Endurance is one of the qualities that should mark the life of every Christian, but is one of the most difficult qualities to maintain, especially in challenging times. Such is the case when believers come under attack for their faith, as we remember on the first Sunday in November each year, when the world observes the annual “International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.” Hopefully, everyone realizes that persecution is not just something that took place back in the early centuries of Christendom.
The ”classic” book about persecution was written by James Foxe following the terrible years of the reign of “Bloody Mary” (1553-1558) in England. Almost 300 Protestants were put to death for their faith, refusing to accept her efforts to return England to Roman Catholicism. These included not only clergy, but also lay people and even children, most of these burned alive at the stake. His 1563 publication, commonly known as “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,” chronicled accounts of martyrdom from apostolic times until his day. In 1979, James and Marti Hefly wrote a book about persecution in the twentieth century (a second edition was released in 1995), “By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the Twentieth Century.” In it, they show what most people don’t realize. There were more Christians martyred for their faith in the twentieth century than in all the centuries of Christendom prior to that.
It requires significant faith to endure in times of opposition. It’s not easy to “Stand Up! Stand Up for Jesus” when hostility is directed against us. Getty Music has a wonderful hymn for the church to sing about this matter: “By Faith We See the Hand of God.” It was written in 2009 by Stuart Townend (b.1963), in cooperation with Keith and Kristyn Getty. Most people today are familiar with the Gettys from their many songs, including “In Christ Alone,” as well as their new 2025 “Sing! Hymnal.” But perhaps not as many know that one of their earliest partners in writing contemporary hymns was Stuart Townend. In addition to “In Christ Alone,” (2001, co-written with Keith Getty, Townend’s first collaboration with any other songwriter), Townend has written “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us,” “Beautiful Saviour” and “The King of Love.” For many years “In Christ Alone” has been listed as one of the most often used contemporary Christian songs in Christendom.
Son of a Church of England vicar in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, Townend has three older siblings. His father, Rev. John Townend, was vicar of Christ Church, Sowerby Bridge, from 1974 until his tragic death in an auto accident in 1985. Townend started learning to play the piano at age 7. At the age of 13, he made a solid Christian commitment, and began songwriting at age 22. He studied literature at the University of Sussex. He is married with three children.
Townend has led musical/sung worship and performed events across the world at conferences and festivals, including the Stoneleigh Bible Week in the early 1990s to the early 2000s, Keswick Convention, and Spring Harvest. He has appeared on the national British broadcast “Songs of Praise” and worked with a number of other Christian musicians. In 2005, Cross Rhythms magazine described Townend as “one of the most significant songwriters in the whole international Christian music field.” The Christian website Crosswalk.com commented, “the uniqueness of Townend’s writing lies partly in its lyrical content. There is both a theological depth and poetic expression that some say is rare in today’s worship writing.” In June 2017, he was awarded the Cranmer Award for Worship by the Archbishop of Canterbury for his “outstanding contribution to contemporary worship music.”
The text of the hymn “By Faith” not only takes us to “The Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11. It also brings to mind Paul’s admonition that we are to “walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Remembering that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” we understand how the writer of Hebrews described each of those Old Testament figures as individuals who lived by faith, trusting that God would fulfill the promises, even though they did not live to see that fulfillment. The fulfillment occurred with the coming of Jesus, which we are now privileged to have seen.
Using that theme from Hebrews, Townend has created a story about the role of faith in a timeline of history, following the progressive place of faith in each of those periods, from creation to our own day.
Stanza 1 starts with creation. We weren’t there to see it happen, but we see it all around us every day. Many of the Psalms point to creation as evidence of God’s existence and attributes (as in Psalm 19), as does Paul in Romans 1:19-20. There he shows how even without special revelation in Scripture, there is enough evidence of God’s existence and attributes that unbelievers are left without excuse. So we see God by faith though the work of His hands in “creation’s grand design.”
We also see God, as Hebrews 11 shows us, through the evidence of “His faithfulness” in the lives of those saints who have gone before us.
By faith, we see the hand of God
In the light of creation’s grand design;
In the lives of those who prove His faithfulness,
Who walk by faith and not by sight.
Stanza 2 looks further down the corridors of history to see, by faith, in the lives of “our fathers” who “roamed the earth,” how God kept His promises which He had planted “in their hearts.” At the center of that, as Townend has written, was God’s promise “of a holy city,” “ a place where peace and justice reign.” While that has come in our hearts, we still wait (by faith) for the complete fulfillment of that n Jesus’ return to establish new heavens and a new earth. All of the promises reviewed in Hebrews 11 were finally fulfilled in the coming of Jesus, which they did not see in their lifetime, but which they still believed “by faith and not by sight.”
By faith, our fathers roamed the earth
With the power of His promise in their hearts
Of a holy city built by God’s own hand –
A place where peace and justice reign.
The refrain (which does not come after every stanza) places us in that lineage of those who walk by faith and not by sight. We are the inheritors of all those promises, promises that are now being fulfilled in the person and work of the Lord Jesus. And so “we will fix our eyes on Him, our soul’s reward, till the race is finished and the work is done.” There is the profession of endurance that we pray will continue to characterize all those whose walk is made difficult by on-going persecution.
We will stand as children of the promise,
We will fix our eyes on Him, our soul’s reward.
Till the race is finished and the work is done,
We’ll walk by faith and not by sight.
Stanza 3 takes our minds back to the prophets of the Old Testament era who believed God’s promises, seeing by faith “a day when the longed-for Messiah would appear.” They longed for it, but we have it! Jesus has come “to break the chains of sin and death” and in fulfillment of prophecy has risen “triumphant from the grave.”
By faith, the prophets saw a day
When the longed-for Messiah would appear
With the power to break the chains of sin and death,
And rise triumphant from the grave.
Stanza 4 is describing the church today in the age of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. From the time of Jesus’ ascension, we have been duty bound to carry out His command. He has told us all, not just those followers there on that day of His ascension, that we have been “called to go in the power of the Spirit to those lost.” And that’s what the great missionary enterprise has been doing over the centuries, “to deliver captives and to preach good news in every corner of the earth.”
Not all of us can do that in distant lands, we can all do it in our own communities here. As John Piper has said, every Christian has only three options: to go, to send, or to disobey!
By faith, the church was called to go
In the power of the Spirit to the lost
To deliver captives and to preach good news,
In every corner of the earth.
Stanza 5 points us to the ultimate victory Jesus has promised: that the gates of hell would not be able to withstand the advance of kingdom. He said that by faith, we have the ability to move mountains. “ For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20).
By faith, this mountain shall be moved
And the power of the gospel shall prevail,
For we know in Christ all things are possible
For all who call upon His name.
Stuart Townend, Keith Getty & Kristyn Getty Copyright © 2009 Getty Music Publishing (BMI) (Adm by SongSolutions [email protected]) and Thankyou Music (Adm. by CapitolCMGPublishing.com excl. UK & Europe, adm. by Integrity Music, part of the David C Cook family, [email protected])
What a wonderful song, not only for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. It would be a great theme song for a church missions conference.
Here is a link to the song as performed by the Getty music team.