the Lord. I think I even pointed my finger at Him and I said, "Lord, is that fair?"
I fell asleep. When I woke up, everything was changed. Everything.
To learn the faith life, you must get to the complete end of yourself and say, "I can't look after myself anymore. There's nothing I can do. It's all over to God." That's when He takes over. He's not going to take over while you are dictating to Him what you want to do.
It's when you come to your end of it. That is the faith life. And that's where I've never looked back in all my missionary career. He's been faithful.
Luke: Yes, God is faithful. And I love how your book unpacks His faithfulness throughout the years to you guys.
Friends, whatever you're going through, remember this: God is faithful, and you can trust in Him, just like Uncle Howard and Auntie Pam had to do. Oh boy, He proved Himself, as He will in your life.
