Chapter 6
DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING FAITH
The next step after consecration, in the soul's progress out of the wilderness
of Christian experience, into the land that floweth with milk and honey, is
that of faith. And here, as in the first step, the enemy is very skilful in
making difficulties and interposing obstacles.
The child of God, having had his eyes opened
to see the fulness there is in Jesus for him, and having been made to long to
appropriate that fulness to himself, is met with the assertion on the part of
every teacher to whom he applies, that this fulness is only to be received by
faith. But the subject of faith is involved in such a hopeless mystery in his
mind, that this assertion, instead of throwing light upon the way of entrance,
only seems to make it more difficult and involved than ever.
"Of course it is to be by faith," he says, "for I
know that everything in the Christian life is by faith. But then, that is just
what makes it so hard, for I have no faith, and I do not even know what it is,
nor how to get it." And, baffled at the very outset by this insuperable
difficulty, he is plunged into darkness, and almost despair.
This trouble all arises from the fact that the
subject of faith is very generally misunderstood; for in reality faith is the
plainest and most simple thing in the world, and the most easy of
attainment.
Your idea of faith, I suppose, has been something
like this. You have looked upon it as in some way a sort of thing, either a
religious exercise of soul, or an inward gracious disposition of heart;
something tangible, in fact, which, when you have got, you can look at and
rejoice over, and use as a passport to God's favor, or a coin with which to
purchase His gifts. And you have been praying for faith, expecting all the
while to get something like this, and never having received any such thing, you
are insisting upon it that you have no faith. Now faith, in fact, is not in the
least this sort of thing. It is nothing at all tangible. It is simply believing
God, and, like sight, it is nothing apart from its object. You might as well
shut your eyes and look inside to see whether you have sight, as to look inside
to discover whether you have faith. You see something, and thus know that you
have sight; you believe something, and thus know that you have faith. For, as
sight is only seeing, so faith is only believing. And as the only necessary
thing about seeing is, that you see the thing as it is, so the only necessary
thing about believing is, at you believe the thing as it is. The virtue does
not lie in your believing, but in the thing you believe. If you believe the
truth you are saved; if you believe a lie you are lost. The believing in both
cases is the same; the things believed in are exactly opposite, and it is this
which makes the mighty difference. Your salvation comes, not because your faith
saves you, but because it links you on to the Saviour who saves; and your
believing is really nothing but the link.
I do beg of you to recognize, then, the extreme
simplicity of faith; that it is nothing more nor less than just believing God
when He says He either has done something for us, or will do it; and then
trusting Him to do it. It is so simple that it is hard to explain. If any one
asks me what it means to trust another to do a piece of work for me, I can only
answer that it means letting that other one do it, and feeling it perfectly
unnecessary for me to do it myself. Every one of us has trusted very important
pieces of work to others in this way, and has felt perfect rest in thus
trusting, because of the confidence we have had in those who have undertaken to
do it. How constantly do mothers trust their most precious infants to the care
of nurses, and feel no shadow of anxiety? How continually we are all of us
trusting our health and our lives, without a thought of fear, to cooks and
coachmen, engine drivers, railway conductors, and all sorts of paid servants,
who have us completely at their mercy, and could plunge us into misery or death
in a moment, if they chose to do so, or even if they failed in the necessary
carefulness? All this we do, and make no fuss about it. Upon the slightest
acquaintance, often, we thus put our trust in people, requiring only the
general knowledge of human nature, and the common rules of human intercourse;
and we never feel as if we were doing anything in the least remarkable.
You have done all this yourself, dear reader, and
are doing it continually. You would not be able to live in this world and go
through the customary routine of life a single day, if you could not trust your
fellow-men. And it never enters into your head to say you cannot.
But yet you do not hesitate to say, continually,
that you cannot trust your God!
I wish you would just now try to imagine yourself
acting in your human relations as you do in your spiritual relations. Suppose
you should begin tomorrow with the notion in your head that you could not trust
anybody, because you had no faith. When you sat down to breakfast you would
say, "I cannot eat anything on this table, for I have no faith, and I cannot
believe the cook has not put poison in the coffee, or that the butcher has not
sent home diseased meat." So you would go starving away. Then when you went out
to your daily avocations, you would say, "I cannot ride in the railway train,
for I have no faith, and therefore I cannot trust the engineer, nor the
conductor, nor the builders of the carriages, nor the managers of the road." So
you would be compelled to walk everywhere, and grow unutterably weary in the
effort, besides being actually unable to reach many of the places you could
have reached in the train. Then, when your friends met you with any statements,
or your business agent with any accounts, you would say, "I am very sorry that
I cannot believe you, but I have no faith, and never can believe anybody." If
you opened a newspaper you would be forced to lay it down again, saying, "I
really cannot believe a word this paper says, for I have no faith; I do not
believe there is any such person as the queen, for I never saw her; nor any
such country as Ireland, for I was never there. And I have no faith, so of
course I cannot believe anything that I have not actually felt and touched
myself. It is a great trial, but I cannot help it, for I have no faith."
