How can I keep the faith?

“But ye, beloved.” There is but a little flock today. The great majority of Christendom has turned away from Christ, and they are going faster and faster every day after every mad thing the devil and man can invent. “Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.” As men depart from it, you be more careful of it. Get your soul better built up in it. It is a most holy faith. It is not the invention of man, and the devil has never had anything to do with it. That faith is from heaven itself. Then “Praying in the Holy Ghost”, not merely saying prayers as a kind of ritual, but praying in the power of the Spirit of God. That is, presenting your supplication not in your own power, but in the only power by which you can have to do with God. You say, “Can I always be filled with that Spirit?” You ought to be. In Ephesians it says, “Be filled with the Spirit”. Who? All believers in Ephesus, and the same thing should be true of all believers, now, everywhere. A person may say, “I wish I were filled with the Spirit. How am I to be?”

We are living in apostate times; when those who take the name of Christ, alas, are using it in any way but for His glory, have any desire but for His glory. We are living in such dark times that we might easily be discouraged. But listen: "Ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." How beautiful! I am surrounded by apostasy; what am I to do? Keep myself in the love of God. I am surrounded by those who are trusting in their own pride and strength; what am I to do? Pray in the Holy Ghost. I am surrounded by those who deny the very foundations of Christianity; what am I to do? Build up myself on my most holy faith. That verse is often misquoted. People say, build up yourself in your most holy faith, as if the faith was something in us, to be strengthened and built up in. That is not the thought. We are to build up ourselves on that solid, holy foundation of the faith, the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That is the faith. We cannot strengthen that, but we can strengthen ourselves upon that. We are to be established upon it in days of apostasy. That brings us again to the precious word of God, which is the only thing that will establish us upon that solid foundation.

It should be a daily question as to how much we are occupied in building ourselves up on our most holy faith. We all know as regards our bodies the need of continual cleansing, taking in frequent supplies of nourishment, protecting ourselves from bad external influences, and of availing ourselves of seasonable refreshment and comfort. But what about our souls? Are we hating the garment spotted by the flesh? Are we carefully seeking to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, and purposing not to touch the unclean thing? Is self-judgment before God habitual with us, because we exercise ourselves to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward man? Do we go to the word of eternal truth morning by morning; read, meditate on it in dependence on the Spirit; pray over it, and take it in as food for the renewal of our inner man? Do we hide the word of God in our hearts that we may not sin against Him? Do we thus have to do with "God, and the word of His grace," which is able to build us up, and throughly furnish us unto all good works?" Do we seek in this way to gather strength, so that faith may grow, love abound, and hope be increasingly brightened? If so, then it may be that we are building up ourselves on our most holy faith. And we may be quite sure that those who are building up themselves will greatly value being built up by others, and be profited by their divinely-given ministrations.

The Lord give us grace then (apart from all questions of "who are we?"), since the days are so bad, "to earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints," and which, despite all length of time, has not lost its virtue; and "building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life (Jude 3, 20, 21); We are told to "buy the truth and sell it not" (Prov. 23:23). W.N.T.

Thus the battle of Rephidim sets before us the blessed principle of victory over sin and the world. If my reader fights on the principle of law, you will be overcome; if on the principle of faith, you will overcome. And just as your hands hang down to one, or are lifted up to the other, will you fail or prevail. And you who have trod the greater part of the journey, I appeal to your hearts and consciences. — Is it not so, just as we have looked to God we have overcome; and just as we have resolved to do our best we have failed. What years of sorrow a life of simple faith would save the child of God. Would you, my dear young Christian, then, spend your little while in holy, happy, devoted service to God, then have no confidence in the flesh — never trust self. Pray without ceasing — at all times and in all places. Remember, you are the temple of the Holy Ghost: He intercedes for you; the risen High Priest is your Advocate; God is for you. Though He chasten, it is because He loves you. Oh! do not forget you are never safe from temptation a moment, except that moment is spent in trusting Him. How soon after the manna and rest, came temptation and Amalek. In seasons of richest blessing, when filled with Christ, the heavenly manna, and the heart at rest in God, yet even then how near to danger. How sudden the change to fierce and unexpected temptation. Oh! watch; pray; trust. "Now to him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever, Amen."

