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Chapter 30—Faith and Prayer
Faith is trusting God—believing that He loves us and knows best
what is for our good. Thus it leads us to choose His way instead
of our own. In place of our ignorance, it accepts His wisdom; in
place of our weakness, His strength; in place of our sinfulness,
His righteousness. Our lives are already His; faith acknowledges
His ownership and accepts its blessing. Truth, uprightness, purity,
have been pointed out as secrets of life’s success. Faith puts us in
possession of these principles.
Every good impulse or aspiration is the gift of God. Faith re-
ceives from God the life that alone can produce true growth and
efficiency.
Make very plain how to exercise faith. To every promise of God
there are conditions. If we are willing to do His will, all His strength
is ours. Whatever gift He promises is in the promise itself. “The
seed is the word of God.”
Luke 8:11
. As surely as the oak is in the
acorn, so surely is the gift of God in His promise. If we receive the
promise, we have the gift.
Faith that enables us to receive God’s gifts is itself a gift, of
which some measure is imparted to every human being. It grows
as it is exercised in appropriating the Word of God. In order to
strengthen faith, we must often bring it into contact with the Word.
In the study of the Bible the student should be led to see the
power of God’s word. In the creation, “He spoke, and it was done;
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He commanded, and it stood fast.” He “calls those things which do
not exist as though they did” (
Psalm 33:9
;
Romans 4:17
), for when
He calls them, they are.
The World’s True Nobility
How often those who trusted the word of God have withstood
the power of the whole world—Enoch, holding fast his faith in the
triumph of righteousness against a corrupt and scoffing generation;
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