Just picture such a day as this, and see how
disastrous it would be to yourself, and what utter folly it would appear to any
one who should watch you through the whole of it. Realize how your friends
would feel insulted, and how your servants would refuse to serve you another
day. And then ask yourself the question, if this want of faith in your
fellow-men would be so dreadful, and such utter folly, what must it be when you
tell God that you have no power to trust Him nor to believe His word; that "it
is a great trial, but you cannot help it, for you have no faith"?
Is it possible that you can trust your fellow-men
and cannot trust your God? That you can receive the "witness of men," and
cannot receive the "witness of God"? That you can believe man's records, and
cannot believe God's record? That you can commit your dearest earthly interests
to your weak, failing fellow-creatures without a fear, and are afraid to commit
your spiritual interests to the blessed Saviour who shed His blood for the very
purpose of saving you, and who is declared to be "able to save you to the
uttermost"?
Surely, surely, dear believer, you, whose very
name of believer implies that you can believe, will never again dare to excuse
yourself on the plea of having no faith. For when you say this, you mean of
course that you have no faith in God, since you are not asked to have faith in
yourself, and you would be in a very wrong condition of soul if you had. Let me
beg of you then, when you think or say these things, always to complete the
sentence and say, "I have no faith in God, I cannot believe God"; and this I am
sure will soon become so dreadful to you, that you will not dare to continue
it.
But you say, I cannot believe without the Holy
Spirit. Very well; will you conclude that your want of faith is because of the
failure of the blessed Spirit to do His work? For if it is, then surely you are
not to blame, and need feel no condemnation; and all exhortations to you to
believe are useless.
But, no! Do you not see that, in taking up this
position, that you have no faith and cannot believe, you are not only "making
God a liar," but you are also manifesting an utter want of confidence in the
Holy Spirit? For He is always ready to help our infirmities. We never have to
wait for Him, He is always waiting for us. And I for my part have such absolute
confidence in the blessed Holy Ghost, and in His being always ready to do his
work, that I dare to say to every one of you, that you can believe now, at this
very moment, and that if you do not, it is not the Spirit's fault, but your
own.
Put your will then over on to the believing side.
Say, "Lord I will believe, I do believe," and continue to say it. Insist upon
believing, in the face of every suggestion of doubt with which you may be
tempted. Out of your very unbelief, throw yourself headlong on to the word and
promises of God, and dare to abandon yourself to the keeping and saving power
of the Lord Jesus. If you have ever trusted a precious interest in the hands of
any earthly friend, I conjure you, trust yourself now and all your spiritual
interests in the hands of your Heavenly Friend, and never, never, NEVER allow
yourself to doubt again.
And remember, there are two things which are more
utterly incompatible than even oil and water, and these two are trust and
worry. Would you call it trust, if you should give something into the hands of
a friend to attend to for you, and then should spend your nights and days in
anxious thought and worry as to whether it would be rightly and successfully
done? And can you call it trust, when you have given the saving and keeping of
your soul into the hands of the Lord, if day after day and night after night
you are spending hours of anxious thought and questionings about the matter?
When a believer really trusts anything, he ceases to worry about that thing
which he has trusted. And when he worries, it is a plain proof that he does not
trust. Tested by this rule how little real trust there is in the Church of
Christ! No wonder our Lord asked the pathetic question, "When the Son of Man
cometh shall he find faith on the earth?" He will find plenty of activity, a
great deal of earnestness, and doubtless many consecrated hearts; but shall he
find faith, the one thing He values more than all the rest? It is a solemn
question, and I would that every Christian heart would ponder it well. But may
the time past of our lives suffice us to have shared in the unbelief of the
world; and let us every one, who know our blessed Lord and His unspeakable
trustworthiness, set to our seal that He is true, by our generous abandonment
of trust in Him.
I remember, very early in my Christian life,
having every tender and loyal impulse within me stirred to its depths by an
appeal I met with in a volume of old sermons to all who loved the Lord Jesus,
that they should show to others how worthy He was of being trusted, by the
steadfastness of their own faith in Him. And I remember my soul cried out with
an eager longing that I might be called to walk in paths so dark, that an utter
abandonment of trust might be my blessed and glorious privilege.
"Ye have not passed this way heretofore," it may
be; but today it is your happy privilege to prove, as never before, your loyal
confidence in the Lord by starting out with Him on a life and walk of faith,
lived moment by moment in absolute and childlike trust in Him.
