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What is required of us as Christians
is the obedience of faith. That’s one of the great words of Romans. It
comes in the first and the last chapters of Romans. “Unto
the obedience of faith.” Faith is obedience. Faith means
I accept absolutely, completely, determinedly, exactly what God says is so,
and I stake my life on it. And though I fail a million times, I still stake
my life on it. Though every man is a liar, God is true. (Romans
3:4).
So I step into that and I say, “I
am crucified with Christ. I have died with Him. I
have been buried with Him. And I have made a
public show of it. I have risen with Him, Christ in me, and
have ascended with Him.” It is a here and now fact.
Now that’s the obedience of faith. Beware lest you are a disobedient
soul because you’re looking this way and that and you think it hasn’t
worked. That isn’t the question. It isn’t a question of whether it works
or not. It is a question of obeying.
And obeying is faith.
It’s the obedience of faith. We must be sure, if we are to be obedient, as
God shows us who we are from His Word, we don’t walk around it, living as if
it is NOT YET so. The simple obedience of faith is to state with all your
soul that what God says is so.
God tells you to reckon yourself dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God
through our Lord Jesus Christ—the world crucified unto you, and you to the
world. You have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. You are
crucified with Christ. Be sure you
say so. (Romans 10:9-10) Be sure
you plunge right out like good old Peter did on those waves and found the
waves held him. He got a soaking, but better get a soaking and walk on
water than the other disciples who got no soaking and didn’t walk on water
either. I’d rather be the man on the water and get a little wet than the
man who stays in the boat and just laughs and gets nothing. Don’t stay in
that boat. Come out. Walk on the water.
Faith isn’t as easy as it looks.
You begin to find that out when you face challenges that make the present
impossible. That’s when you face it. That takes faith. When you face the
challenges of the past or future, it’s not quite so difficult. That’s why
salvation by grace isn’t quite so difficult. Because when you first
come to Jesus for salvation, in the main you are concerned about those past
sins that are damning you and your future security in heaven. It is a
little easier to believe something way in the past or the future. But it
is a much harder thing to believe in the immediate possibility of a present
sanctification.
That is why we begin to find out
that faith for sanctification isn’t so easy. Because we are to believe
we are what we are not. That takes some doing. We are to call the
things that be not as though they were. (I Cor. 1:28) If we
don’t then we are people that slip away into sin and we are inconsistent.
We are heavy one day and peaceful another. We are told of a purity of heart
that we ought to have, and we have to believe we have it when we don’t feel
we do. That takes some doing. We have to believe the present
impossibility. So we begin to find faith isn’t so easy as it looks.
Here are a few essential points on faith that have meant something to me.
1.
FAITH PRODUCES REALITY
The first is this: Faith must
“SEE” the reality. Faith is recognition of fact. Let us understand
this. Faith realizes fact or it isn’t faith. The proof of that is Hebrews
11:1, and all of Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 shows faith responding to invisible
facts. God said in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith
is the substance,” that is fact, that is reality, that is
experience. “The substance of things hoped
for”—it gives hope substance. It makes aspirations
realizations. You haven’t faith until you are on the realization level,
until you have the thing and know you have it. That’s the whole meaning of
faith, because it is so difficult to attain. We toss to and fro and say we
have faith when we are only hoping for a thing. We mix up hope and faith.
It is very common for us to mix them up.
But that is the fact. “Faith
gives substance.” That’s one translation. “Faith
is the giving of substance.” I like that translation because it
helps you to see it. “Faith is the giving of
substance of the things hoped for.” It makes the vague
aspirations actual realizations.
Our faith is going to do that. That
is exactly what your faith did for your justification. Faith made the
desire to be saved the actuality of salvation. So your faith is
coming to the realization of a living Jesus and the efficacy of His Precious
Blood a certainty in your heart—that means you have passed from death unto
life. So you rejoice, “Praise the Lord, I have eternal life. Praise
the Lord my sins are forgiven.” This substance in you comes out and
expresses itself in a changed life so that other people see it as well. It
is a faith that has produced actual substance within you, a spiritual
substance. Now that is faith.
