The Necessity of Increasing Faith to Missions

Missions to the world begins with strengthening faith at home. In Send to Survive, Chad Vegas says,“Churches that glorify God and enjoy Him forever are churches that evangelize both their neighbors and the nations.” Strengthen your desire to glorify God, and your desire towards missions should thrive. 

Throughout history, the times where churches flourished were also the times when international missions were most prevalent. William R. Williams (1804-1885)  was not a missionary. He was an ordinary Christian man who pastored a Baptist church in New York for over fifty years. But even early on in his ministry, he preached a sermon on how Christians who strengthen their faith also strengthen missions.  

The following is an excerpt from his sermon “Increase of Faith Necessary to the Success of Christian Missions” which can be read in full here.

It remains now to examine the intimate connection existing between this faith and the missionary efforts of the church.

Having observed that this principle is the source of knowledge, and the parent of motives and feelings to the Christian, it is at once evident that the largeness or the narrowness of the knowledge thus gained, the weakness or the strength of the feelings thus excited, and of the motives which are in this mode implanted, will constantly affect the character of all the Christian's doings, but especially those which depend most upon faith for their inception and completion—his doings in behalf of his impenitent fellow-men.

Upon the enterprises of the church, it is immediately apparent, whether the faith of the believers who compose that body is in a state of feebleness and declension, or of energy and growth. He who looks much to the parting commandment of his Lord for the universal proclamation of his truth, and much to the repeated assurance of his Lord that his truth shall prove itself mighty, and his word not return void, will be prepared to hope and to attempt much, in obedience to the commandment and in inheritance of the promise. He, on the contrary, who sees eternity but indistinctly, seldom and afar; and whose faith takes but short and occasional flights into the enduring world of realities that surrounds us, will be prone to exhibit in his plans timidity and despondency, in his efforts remissness and apathy. And if we look to the period when the limits of the church were most rapidly and widely extended, it will be found not the era when the worldly power, the learning and the wealth of the church were at their highest elevation, but in the age when, though lacking all these, by the energy of an overmastering faith, she rose superior to every impediment, and destitute of all earthly aid and encouragement, dared to hope in God. Wise in His wisdom, and strong in His might, she planned her plans of conquest upon the broad and magnificent basis of the Savior's promises; and then, in humility, diligence, and simple devotion, called upon the Savior's faithfulness to accomplish the plans His own word had warranted, and His own Spirit incited. And in most of the great revivals of faith and godliness in the modern church, it will be discovered that the rising flood of religious feeling has opened anew, or found and followed the already open channel of missionary enterprise. The revival of religion granted to the early labors of the Puritan fathers in New-England, saw also the rise of Elliot and the Mayhews, the first evangelists of our Indians. The energetic faith of Wesley sought for its first field a mission to the savages of our southern coast. The era of Edwards, when the faith and love of the church received so wide and mighty an excitement, was also the era of Brainerd, his friend and disciple, a missionary of the rarest endowments. The revival of faith in Protestant Germany under Francke, Spener, and the Pietists, founded the Orphan House at Halle, and saw go forth from its walls Swartz and others, his associates, to labor amid the heathenism of India. The accession of strength to the faith of the Moravian brethren, by the labors of Zinzendorf, soon found an outlet in missionary enterprises of apostolical simplicity and successfulness. The established church of England, in her recent return to the faith of her early founders, has also been aroused to the cause of missions, and already rejoices in the record of her Heber, her Buchanan, and her Martyn. And in our own division of the Christian host, the energetic labors of the elder Hall, Fuller, and the younger Ryland, to restore to the faith of our churches its proper and practical character, were soon followed by the establishment of those missions, which have given, as we trust, an impulse to the energies of the church that shall go on, with greater extension and deepening intensity, until the time of the Messiah's second advent.

The same increased faith which excites the enterprise, serves withal to multiply the resources of the church for the successful development and prosecution of the plans she has formed. Consecration to God of our hearts and our substance will produce a liberality which would, to a lukewarm age, seem fanatical and extravagant. Living as in the constant view of the last judgment; estranged from the world, and thus exempted from the various and costly sacrifices it requires to fashion, to pride, and to luxury; the conscientious frugality of the church would enable the poorest and the richest members to unite in habitual contribution. A simple-hearted faith would banish also from the confines of the church that pretended spirituality which anxiously excludes religion from the scenes of business, and shuts her out from all interference with pecuniary matters, under the pretext of guarding her sanctity; but in truth for the protection of a hidden covetousness. In the better and happier era of her history it is found that religion is a familiar and every-day guest, visiting not the chamber of social or secret prayer and the sanctuary only, but passing through all the scenes of human industry, and shedding over every occupation her mild and hallowing influence. Systematic contribution to every form of religious benevolence, will then be regarded as a necessary mark of true piety. But the chief treasures of the church are not her stores of silver and gold, but her living members, with their spiritual endowments of varied character and grades. And how greatly would a revival of primitive faith draw upon these her spiritual resources, for the supply of the perishing heathen. The missionary cause would not be considered as making well nigh its exclusive appeal to ministers of the church; but the merchant, the artisan, and the farmer, each anxious to give himself to the Lord's service, would present not a stinted tithe of his earnings, but himself, his personal labors, and his life, as an offering to the great work of evangelizing the heathen.

