Blank Check Promises

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It said that Joshua commanded the officers of his army to prepare food, “for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan”—a Jordan in flood—”to go in to possess the land.” What right had Joshua to say “three days”? God’s instructions had not specified any time frame. In a flash we saw that great secret.

When we are God’s servants, in His service (which is all life, no matter what our circumstances—Col. 3:17), then God says to us, “Here are My
promises, like a blank check. You fill in the amount according to the present need.” We fill in the blank check. Joshua did it by predicting three
days in his military assessment.

We saw this now for our missionary commission. It did not apply to the present needs of the 35 workers, for they had already trusted God for
their daily needs according to Matthew 6:33. But our commission, as given to C.T. Studd, was for the whole unevangelized world. Fantastic! No
wonder Studd said that only faith can laugh at impossibilities.

But how were we to put faith into action? How? By naming our existing need—spelling it out in words to God. Then, though trembling within by
the apparent absurdity of it, by speaking out the word of faith—that our need was already supplied, and we said so. We said it on the given fact
that God had supplied it already in the invisible, and we would see it in the visible.

We are told to “have the faith of God” (Mark 11:22, margin). What is God’s faith? We looked at Romans 4:17, and there it was in print: God
calling the things that be not as though they are! And the Spirit causing us to believe, with His believing as ours.

So we did the same. We assessed what we would like as a first step forward into peopling the unevangelized world with those who would
take them the gospel. Deliberately we said, “ten new workers” in that first year. It was our spoken word of faith.

As we met on subsequent days, we never dared to ask again! We often just laughed at the prospect of those ten coming, called of God, filled with
the Spirit, taught in the Scriptures, and with the funds to take them to the field—the first reinforcement to the Congo.

Needless to say, they came: five men, five women and the last one within three days of the end of that year.