If you
have faith as a mustard seed . . . nothing will be impossible for you —Matthew 17:20
We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, and it may be so in
the initial stages. But we do not earn anything through faith— faith brings us
into the right relationship with God and gives Him His opportunity to work. Yet
God frequently has to knock the bottom out of your experience as His saint to
get you in direct contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is
a life of faith, not a life of emotional enjoyment of His
blessings. The beginning of your life of faith was very narrow and intense,
centered around a small amount of experience that had as much emotion as faith
in it, and it was full of light and sweetness. Then God withdrew His conscious
blessings to teach you to “walk by faith” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And you are worth much
more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight with your
thrilling testimony.
Faith by its very nature must be tested and tried. And the real trial of
faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character
must be proven as trustworthy in our own minds. Faith being worked out into
reality must experience times of unbroken isolation. Never confuse the trial of
faith with the ordinary discipline of life, because a great deal of what we
call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith, as the
Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts
Him— a faith that says, “I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may
do.” The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is—
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
