God's Smuggler, by Brother Andrew

The following is an excerpt from the book. Brother Andrew is a Dutch lad who is at a missionary training school in Scotland.

"During the first few weeks, however, something kept happening that bothered me. At mealtimes the students would frequently discuss inadequate funds. Sometimes after a whole night in prayer for a certain need, half of the request would be granted, or three-quarters…The Bible said that we were workers in God’s vineyard. Was this the way the Lord of the vineyard paid His hired men?

One night I went out for a long solitary walk. On several occasions students had warned me not to “go into Patrick.” Patrick was the slum at the bottom of our hill. It was, they said, the home of addicts, drunks, thieves, even murderers, and walking its streets was unsafe….Before I had gone five blocks I was accosted two times by beggars. I gave them all the money I had in my pocket and watched as they moved without pretense toward the nearest pub. I knew that thee drifters, begging in the streets of the Glasgow slums, would receive a better income than the missionaries-in-training at the top of the hill.

I could not understand why this bothered me so. Was I greedy? I didn’t think so. We had always been poor, and I had never worried about it. What was it then?

And suddenly, walking back up the hill toward the school, I had my answer.

At the chocolate factory I trusted Mr. Ringers to pay me in full and on time. Surely I said to myself, if an ordinary factory worker could be financially secure, so could one of God’s workers.

I turned through the gate at the school. Above me was the reminder “Have Faith In God.”

That was it! It wasn’t that I needed the security of a certain amount of money, it was that I needed the security of a relationship.

I walked up the crunchy pebblewalk feeling more and more certain that I was on the verge of something exciting. The school was asleep and quiet. I tiptoed upstairs and sat by the bedroom window looking out over Glasgow. If I were going to give my life as a servant of the King, I had to know that King. What was He like? In what way could I trust Him? In the same way I trusted a set of impersonal laws? Or could I trust Him as a living leader, as a very present commander in battle? The question was central. Because if He were a King in name only, I would rather go back to the chocolate factory. I would remain a Christian, but I would know that my religion was only a set of principles, excellent and to be followed, but hardly demanding devotion.

Suppose on the other hand that I were to discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He communicated and cared and loved and led. That was something quite different. That was the kind of King I would follow into any battle."