That first step of faith gives us
the standard for the rest. We can see there, that faith recognized
substance. You know perfectly well that if a person says, “Oh, I believe
God,” and you ask, “Brother, are your sins forgiven?” And he says, “I hope
so.” You say, “Brother you’re not there yet.”
You’re not there yet. You must have
more than hopeful wish that your sins are forgiven. You have to say, “I
know they’re forgiven.” Faith sees the reality. Go beyond the
child level of a new believer and on to the adult level of one who KNOWS
who he is in Christ. Be sure you go on from the justified level to the
sanctified level. Move on from the level that your sins are washed away by
His Precious Blood to the level that you are crucified, dead
to sin, and alive unto God, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Faith sees
this as being so right NOW.
You must have it on all levels.
That is why it is so important when you have learned how to have a
practicing faith, you can then not only work it for your own needs, but for
the needs of others. And so these men in Hebrews 11 did all sorts of
marvels, not merely for their own deliverance, but for the deliverance of
others too, because they functioned from faith. They could see results:
stop the mouths of lions, quench the violence of fire, bring forth a child
from the impossible, open the Red Sea, and so forth. “Faith
is the giving of substance to things hoped for and the evidence of things
not seen.” Faith is its own evidence.
Saying, “I believe I’m
crucified with Christ. I believe my heart is purified by faith,” you
do not have the evidence. The “I believe” shows you are just
trying to believe something. When you stand in the witness box before
the judge, you can’t say, “Well, judge, I believe so and so happened.” The
judge will say, “I don’t want to know what you believe. I want to know what
you saw. You’re a witness. Tell me what you saw. I don’t want to know
what your theories are.” See, that’s what it is to have evidence. So it is
no good for me to say, “Oh, I believe so.” I must be able to say, “I’ve
seen it. I know it’s so. I tell you—God, man, devils, anybody—I
tell you it is so.” Knowing is the evidence. That’s what faith
reproduces within us. John’s witness was, “This
is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things:
and we know that his testimony is true.” As Paul said, “And
we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Or, as
John testified, “Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know
that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he
is.” We KNOW because of what He has worked in us, “We
know that we have passed from death
unto life, because we love the brethren.” What He has produced
in us causes us to KNOW and thus evidence our faith by such a
response.
The other great verse on the matter
is that marvelous flash of insight in the Bible, I John 5:10, which tells
us, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath
the witness within himself.” Thus the faith and the witness are
one thing. Faith bears its own evidence. Therefore faith isn’t faith until
it has born its own evidence, because it definitely says that the faith and
the witness are one thing.
If you have faith you have “the
witness within” yourself. Often we say we have faith and we
don’t have the witness. That is when we are only kidding ourselves.
God’s Word says faith always has its own witness, so it isn’t yet faith
until there is the witness; an inner witness or that inner peace that we are
always telling you should “umpire” your heart and mind. And out of the
inner witness, of course, comes the outer work.
Charles H. Spurgeon said, "To
be the LORD's own people is a choice blessing, but to know that we
are such is a comfortable blessing. It is one thing to hope that God
is with us and another thing to know that He is so. No believer
should be content with hoping and trusting; he should ask the LORD to lead
him on to full assurance, so that matters of hope may become
matters of certainty. It is when we enjoy covenant blessings and
see our LORD Jesus raised up for us as a plant of renown that we come to a
clear knowledge of the favor of God toward us. Not by law, but by
grace do we learn that we are the LORD's people. Let us always turn our
eyes in the direction of free grace. Assurance of faith can
never come by the works of the law."
Now, that’s the first observation of faith I would
stress. Of course I’m speaking particularly of our walk as a Christian. We
are to walk by faith. So I now live in this realization, this actual inner
certainty and inner knowledge, that this thing is so. And then, as I say,
the outer works follow.
