One evening the Lord commanded His disciples to cross the Lake of Galilee to the other side. Suddenly there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat upon the boat so much that it was now filling up. The Lord Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. The disciples awakened Him and said, "Teacher carest Thou not that we perish?" The Lord arose and rebuked the wind. But what did He say to His disciples immediately afterwards? ... "have yet not faith?" (Mark 4:40). This indicates that many hasty prayers are but an expression of unbelief. If there were faith, you would stand firm. The Lord orders you to cross to the other side; He has not commanded you to go to the bottom of the lake. Because He has given His order—and no matter how strong the wind blows or how high the waves beat—the boat cannot capsize. Praise and thank God, victory is Christ, not I. Were it I, I could only endure so much, and then I would explode. But if it be Christ, no temptation will be too much for Him, nor any testing too difficult for Him. Stand on the side of God's word, stand on the side of faith—and Satan is rendered helpless. Since the Lord orders us to go to the other side, to the other side we will go. Not because our word counts, but because God's word is trustworthy, for He is forever faithful. No matter what the enemy says, your response is and always shall be that Christ is trustworthy and God's word is dependable. This is faith; this substantiates the truthfulness of God's Word. ... Genuine faith believes in the Word of God exclusively, it is not believing in one's own experience, feeling, or dark environment. If environment and experience coincide with God's Word, we praise and thank the Lord. But if these disagree with His Word, then the Word of God alone stands true. Whatever is contrary to God's Word is false.
There are four principles for Christians to follow by which they might be strengthened in their faith. The first principle is to read the Bible and meditate upon it. God becomes know to us through prayer and meditation upon His word. Secondly, seek to maintain an upright heart and a good conscience. The third principle is this, if you desire your faith to be strengthened you should not shrink from opportunities where your faith may be tried. Trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats are the very food of faith. Remember the beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. The last importance principle is to let God work for you. When the hour of trial comes do not work a deliverance of your own. The greater the difficulty to be overcome the more it will be seen to the glory of God how much can be done through prayer and faith.
Some people try to have faith in their own faith, instead of faith in Jesus Christ. They keep looking for a subjective condition. They ought to be looking to an objective Christ. True faith pays no attention whatever to itself. It centers all its gaze upon Christ. For faith is not our savior. Faith is simply an attitude of the soul through which Jesus saves. When Satan cannot beguile us in any other way, he gets us to scrutinizing our faith, instead of looking unto Christ. That Christian has the strongest heart who is the least conscious of its existence. And that faith is the strongest which pays no attention to itself. You may weaken the heart by centering your anxious attention upon it. So nothing will quicker weaken faith than the constant endeavor to discover it. It is like the child’s digging up of the seed to see if it is growing. It is a curiosity which brings disaster to the seed. It is not a man’s faith, but his faith in Christ which saves him. To be looking unto Christ is faith. To be looking unto anything else, even unto faith is a trouble to the soul. Therefore do not worry about your faith. Do not always be scanning it. Look away from it altogether—unto Jesus. For faith alone is naught. It is only faith in Jesus that counts. Take care that you are depending upon Jesus to save. And faith will take care of itself.
Looking unto Jesus—and not at our faith. The last device of the adversary, when he cannot make us look elsewhere, is to turn our eyes from our Savior; to our faith; and thus to discourage us if it is weak, to fill us with pride if it is strong. Either way weakens us. For power does not come from the faith, but from the Savior by faith. It is not looking at our look, it is "Looking, looking unto Jesus!"
We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety. This is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.
"For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7) All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always meeting a mountain, a mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God’s Word, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact—of failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion—and either faith or the mountain has to go. They cannot both stand. but the trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. That must not be. If we resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan’s lies are often enough true to our experience; but if we refuse to accept as binding anything that contradicts God’s Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find instead that Satan’s lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively to tally with that Word.
It is the faith that continually closes its eyes to the weakness of the creature, and finds its joy in the sufficiency of an Almighty Saviour, that makes the soul strong and glad. It gives itself up to be led by the Holy Spirit into an ever deeper appreciation of that wonderful Saviour whom God hath given us—the Infinite Immanuel.
If you look at the world, you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed. If you look at God you'll be at rest.
You yourself may ebb and flow, rise and fall, wax and wane, but your Lord is this day as He was yesterday; and it is your comfort that your salvation is not rolled upon wheels of your own making, neither have you to do with a Christ of your own shaping.
You probably know the illustration of Fact, Faith and Experience walking along the top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to right nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed and all went well so long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact; but as soon as he became concerned about Experience and turned to see how he was getting on, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Experience fell down after him.
Christ’s call to the soul is four-fold: Come unto Me, Learn of Me, Follow Me, Abide in Me. Come unto Me as Redeemer; Learn of Me as Teacher; Follow Me as Master; Abide in Me as Life. And all that is required of us is the one sufficient and inclusive attitude of soul which the New Testament knows as faith. This attitude and response of trust, self-surrender, dependence, is the essential attitude and response of the soul of man to God. Every sincere man knows full well the impossibility of realizing his true life in isolation, apart from God. Faith as man’s response to God for ever puts an end to the spiritual helplessness and hopelessness of the solitary man. He brings into the heart the assurance of forgiveness and deliverance from the burden of the past, he bestows on the soul the gift of the Divine life, and then he commences a work that is never finished in this life of assimilating our lives to that of Christ, working in us that Christlikeness which is the essential and unique element of the Gospel ethic. As we continue to maintain and deepen the attitude of faith the Holy Spirit is enabled to do His work and we are enabled to receive more of His grace. "That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Galatians 3:14). By every act of trust and self-surrender we receive ever larger measures of the life of Christ, and all the while we are being changed into the image of Christ "from glory to glory" by the Spirit of the Lord.