Helps
To Faith
By
Susan A. Duncan
Acts
27:14-44
Some
Definitions of Faith, which have grown out of the experiences of God's children, have been made helpful to us, and we bring
them to you with the desire that your faith also be strengthened.
"Faith is a resting on the promise and the Promiser until He fulfill it." It is quite possible for us to ask
God for some great thing when under the inspiration of the Spirit, but quite another thing to rest in the promise when nothing
seems to be done, and days and weeks and months go by, and the promise tarries still. The word to the disciples was to tarry
in Jerusalem,” not a few days, but to “tarry until,” - until the promise came. We are too apt to think that
if our request is in harmony with the will of God that it will be granted at once and without difficulty. On the contrary,
look at Paul's experience in our lesson. It was God's thought that Paul should preach the Gospel at Rome. Human reasoning
would have said that the way would easily be opened, that Paul should go as a minister of respectability and repute; by easy
carriage and suitable comforts; but God's way was to let hum go as a prisoner in chains, to encounter storm and shipwreck,
escaping to land by the greatest difficulty.
Faith
will not be discouraged by delays or difficulties if our mind and heart is set on the promise and our eyes on the Promiser.
A
second definition. “Faith is simply the recognition of the reliability of those with whom we have to do.” In all
the affairs of life, when man is dealing with man, they ask themselves, is this person reliable? Can I trust his word? All
business is transacted by faith, and this faith is based upon our notion of the reliability of those with whom we have to
do. Not long since we received a letter from a distant southern State, I was surprised on opening it to find a silver dollar
perfectly loose in the envelope. The fact was, they had registered the letter, and our postal service promises to be responsible
for such letters, and trusting in the reliability of the government, the money was committed to the mails, and the sender
was at rest. Apply this rule to your daily needs, for body, soul, circumstances, everything. Has God spoken? Is He reliable?
Then commit yourself and your need to Him and rest.
Again,
“Faith is always repose in what another will do for me.” It is really taking our hands off: we think it is putting
them on, as if we had to do the thing ourselves. Our friend who sent us the letter, dropped it in the box and rested while
the postal service worked. Can we think our God less reliable than the government? Alas, we often treat Him so! It is as though
the sender of the letter had, after dropping it in the box, sent a messenger to the general post office to see if the letter
had gone that far safely, and then telegraphed on to us, that it was sent and she would be anxious till we informed her of
its safe arrival. We really trust the mails that often miscarry more than we trust our God, whose faithfulness is unfailing.
To
maintain constantly an attitude of faith, one must believe at least three things. First, that God does the right thing, and
the best thing, always, no matter what happens. But you say, what of our mistakes and failures, does God want these? Look
at Peter's experience for example. God apparently allowed him to be tempted over much; it was a hard place: He, whom they
thought was to redeem Israel, had been put to death; He had not exerted any kingly power to defend or deliver Himself, and
seemed to have died in weakness and shame. Could this have been our Messiah? Peter queried, and for the time lost his Christ,
let go all hope, and went back to his fishing. How many since that day have done the same thing? You have taken the Lord for
the body, and because He did not deliver in the way you looked for, you have gone back to the arm of flesh. Some have failed
to overcome in the conflict with the flesh and the world, and have said, “This life in not mine, I must live on a lower
plane.” Others have been called to a faith life, of utter dependence upon God for all; trial, testing, persecutions
have come, and failing to see God in these, many have gone back to their nets.
God
has permitted the failure, to reveal the utter weakness of the flesh, and to throw such souls more fully upon Him, and as
one accepts, even the failure from God, as surely as did Peter, you will hear a new call to service and receive a new commission.
Second.
We must abandon every interest to God. Have you sensed the full meaning of that word abandon? It is a complete giving up;
an utter forsaking, and going away from. Paul experienced this in the storm, for he says, “When the ship was caught,
and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive... and when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small
tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was taken away.”
The
sailors were utterly abandoned to the winds and the waters, but Paul had a higher recourse, that of the throne of God, and
as he committed his case, God sent an angel with a message of deliverance, and Paul was from this moment completely abandoned
to the Word of God. He said, “Sirs, I believe God,” and because God was going to work he could rest: not indifferently,
and in discouragement, but with the keenest activity of faith, yet perfect rest. “We that believe do enter into rest.”
Why? Because some one else is going to do for us.
Oh
the power of such abandonment to God; even these heathen prisoners and wicked sailors felt it, and obeyed each word of Paul,
who virtually now had command of the ship with its whole crew. So restful was he that he sat down to eat, the first time in
fourteen days; and so contagious was his faith, that we read, “Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took
some meat.”
God
is ever shaping circumstances so that we will have His Word only to rest upon. When God has spoken we can afford to be blind
and deaf to all else.
In
1 Samuel 10:27, we have king Saul at the beginning of his reign. It reads, “But the children of Belial said, 'How shall
this man save us?' But he was as though he had been deaf.” (margin). Belial not only speaks himself in these days, but
he has many children also to say, “How shall this man save us? Or how shall these things be?” Let our attitude
toward all these opposing discouraging voices be “as though we had been deaf,” hearing God's Word only.
Third.
We must efface self in our choices. Any opposition to God's will hinders faith. So long as you have a will or choice unsurrendered
in any matter, you cannot get clearly the mind of the Lord. Here we are to see God in everything: abandon all to Him; take
self-interest out; and nothing can hinder God from working. We have a notable example of this in the Israelitish nation. The
Jews are now in unbelief, yet God is moving on. “For what if some were without faith? Shall their want of faith make
of none effect the faithfulness of God?” Romans 3:3 R.V.
Away
back in the ages there was a man who believed God, and by faith received the promise, and God will not fail to keep His Word
with Abraham, nor suffer His plan to be thwarted, even though some believe not.
Some
one has said that the eighth verse of the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm is the center verse of the whole Bible. Let us
rest in it. “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”