2.
PARTIAL AND PERFECT FAITH
The second thing is learning to
discern between partial and complete faith. Let us learn to
discern. If you discern you won’t kid yourself. A great deal of the
problem is self-deception. Discern between partial and perfect faith. Now
there are many instances in the Bible of partial faith that is not perfect
faith.
Take for instance, Zacharias and
Elizabeth, the father and mother of John the Baptist. Because they were
barren, Zacharias had prayed with Elizabeth for a child for, we’ll say, 20
years, maybe 30 years. He never believed his prayer. He prayed 30 years
and never believed his prayer. The reason or proof is the moment the angel
said to him, “You shall have a son,” he said, “How can that be?” And
immediately the angel said, “You have unbelief. That’s your trouble. Shut
up your mouth for a while.” So until the baby was born he could not speak.
Now Elizabeth believed her prayer.
That was an inner thing no one else could see. How do I know Elizabeth
believed her prayer? For this reason, they had the child. Remember that
beautiful, holy incident when her cousin Mary, the mother of Jesus, came to
see her, and the babe leaped in Elizabeth’s womb. What did Elizabeth say?
“Whence cometh the mother of my Lord to see
me for blessed is she that hath believed, for there shall be a
performance of those things which were told her of the Lord.”
Only faith can see faith. And Elizabeth saw a marvelous thing—which no one
else had seen—that the birth of Jesus was not automatic, Mary had
faith. Mary believed the word from God. It was one of the triumphs of
faith in history. It was the operation of the Spirit joined to the faith He
gave Mary.
So Elizabeth said, “You believed you
would have a Son, which for a virgin is impossible. You have believed more
than Abraham. You have believed without a husband that you will have a
Son. You have believed in the virgin birth. You have believed something
through eternity.” “Blessed is she that
believed.” She believed it, and there was a performance of it.
Now Elizabeth could only say that because she had faith herself. Faith sees
faith. Remember, Paul saw the faith of a crippled man before the
evidence was visible: “The same heard Paul
speak: who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to
be healed.”
So we know therefore that Elizabeth
believed for her John, the same as Mary believed for her blessed Jesus.
But, poor old Zacharias failed. So you see what I mean? It isn’t that
godly Zacharias had no faith. He only had partial faith. He just
didn’t have the faith that recognized the substance that produced the
experience of the reality.
Now a lot of our faith is partial.
It doesn’t stand the storm. There is that faith which stands the storm
because it has it, and you can’t move it. Exactly as I say I can’t move you
from justification by faith, can I? I can’t persuade you that your sins are
not forgiven. No storm on earth can persuade you of that because you
possess it. Your faith is substantial, nothing will move you; and, praise
God, so with many of us on the sanctification level too. Nothing can move
us from the fact that we were sanctified by grace through faith, because we
possess it. I say “it,” but of course it’s Him. You see, when faith
is substantial, nothing can move you. When faith is insubstantial, it is as
a morning cloud, and with the first rising of the hot sun it evaporates.
We have plenty of evaporating
faith. The only man who confessed having a partial faith was the unknown
father of the demon-possessed son who met Jesus when he came down from the
Mount of Transfiguration, the man who had previously asked His disciples to
deliver his son and they could not. Do you remember the incident when he
said to Jesus in his agony, “If You can do anything, heal my son.” Jesus
swung right around on him and said, “If you
can believe all things are possible to him who believes.” He put
it back on him. What did the man answer? A delightful answer, a
delightful, innocent, fresh answer. He said, “Lord,
I do believe, help Thou my unbelief.” He said, “I do
believe. Honestly, I don’t think I do believe. I do believe but I don’t
believe.” That’s how most of us are when we are honest. We’d say, “I
believe, I believe, I believe,” and in our hearts we don’t believe a thing.