How evident and vast the increase of missionary power given to the church, in the influence of a purer and simpler faith upon her doctrines. We have viewed incidentally the errors that usurp the name of Christian faith. When these should have been outgrown and superseded by a true and hearty acceptance of God's whole testimony, how immense the amount of moral power thrown into benevolent action. Again, even where true faith exists, it is now embarrassed in its operations by its union with more or less of error. Every admixture of human tradition, and each addition of extraneous and irrelevant authority, has served but to disfigure and weaken the truth it was intended to adorn. When these cumbrous appendages shall be relinquished, and the oracles of truth shall be consulted more habitually in prayer for the teachings of the Spirit, what may not be hoped from the blessing of that God who is jealous for the honor of His own word? What may not be hoped from the temper and edge of the sword of the Spirit, when it shall have been disencumbered of the scabbard, that has so long served only to conceal and corrode its brightness?

The transition is a natural one from the doctrines of the Gospel to the motives which they suggest and sustain. And much aid will have been won for urging onward the cause of the Saviour in heathen lands, when a higher standard of faith shall have trained up the church in greater simplicity of purpose, and in pure and single-hearted desire for the glory of God. How much effort is now lost to the world and the church, because polluted by motives which God cannot deign to bless. When this transparency of purpose shall become prevalent, how strong and general the tendency towards a cordial union of all Christians in the common cause. How much of the time and strength of brethren is now wasted upon unbrotherly divisions. Bigotry and partisanship are dividing those who should never have been sundered. And how much useful and needed power is now withholden, because its possessors are at present unwilling to bestow it, accompanied, as it would be, with an exposure of their personal inferiority. The talent being but one, they deem it but Christian modesty to enwrap and inter it. A faith which shall purge the heart of these base and earth-born feelings, and make the motives of action necessarily more powerful, as they were more simple and pure, would evidently strengthen the aggressive energies of the church for her inroads upon the dominions of spiritual darkness.

The force of pious example in the Christian church, as influencing the world, is yet but scantily developed. But when there should prevail a general union amongst the disciples of our Lord, one of the most common topics of reproach, employed by the world, would be taken away. Affecting, also, as an increase of faith would do, the personal character of each member in the various divisions of the Christian church, what would be the influence of the resplendent and consistent holiness thus cherished, upon the families and dependants, the neighbors and friends of Christians. And this influence would be felt, not merely inviting their co-operation in the missionary alms of the church, but attracting and awakening them to inquiry and repentance, and drawing them into the same bonds of tender and heavenly brotherhood. How much of the reasoning and zeal and energy of the church is now wasted, because counteracted by the lukewarm remissness or the undisguised scandals exhibited in multitudes wearing the Christian name. And when a vigorous and wholesome faith should purify our churches; when the unhealthy and diseased portions should be seen sloughing away under the searching influence of Christian discipline, and the faithfulness of an evangelical ministry; and the church should shine forth in the healthful beauty and symmetry of holiness; what would be the boldness of her advocates, the power of her appeals, and the confusion of her enemies. And all these would be felt immediately in the fields of missionary labor; the Christian mariner, the Christian merchant, and the Christian traveller, would strengthen by holy example, in the sight of the heathen, the hands of the Christian missionary.

But the most important advantage thus gained, for the cause of our Lord in unevangelized lands, would be the enlarged channel for the communication of the Divine Influences. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Great faith delights, as a weak and narrow faith dishonors and grieves Him. And when the thousands of Israel shall go up with the ardent though humble expectation of receiving an answer to their prayers, whilst the supplications of primitive faith should again ascend, who shall say that the wonders of the early church may not return; and men, in the spirit and power of the early believers, rise up to become the heralds of salvation to the most distant and most brutified tribes of mankind? Assuredly those who should honor Him by a childlike dependance, would be honored of Him. Then, as the early and the latter rain descended, and when the "fountains of the great deep" of moral power now unemployed, should be broken up from beneath in a wrestling church, and "the windows of heaven" be opened from above by a favoring God; how rapidly would the waters of salvation rise and swell and diffuse themselves, till the knowledge of the Lord should cover the earth, and like a sea of glory it spread from pole to pole.