“THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH”

Remarks of Norman P. Grubb

August 5, 1954

            We have been seeing from God’s Word that His marvelous purposes of grace in both the creation of man, and the re-creation of man in His beloved Son, is that the blessed Christ Himself should be perfectly free to live His own wonderful life in and through the human personality.  As we’ve said all the time, the human mind cannot take in what that wonderful fact must mean.  Christ Himself perfectly free to fulfill all that He is, all His mind, His heart, His character, His power, His purpose, His grace, perfectly and freely in me and through me. 

            That’s been the basis of our thinking from God’s Word in these meetings.

            (a)  Removal of Independent Self.

            We have also seen that that Self of all selves, that Great I Am, cannot be Himself fully within me if there is a rival other self.  If there is an independent human self which counters His claim to do exactly what He likes in and by me, He cannot be free.  And that is exactly what has happened, first of all through Lucifer and all those terrible hosts of fallen angels with him, and then imparted into man and in fallen humanity.  A rival self has entered to rival The Self within, and that rival self is our problem, what we shall call the independent self.  Yet so perfectly does God’s Word rightly divide things for us that He makes things perfectly clear, that it doesn’t mean that we lose ourselves; rather, we become our rightful selves.  It’s the wrongful self we lose; the rightful self then becomes itself. 

            So it is not losing self.  It is losing the wrong form of self that the rightful form of self may coexist with that other Self.  But the rightful form of self is that which becomes very small and as near a cipher as it can become; and it recognizes its own weakness. 

            The tragedy of humanity is that we are created inferior and we try to make ourselves out as superior.  That’s where all break downs come from.  We all have the inferiority complex and we try to make out that we have the superiority.  When I recognize that wherever I am I am there to have a Superior Person inside me, then I get the right superiority complex.  The complex is Christ, not myself.  We have, therefore, to learn first of all a basic eternal inferiority of humanity, and a basic eternal Superiority of the Living One who comes and lives in me.  That inferiority and that Superiority joined makes man the divine man.

            (b)  Liberated Christ Within. 

            So our problem is, having recognized that the only purpose for which we are created and the only way in which humanity can function is by a liberated God within us, perfectly free to be God within us, to be Himself within us; having realized then that that cannot be under existing circumstances until this false god has been removed (the false god is the independent self, the devil behind it), we have had to seek the remedy—the removal of the independent self that the dependent self may remain with The Self within it, the Self of all selves within it, the I AM within.  Thus, as I said before, I think we have the perfect analysis of the human-divine relationship in Galatians 2:20 where “I,” the independent Paul, has got out, gone right out, right out, crucified with Christ.  “I” the dependent Paul will live—“nevertheless I live,” but that’s not really I at all, “not I, but Christ lives in me.”  And now I am living, oh yes, I have a mind, and a heart, and a will, and I am a full man—I am not a full man until I am a dependent man.  In His service is perfect freedom.  I am a full man in the full vigor of my humanity.  So I live now my daily life in the dusty paths of life, the life which I now live in the flesh.  Oh, but I am not living it—I am living it by derived faith.  I am living it by an unceasing tide of faith within me—the faith of the Son of God, which is an unceasing well of love within me, an unceasing well of purity within, an unceasing output of power within me—the Living Christ.  So I live by the faith of Another, by the power of Another, by the beauty of Another, by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me. 

            That is, so far as I can see, the perfect Biblical analysis of the true divine-human relationship for which we were created, and then, having lost it, re-created by the blessed Grace in Christ.  We saw then, blessed be God, that He has given a complete remedy for the removal of that independent ego, not for the removal of the ego, but for the removal of the independent ego—a complete method for its removal, as complete as the death of Christ is complete.  Because that is the remedy.  So we saw that fact. 

            I like that word Brother Thompson emphasized to us in a previous meeting, that we are dealing with facts.  These aren’t facts.  These are passing temporal—I won’t say “illusions” or I should be called a Christian Scientist—but they are sort of, sort of, sort of .  .  .  they just don’t matter too much.  The things that are seen are temporal, but the facts of the eternal essences, the facts of the eternal facts, and my union with Christ in His death, are eternal.  When I learn that I enter into liberation, which is just as much an eternal fact as my sins having been washed away in the Precious Blood, that’s a fact.  The whole world of devils knows that, and I know it too, by the Spirit.  That’s a fact, but so is the other a fact.

            (c)  Identification with Christ. 

            My union with Him in death and resurrection is an eternal, an essential, a substantial fact.  That is what must be imparted to us.  So we have had revealed to us from God’s Word that this is the heart meaning of the substitutionary work of Christ—that because He was merely my substitute in infinite grace, it is really I that did the dying there—because there was no need for Him to do the dying.  I did it.  He did it in my place, so in God’s sight, I did it.  It’s just the same as when I used that simple little illustration yesterday, to the effect that if you owe a bill to a storekeeper and your brother comes and pays it for you, the storekeeper receipts the receipt that you paid it.  He doesn’t receipt the receipt that your brother paid it.  You owed the bill; your brother paid it; but he puts on the receipt that you paid it.  That’s substitution, that’s identification, and that’s this fundamentally profound truth—that’s the heart of the matter. 