Although that is our trouble, God will meet this honest response every
time.
I read where one young student said
what I thought was a very good illustration of this. He said, “Sir, isn’t
this real faith?” And he held up a book. I think it was his Bible. He
said, “If I say to you, ‘I believe I have a book in my hand,’ the
implication is I’m not quite sure if I have a book in my hand.”
Saying that I believe I have a book
in my hand, the implication is that it might be a serpent or something.
There’s a slight doubt in putting in the words “I believe.” But I don’t say
that, do I? I just say, “I have a book.” That is the faith that has. That
is the faith that realizes the fact. I don’t say, “I believe I have it.” I
have a book. Of course I have a book. That’s faith. That’s the difference
between the real faith and the imperfect faith.
So we say, “I have a Saviour.” We
don’t say, “I believe I have a Saviour.” And we say, “I have a Sanctifier,”
not, “I believe I have a Sanctifier.” “He
is the source of your life in Christ
Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, "Let the
one who boasts, boast in the Lord."” We “boast” not in what we
have accomplished, but what He has accomplished, even our “sanctification.”
“I have a heart which has been
purified by faith.” Not, “I believe I have.” That little element of
saying, “I believe,” which is really an element of doubt, has gone out. The
faith has become sight. The faith has become realization. It is
substance. That is faith.
So let us notice these two observations: first of all,
that faith is not faith until it produces its substance. Faith must
“see” a reality, an experience, a witness, evidence. Second, learn to
discern between a climbing faith and a Mt. Everest faith. One is a
climbing faith that hasn’t reached there yet. Don’t mistake the two. When
you’ve reached there you’ve got it. You have it in your spirit; you have it
in the inner fact. Have it in the inner spiritual fact and later on it
comes out in the physical and material fact, maybe in the change of life,
maybe in this, maybe in that, but you have it and it comes forth in your
life.
3.
THE EXERCISE OF FAITH
Now I want to pass on to another
point or two. How then do we exercise faith? How do we exercise the faith
that does produce a reality?
Faith Is Action
First of all—faith has the
participation of our human action. Faith is action. James says, “Faith
which has no action is a dead faith.” Faith has an element of
our human action in it. Of course we people of the Spirit know actually
that human action has the divine empowering behind it, but that is a
different point than I am addressing now. We know that it is really the
Holy Spirit giving us faith through the Word of God, but we are addressing
this from our point of view.
Let us look at a faith that
experiences contrasted with a faith that theorizes. Faith, natural or
spiritual, is the same thing, only applied in different realms. I see a
chair over there, and I say to you, “I believe that chair will hold me.”
That may be genuine faith on my part. I may really believe, and I do
believe, that the chair will hold me if I sit on it. You may stand there
and say, “Oh, no, you don’t know. That chair won’t hold you. It’s got a
broken leg under there. It won’t hold you.” Well, we can argue till
Doomsday, and neither of us can be proved right. I merely say, “I believe
it will hold me.” You say, “I don’t believe it will.” Well, that comes to
nothing because there is no experience in that kind of faith.
Now suppose I say, “I’m going to sit on it.” Then the
faith takes hold of me. I proved it. Here’s the chair holding me. I know
it, and now you know it. The world knows it. That’s faith in action. It’s
a particular action that has produced an experience in me and there it is.
I know it. It is not just theory. I don’t say the other is not faith when
I said, “I believe it will hold me.” But it isn’t a faith that produces
anything. I’m not so sure there isn’t some differentiation in the Bible
between faith and belief there. (See John 2:23-25 and 8:30-59) I’m
not so sure that belief isn’t saying it, and faith doing it. The devils
believed, but they never acted on their faith. They couldn’t act, of
course. They believe and tremble. In John 8:30 they believed, but by verse
59 “they took up stones to throw at Him.” There
is something inadequate in just “believing” compared to having
“faith.”