You have trusted Him in a few things, and He has
not failed you. Trust Him now for everything, and see if He does not do for you
exceeding abundantly above all that you could ever have asked or thought; not
according to your power or capacity, but according to His own mighty power,
that will work in you all the good pleasure of His most blessed will.
You find no difficulty in trusting the Lord with
the management of the universe and all the outward creation, and can your case
be any more complex or difficult than these, that you need to be anxious or
troubled about his management of it. Away with such unworthy doubtings! Take
your stand on the power and trustworthiness of your God, and see how quickly
all difficulties will vanish before a steadfast determination to believe. Trust
in the dark, trust in the light, trust at night, and trust in the morning, and
you will find that the faith, which may begin by a mighty effort, will end
sooner or later by becoming the easy and natural habit of the soul.
All things are possible to God, and "all things
are possible to him that believeth." Faith has, in times past, "subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of
lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, waxed
valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens"; and faith can do
it again. For our Lord Himself says unto us, "If ye have faith as a grain of
mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place,
and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
If you are a child of God at all, you must have
at least as much faith as a grain of mustard seed, and therefore you dare not
say again that you cannot trust because you have no faith. Say rather, "I can
trust my Lord, and I will trust Him, and not all the powers of earth or hell
shall be able to make me doubt my wonderful, glorious, faithful Redeemer!"
In that greatest event of this century, the
emancipation of our slaves, there is a wonderful illustration of the way of
faith. The slaves received their freedom by faith, just as we must receive
ours. The good news was carried to them that the government had proclaimed
their freedom. As a matter of fact they were free the moment the Proclamation
was issued, but as a matter of experience they did not come into actual
possession of their freedom until they had heard the good news and had believed
it. The fact had to come first, but the believing was necessary before the fact
became available, and the feeling would follow last of all. This is the divine
order always, and the order of common-sense as well. I. The fact. II. The
faith. III. The feeling. But man reverses this order and says, I. The feeling.
II. The faith. III. The fact.
Had the slaves followed man's order in regard to
their emancipation, and refused to believe in it until they had first felt it,
they might have remained in slavery a long while. I have heard of one instance
where this was the case. In a little out-of-the-way Southern town a Northern
lady found, about two or three years after the war was over, some slaves who
had not yet taken possession of their freedom. An assertion of hers, that the
North had set them free, aroused the attention of an old colored auntie, who
interrupted her with the eager question, --
"O missus, is we free?"
"Of course you are," replied the lady.
"O missus, is you sure?" urged the woman, with
intensest eagerness.
"Certainly, I am sure," answered the lady. "Why,
is it possible you did not know it?"
"Well," said the woman, "we heered tell as how we
was free, and we asked master, and he `lowed we wasn't, and so we was afraid to
go. And then we heered tell again, and we went to the cunnel, and he `lowed
we'd better stay with ole massa. And so we's just been off and on. Sometimes
we'd hope we was free, and then again we'd think we wasn't. But now, missus, if
you is sure we is free, won't you tell me all about it?"
Seeing that this was a case of real need, the
lady took the pains to explain the whole thing to the poor woman; all about the
war, and the Northern army, and Abraham Lincoln, and his Proclamation of
Emancipation, and the present freedom.
The poor slave listened with the most intense
eagerness. She heard the good news. She believed it. And when the story was
ended, she walked out of the room with an air of the utmost independence,
saying as she went, -- "I's free! I's ain't agoing to stay with ol massa any
longer!"
She had at last received her freedom, and she had
received it by faith. The government had declared her to be free long before,
but this had not availed her, because she had never yet believed in this
declaration. The good news had not profited her, not being "mixed with faith"
in the one who heard it. But now she believed, and believing, she dared to
reckon herself to be free. And this, not because of any change in herself or
her surroundings, not because of any feelings of emotions of her own heart, but
because she had confidence in the word of another, who had come to her
proclaiming the good news of her freedom.
Need I make the application? In a hundred
different messages God has declared to us our freedom, and over and over He
urges us to reckon ourselves free. Let your faith then lay hold of His
proclamation, and assert it to be true. Declare to yourself, to your friends,
and in the secret of your soul to God, that you are free. Refuse to listen for
a moment to the lying assertions of your old master, that you are still his
slave. Let nothing discourage you, no inward feelings nor outward signs. Hold
on to your reckoning in the face of all opposition, and I can promise you, on
the authority of our Lord, that according to your faith it shall be unto
you.
Of all the worships we can bring our God, none is
so sweet to Him as this utter self-abandoning trust, and none brings Him so
much glory. Therefore in every dark hour remember that "though now for a
season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations," it is in
order that "the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that
perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise, and honor,
and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ."