Part 7: No Excuse For a Lack of FaithAfter consecration, the next step in the soul's progress out of the wilderness of a failing Christian experience into the land that flows with milk and honey, is that of faith. And here, as in the first step, the soul encounters certain kinds of difficulty and hindrance at once.The subject of faith is very generally misunderstood. For, in reality, faith is the simplest and plainest thing in the world, and it is most easy to put into practice.Your idea of faith, I suppose, has been something like this. You have looked upon it as a sort of thing - either a Christian exercise of soul, or an inward attitude of heart. You suppose it to be something tangible. In fact, when you have secured it, you suppose you can look at it and rejoice over it. You suppose you can use it as a passport to God's favor, or a coin with which to purchase His gifts. You have been praying for faith, expecting all the while to get something like this. You have never received any such thing, so now you are insisting that you have no faith.Faith is not in the least like this. It cannot be touched. It is simply believing God. You see something and know that you have sight. You believe something and know that you have faith. For as sight is only seeing, so faith is only believing. 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. In both cases the act of believing is the same. The things believed are exactly opposite, and it is this which makes the mighty difference. Your salvation does not come because your faith saves you. Your salvation comes because it links you to the Savior who saves. Your believing is really nothing but the link.I beg you to recognize the extreme simplicity of faith. I beg you to recognize 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. Then trust Him to keep His word. It is so simple that it is hard to explain.How mothers trust their precious infants to the care of nurses and feel no shadow of anxiety! How often we trust our health and our lives, without a thought of fear, to cooks and taxi drivers, and all sorts of paid workers who have us completely at their mercy. They could, if they chose to do so, or even if they failed in being careful, plunge us into misery or death in a moment. We do this and make no complaint about it. We often put our trust in people we hardly know. We require only a general knowledge of human nature as the foundation of our trust. And we never feel as if we were doing anything in the least remarkable!You could not live among your fellow-men and go through the customary routine of life for a single day, if you were unable to trust them. It never enters into your head to say you cannot live among them. Yet, you do not hesitate to continually say that you cannot trust your God! You excuse yourself by saying that you are "a poor weak creature" and "have no faith".I wish you would try to imagine yourself acting in your human relations as you do in your spiritual relations. Suppose you should begin tomorrow with the notion that you could not trust anybody, because you had no faith. When you sat down to breakfast you would say, "I can't eat anything on this table, for I have no faith, and I can't believe the cook hasn't put poison in the coffee, or that the butcher hasn't sent home diseased or unhealthy meat." So you would starve. When you went about your daily business you would say, "I can't ride in this train because I have no faith. I can't trust the engineer, nor the conductor, nor the men who built the train, nor the men who repair the rails." You would have to walk everywhere, and would become completely exhausted. You would be unable to reach the places you could have reached in the train. When your friends met you with any statements, or your business agent with any accounts, you would say, "I'm sorry that I can't believe you, but I have not faith, and never can believe anybody."Just picture a day like this and see how disastrous it would be to yourself. It would be completely ridiculous to anyone who observes you. Realize how your friends would feel insulted, and how people would refuse to serve you another day. Then realize that if this lack of faith in your fellow-men would be so dreadful, what must it be when you tell God that you have no power to trust Him or believe His word. If your friends would be insulted, imagine telling God that it is a great ordeal, 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? IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU CAN RECEIVE THE "WITNESS OF MEN," AND CANNOT RECEIVE THE "WITNESS OF GOD?" IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU CAN BELIEVE MAN'S RECORDS, AND CANNOT BELIEVE GOD'S RECORD? YOU CAN COMMIT YOUR DEAREST EARTHLY INTEREST TO YOUR WEAK, FAILING FELLOW-CREATURES WITHOUT A FEAR. YET, YOU ARE AFRAID TO COMMIT YOUR SPIRITUAL INTERESTS TO THE SAVIOR WHO LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR YOU, AND OF WHOM IT IS DECLARED IN HEBREWS 7:25 THAT HE IS "ABLE TO SAVE TO THE UTTERMOST ALL WHO COME UNTO GOD BY HIM?"Surely, surely, dear believer, you, whose very name "believer" implies that you can believe, you 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. Your soul would be in very poor condition indeed. Let me beg you, then, when you think or say these things, always to complete the sentence, and say, "I have no faith - in God! I can't believe - God!" I am sure this will soon become so dreadful to you, that you will not dare to continue it. I am still reading through Hannah Whitall Smith’s classic A Christian's Secret of a Happy Life and have been sharing the treasures I have found in this book with you. I hope you will be blessed as I have been. Your comments are welcome and encouraged.Read the previous 6 articles in A Christian's Secret of a Happy Life (article series)