So I think there’s some difference
in believing that is on the theoretical side and faith that is on the action
side. Therefore, let us see that faith always means taking action on a
statement. “Faith comes by hearing and
hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17)
Some people have the idea that you
sort of sit down and wait for things to happen, sort of ask for faith. No,
you don’t ask for faith. You exercise faith. To speak about Christ
when there is no glow in your soul is pretty hard, as if there is no
Christ. One man who was trying to speak of Christ, yet in his heart being
as dead as a stone, and as black as ink, he said, “I’m finished. I’m not
going to open my mouth in a public meeting until this thing somehow gets
adjusted inside me! I can’t go on talking in darkness about a Christ Who I
say is alive and yet my own heart is as if He isn’t alive.” He testified
that suddenly the Spirit of God spoke to him. He said, “Who told you that
you were in darkness? I am the Light of the world and I am in you.”
He said suddenly he saw that he had
received a lie from Satan that was an illusion, a delusion. And for the
first time in his life he took action. As he walked out he said, “You
get out Devil! Christ is in me. He is my Light. And I affirm it now.”
He said, “I bit the devil for the first time with my teeth. I ground my
teeth and bit him. I did and I have bitten him many times since.” Is that
what James meant when he said, “Resist the
devil and he will flee from you”?
He learned something through that
simple silly little action. He learned that faith is action. He learned
that he was not to lie down under delusion and illusions and appearances or
FEELINGS. He learned to press right through into the actions of faith.
As far as I know, the most
illuminating description of the action of faith in full analysis is given us
in Romans 4. This is where we get the great pioneer of faith, Abraham, in
action and we see all the stages of faith. There are three main stages
of faith in action. Look at the last few verses of Romans 4 where it talks
about the faith of Abraham.
1. Abraham Was
Not Weak in Faith.
Romans 4:19 tells us first of all
that Abraham was not weak in faith. “And
being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead,
when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s
womb.” That was the first action he took in faith. To be weak
in faith is to lie down passively. That doesn’t mean you have no faith. It
just means it is passive. He was not just waiting for God to do things.
That is weak faith. You begin to get perfect faith, strong faith, when you
begin to take action. Sometimes that is just looking for an “open
door” to go through.
The first action he took was when
he deliberately refused to judge by appearances. Now that takes some
doing. He says, “I will not accept things on appearances. Human
appearances make it look ridiculous that I, a hundred years old, can have a
child, and that Sarah who has never had a child at all at ninety years of
age could have a child. Yes, it is fantastic, but I will not be governed
by appearances. I will not judge by appearances.” Abraham is taking action
in his spirit.
2. Abraham
Believed Promises.
He goes one stage further then and
grips the promises. Next stage says this: (Romans 4:20) “He
staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief.” In other
words, he turned his attention away from appearances and he put
his attention on the promises. He said, “Now I am going to take a hold
of that. God has said that this hopeless and improbable thing would
happen. I have God’s Word and I am going to believe in the veracity of God
and in His faithfulness to His Word. I am going to take hold of it.” That
is the next stage—taking the promises of God.
3. Abraham Gave
Glory to God.
The third stage is where he breaks
through. At the end of Romans 4:20, it says that he was “strong
in faith giving to God glory.” Now that is faith going right
into action. Deliberately he said, “Praise the Lord, I am going to have a
child. Praise the Lord it is a settled matter.”
The glory was in his soul. That is
the substance appearing. That is the inner substance. Faith has an inner
substance and an outer substance. The inner substance is the glory in your
soul, the certainty, the assurance. The outer substance is the thing that
happens as a consequence. If it is a question of sanctification, the inner
substance is the certainty that you are sanctified; the outer
substance is the changed life, and so on.
That is where he got through. That
was faith in full action. He was led to take some actual human activity.
