The one word which has stood out pre-eminently before us these years has been “faith”. We found full authority in the Scriptures for a strong emphasis upon it. Outstandingly is this so in Hebrews 11, where every life of notable achievement in the Bible is labelled with a single incisive phrase as its keynote, “By faith”.
Christ, too, put remarkable emphasis on faith. To practically every miracle of healing He added a comment such as, “Thy faith hath saved thee”; “According to your faith be it unto you”; “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth”.
We remember how in our earlier days of Christian service we often wished to rewrite these statements. We thought that stress would be put in the more proper place if they were changed to “By the power of God” instead of “By faith”; and “The Lord hath saved thee” instead of “Thy faith hath saved thee”. Now, however, we had begun to understand the whole point to be that the inflow of almighty power into Christian lives is potentially ceaseless and can be taken for granted through grace; but what is so rare and therefore necessary of emphasis is the faith that applies it.
All believers say in a general way “God is Almighty”, “God can do this or that”. Only one in a thousand says, “God is almighty in me” and “God will do so and so through me”. Here lay the essence of Moses’ controversy with God at the burning bush. God was saying, “Come now, I will send thee, and thou wilt deliver My people.” Moses was replying, “I believe You can and will do it, but not through me”. God’s almightiness was not the point in question. It was Moses’ appropriation and obedience of faith that hung in the balance.
Thus when Moses did set forth to carry out the commission, the Holy Spirit rightly says it was done “by faith”. The same difference in the quality of believing makes the dividing line between Elijah and the other 7,000 true believers who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and yet who had so little influence on the lives of their generation that Elijah did not know of their existence.
If we trace our weakness in the exercise of authoritative faith to the source, we shall find that our spiritual vitality is sapped at the roots through failure to take a bold grasp of the truth of “Christ in you”, sufficient to shatter the illusion and consequent weakening effects of a false sense of separation. We know God only at a distance. We know touches of His power and grace, visitations which come and go. We are sure about the past through trust in His atoning work, and of the future through the promise of eternal life. But we have only a variable consciousness of His daily presence with us.
The transforming truth is that of our inward fusion with Him. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Can anything describe actual union more realistically than that? We have His mind. We have His power. If all power is in Him, all power is in us. This was the transforming revelation to the men of faith of old.
From “Touching the Invisible” by Norman Grubb
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