And notice that expression "hardened." Sin is a thing that hardens — the heart and conscience becoming callous, less sensitive. In the joy of first love, Christ fills the heart, and any thought of giving Him up is torture to the soul. Oh, who with the joy of first love in his heart would think for a moment of turning from Christ to anything else? But the sin of unbelief hardens. If you turn away from Christ, if you allow the world to come in, or, as these Jewish Christians were allowing, persecutions on one side, and the desire to be identified with Judaism on the other, to come in between the soul and Christ — if these things come into the soul, the heart becomes hardened. The sin of unbelief is a deceitful thing. It detaches one imperceptibly from the object of faith, and, before you are aware of it, the result is grievous dishonor to Christ. If he is a true beliver, like Peter, thank God, he will be brought to repentance. If he finds that he has failed, out of the very ashes of failure and unbelief, God will bring in brightness again. The very overwhelming flood that God permits to come upon us, the crushing sense of humiliation and sorrow because of our failure, will be the occasion used of the Spirit of God to bring out again that faith which was losing its brightness. The very sorrow of our experience will be His means of restoring us to Himself. But as the apostle is speaking of profession, true and false as well, he shows the effect of sin upon the heart to make them careless and coldhearted; then to allow something else than Christ to have a place, until Christ loses value in the eye of the heart and they go back again to that Judaism, — to shadow instead of the substance; it becomes an idol now, in that it displaces Christ: they give up Christ. That is the deceitfulness of sin; and we, as true believers, need to exhort one another, not against doing this or that or the other thing merely, but to exhort one another daily to hold fast to Christ.

The State of the Believer When not Living Upon Christ. So long as we abide in the Lord Jesus, dwell on His love, live in His presence, sit at His feet, rest on His promises, feed on His word, love His ways, pour out our hearts to Him, and draw out of His fulness, our peace flows as a river; we overcome in conflict, escape out of temptation, bear our sufferings with fortitude, fight the good fight of faith, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. But when the eye and heart forget Christ, when we turn from Him as the smitten Rock, the fountain of life and love, then the barrenness and sorrows of the wilderness press heavily upon us, and disappointment, rebellion, murmuring, and other bitter fruits of unbelief easily manifest themselves. Perhaps no people act more foolishly, are more miserable, or more exhibit the unlovely tempers and evils of the flesh, than those believers who forget the Lord Jesus, and draw not refreshment and blessing out of His fulness. The enemy, finding such off their guard, easily overcomes them with his fiery darts, acts upon the pride and lusts of the flesh, until, instead of the triumphant song of "Worthy is the Lamb," their lips give utterance to desponding and complaining exclamations.

If I trust to my own strength in the hour of temptation, I break down: but if I have learnt, through grace, to cast myself on Christ, I find all in Him to help me, and to go through the temptation unscathed. I must learn the lesson. If I learn it with the Lord, I am spared the sifting; but if not, I must be sifted. If not in intercourse with the Lord, it must be with Satan. "Nevertheless," saith the Lord, "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." It is blessed to believe that God loves us, notwithstanding all our failure. It is worth (not any sin but) any sorrow to learn this.

Faith here is the full confidence in God, which counts on His goodness and faithfulness, and that He is for us - which trusts a God who is entirely for us. Without this all is despair, or near to it, in a conscience which feels that it has to do with God. Satan has got in; and to the soul which feels the need of God being for it there is left only the agonising feeling that He is not. Hence the Saviour prays for Peter, that his faith might not fail; that is, that in spite of his dreadful fall he might not be left to the thought that therefore God had abandoned him, was against him, and that there was no hope. The fiery darts of Satan are not his efforts to seduce by acting on our various lusts; but where, by any means, our hearts are turned away from God, the inroads he makes in the form of unbelief and despair. This is the force of the passage in the Corinthians, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency. The evil was there, the incontinency was supposed, the temptation was the power of Satan over the soul, which was the result. It is evidently a different power from his seductions. There is no pleasure in despair, but deep agony. The flesh finds its pleasure in satisfying its lusts, but there is no lust of despair it is as a consuming fire in the soul.

And what is there to compare with God's word against the enemy? "By the word of Thy lips I have kept from the paths of the violent." It only is the sword of the Spirit; but here too we need all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching "hereunto with all perseverance, in order to wield it with effect. "Through faith" are we guarded by the power of God to salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. But faith ever supposes and relies on His word. Otherwise one is prone to self-deception. Satan is as strong as we are weak; yet the word is, "Whom resist, steadfast in faith." For the word assures us, that, so believing, we have the Lord to stand with us, to deliver from every evil work, and preserve for His heavenly kingdom. "Princes also did sit and talk together against me: thy servant doth meditate in thy precepts. Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counsellors."