He went out to circumcise the family, starting with himself. He had to take
the covenant of circumcision in faith that the child of promise was going to
come. So he made an outward act as well. We see faith in action. Abraham
did not lie down; he went right into the statements of God and refused
appearances against them. He embraced them, confessed them, and praised the
Lord. Then the glory came to his soul, and the facts came out. That is
faith.
So I am saying, first of all, simply
that important point—faith is action. I am talking about what we
commonly call sanctification by faith. It is written that I am
sanctified. “God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of
the truth.” There the question of what I have a right to believe
is not difficult because it is written. We know what we have a right to
believe because it is outlined for us in identification with Christ in many
Scripture texts.
When God has shown you what He wants
in your life, the fun of life begins, the adventure of faith, because you
have begun to find that you have a human capacity. It is not you, or rather
it is the REAL you, Christ in you. That is what we are
talking about in Galatians 2:20, “I have been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son
of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. “
It is not the natural you at all.
It is the Divine Believer inside you. It is the faithfulness of His Spirit
in you in this wonderful cooperation that appears to be Union, and
you enjoy life as He enjoys it. We enjoy it together and you have the
sense, “Come on, we are going into this thing. We can do these things.”
That’s the Union the Scripture talks about.
Consider that grand word of Caleb, “Let
us go up at once, for we are well able to overcome.” So says
this strong old man of faith. There he was, this one man, and all the
others said, “You can’t go up. There are giants in the land and they will
eat us up.” Old Caleb stuck out his stout chest and said, “Let us go up.
We are well able to overcome it. They’ll be bread for us and we will
chew them good and hard.”
There it is: “we,” “we,” “WE, the Union” . . . the
UNION . . . the UNION . . .. “We.” Yes I can do it! Praise
God! I have Somebody inside me Who is Life. I have Somebody inside me Who
is the Power. Yes, we will go. We’ll knock you out, Devil. You will
see.” That is the stuff of life. That is where you get it yourself. But
there is human action in it. Thank God, we don’t become robots. We don’t
become jellyfish. We become human beings plus, plus, plus. The “Plus” is
when we have that One inside us. That is faith in action.
4.
Faith needs Endurance
Our next observation concerning
faith is that there is an element of patience in it. Hebrews 6:12 states, “Be
followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
I prefer the other word. The other word for “patience” is “endurance,” what
we sometimes call “guts.” Endurance! “Let
us run with patience the race that is set before us.” (Hebrews
12:1). No, let us run “with endurance”.
It is the idea that it costs you something—you have to go through it.
Patience gives us too much the idea of passivity. Of course, there is an
element of passivity in it because there is the element of giving up to Him,
but having given up to Him now you go on with Him, and by Him.
Meekness has soldier-hood in it.
Meekness means that, instead or relying on yourself and your judgment and
your way, you are relying upon Him. That’s what meekness is. Meekness is
transferring yourself to Himself. That is all meekness is. Then you go
forward.
So perfect faith has its own
evidence . . . is its own evidence. Therefore when I don’t have the
evidence within me it means that I don’t have perfect faith. Well, I must
not be alarmed. I must just plod on because it means that there are
elements in me that are not yet clarified on this faith matter and I say, “I
believe,” which actually means I am not really believing completely. But in
the end faith is a Divine impartation. It is the gift of God. So there is
a sense when that light must come from Him.
There is often a gap between faith
and realization—which isn’t on His side. It is on my side. But I can’t
remove that. All that I can do is to keep open to Him as best I know how.
I will illustrate this. Everything is done by faith in the world. There
isn’t a single thing that you do that isn’t by faith. When you go to church
you go because you believe there will be a meeting at a certain place and a
certain time. It is all faith.
It is so of learning a trade. If you want to learn
electricity or carpentry or the like, you have to go through the inquiring,
the plodding stage, but you have to have the spark of faith that you will
get it somehow. Then after a few years, it has you and you are a natural
carpenter, a natural musician, or a natural anything. That is faith.
