October 31st
Discernment of faith
Faith as a grain of mustard seed.… Matthew 17:20
We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith; it may be so in the initial stages, but we do not earn anything by faith. Faith brings us into the right relationship with God and gives God His opportunity. God has frequently to knock the bottom board out of your experience if you are a saint to get you into contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings. Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sun-spot of experience that had as much sense as confidence in it, full of light and sweetness; then God withdrew His conscious blessings to teach you to walk by faith. You are worth far more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and compelling testimony.
Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the actual trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabled isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life. Much that we call the practice of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith in the Bible is faith in God against everything that contradicts Him—‘I will remain faithful to God’s character whatever He may do.’ “Though He slays me, yet will I trust Him”—this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.
Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986. Print.
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