Therefore there is room there for a
plodding in our faith, and saying, “Now I am taking what God says. I’ve
entered in. I have declared, praise God, that this is so. Even if I can’t
rise and say that I know for certain without a shadow of doubt, if I can’t
say that, then I will plod on. If I haven’t got there yet, I won’t deceive
myself or kid myself. I will just plod on but I don’t lose my faith. I
stand in my faith. I declare it to God. I declare it to man. I declare it
to the devil. “For with the heart one
believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation.”
One day the bell rang in me, it
rang. Not in a noisy way, but it was an inner bell, that bell sometimes
rings louder than an outer bell. Praise His Name it rang, and I saw
Galatians 2:20 as my own position in Christ. Not that wretched “standing”
and “state” business that theologians use to explain “away” Scripture.
Excuse me. That is one of our pet excuses or ways we explain “away” the
Scripture. We call it our standing and not our state. We have no business
to divide the two saying, “That is my standing but of course my state is not
that.” You had better get where the Scripture says you ARE! Live
from where the Scripture declares you ARE, not from trying to get
there and always coming up short. Live in the VICTORY He HAS
accomplished, not in the failure of your trying.
CONCLUSION:
Faith always has its realization.
It isn’t faith until it has its realization. The aspiration becomes
realization. Therefore, don’t deceive yourself about faith. Understand the
difference between a partial faith and a perfect faith. There is plenty of
room for a partial faith, but don’t mistake it for the perfect faith.
Then the way you get into faith is by human action
although it is the Holy Spirit behind as He stirs your heart to see a need
and to see its supply in God’s Word. Romans chapter 6 is the supply.
Galatians 2:20 is the supply, and so on through the many Scripture texts.
You have the fullness of the Spirit, or whatever expression you want to
use. As you see the supply there, enter right in by human action and say,
“I am going to obey God and fulfill the obedience of faith. I enter in by
faith although I may feel nothing. I declare what the Scripture declares of
me in Christ. That is who I am RIGHT NOW according to God’s Word.”
One day inwardly I saw. Oh, I saw. It is a fact—Christ
lives in me! It is a fact. I am crucified with Christ. Christ
lives His life in me. I saw it. It was silent as the dew, silent as light
is silent—but the Light of God shined in me and I knew. There was no
question of believing this or that. Oh, no, no, no, NO! It is a fact,
I am what I am by His infinite grace and when the Spirit of Christ in me
opens the Scripture to my heart, it shows me the truth of who I am in Him.
I live in that every day.
Now where do you stand? Paul said
you have to know! “Know ye not that as many of us as were
baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? - Knowing this
that our old man was crucified with Him that the body should no longer be a
body for sin to dwell in but a body for the Holy Ghost to dwell in and so
on. Know these things!”
Therefore we must have knowledge.
Maybe you have imperfect knowledge. God has given you enough knowledge to
act on regardless. You have enough knowledge, but you must act on it. See
clearly that your given place in Christ, as God regards you now, is that you
are a person who was crucified with Christ, was buried with Christ, was
risen with Christ. You now have the other Person within you as the Risen
Life and that is who you are.
God requires you to declare, to
believe, and to accept what He says you are. Otherwise you are
disobedient. Maybe you see that. Well now, do you do it? Do you take some
way in your heart gripping this, saying, “Very well, Lord, I don’t care what
the future holds? I may fail a thousand times. I don’t care. I am what
your Word says. I cease to own myself. You live in me Your Life, your
Blessed Life, the good perfect, and acceptable will of God in me. You work
it out in me.” And He will.
That One, that One Who loved me and
gave His Precious Life for me, that is the One who dwells and lives in
me—the One who loved me and gave Himself for me. So, Lord, I take that
plunge.”
This is the OBEDIENCE OF FAITH.
So, Lord, just impart and engraft
your Word into us according to the need. We ask it all for the glory of our
Blessed Lord Jesus. Amen.
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