            I think one thing needs stressing there—probably not to an audience like this too much, but to many audiences—and that is the grasping of the realization that it is an accomplished fact and not something to be accomplished.  There are thousands of hungry Christians who are trying to be crucified, and wishing they were crucified.  No, no, no.  You were crucified.  You have been crucified!  It is a fact concerning every believer.  That’s most important.  When you deal with a seeking soul desiring salvation, you don’t tell him that his sins have to be atoned for.  You don’t say, “Pray, and cry, and wait until the atonement has been accomplished for your sins.”  That would be a pretty poor Gospel, wouldn’t it?  You say, “Praise God, it was done 2,000 years ago!  Look at the Cross of Calvary.  That’s the historic evidence of the fact that the completion of the atonement was made.  All you have to do is accept that, and lean on it.  Believe it and you’re free.  It was done and your sins are finished in the Blood of Jesus.” 

            So is your “self” finished on the Cross of Jesus.  Your independent self is finished on the Cross of Jesus.  The same as your sins are finished in the Blood of Jesus, your self also was finished.  And we waste our breath and our time and our agony when we ever allow ourselves to say, “Oh, I wish I could be crucified!”  It is an illusion.  A wish to be crucified is sanctification by works just as a wish that your sins could be atoned for would be salvation by works.  I have met many like that.  I have met them on this tour.  But some souls have been gloriously and graciously liberated by a flash of light.

            There is only one Cross, a glorious historic Cross; only one Christ, an historic Christ; only one death, an historic death which He accomplished for me.  But being my substitute, in fact, if I am a believer, it was I there on the Cross.  So I lean back on an accomplished fact.  I reckon on the fact of my co-crucifixion and co-resurrection with my Lord Jesus Christ.  The co-resurrection, of course, being by Another.  As I carefully pointed out last night, the resurrection wasn’t by the ability of Christ to rise from the dead; because in infinite grace, taking our place as a man, He gave up His right to rise.  He was a dead body.  Another raised Him from the dead, as Another comes and raises us from the dead; that indwelling Person of Romans 8.  Thus we enter into Galatians 2:20.  Now I am a crucified person so far as that independent ego is concerned.  I am alive, so far as that little bit of an ego in which I was created is concerned.  Inside that lives The Ego, the Self of all selves—Christ within.  Now I live my life. 

            Because of the disillusionments and disappointments that many had last night, I added this important fact:  we see from Scripture that our death with Christ and in Christ is not yet so total as His own was, for there is a sense in which ours is still only partial.  His death and resurrection was death of spirit and body and resurrection of spirit and body, right out of this realm, and He is now the Man in the Glory, the Glorious Forerunner, the great High Priest, who has accomplished redemption and is there, in Himself, cut right out of this realm of temptation and devils and world and flesh, and is not temptable, not reachable.  Now, our death and resurrection in Christ is only partial because it is not fully accomplished yet.  It’s reached as far as our spirits.  And in our spirits we are cut off in our spirits, but we are not cut off in our bodies.  We are cut off in our spirits, and that’s what death means, the separation, the cutting off of our spirits from any claim of sin upon us, any claim of the flesh upon us, and any claim of the world upon us.  But we have not yet passed into that realm where they can’t reach us.  We haven’t yet that resurrected body which won’t be temptable.  So you see there are two perfections.  Jesus was perfect on earth but He was temptable.  He is perfect in Heaven and is untemptable.  There are two perfections.  Now we can go on to that tomorrow, probably. 

            There is a stage in which we can walk in that form of perfection which is still a temptable perfection.  We can’t walk in a non-temptable perfection but that’s going to come one day, praise His Name.  So that gives us an understanding of the fact that taking our place in co-crucifixion with Christ and co-resurrection with Christ doesn’t remove us one inch from all those things that pour in upon us to divert us.  Perhaps they become worse afterwards, rather than better.  And every form of temptation pours in to us and sometimes we respond.  That’s something I am going to deal with tomorrow, temptation of sin, because it is important in the daily life.  But there is no doubt that there are many folks who have been disillusioned about claiming identification with Christ because they said, “Well, the fact is, it just doesn’t work.  It is all right from the pulpit, and it is all right from the Bible, but it isn’t all right in life.  It just doesn’t work.  I say that I am dead today and tomorrow I lose my temper with somebody.  It doesn’t work.”  But you see you have to find its balance.

THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH

            At the same time we are going back to this, first of all this morning, that we have to be what God says we are and have what God says we have.  Now you know if you’re talking to an unconverted person you won’t allow him to get out of conversation by saying, “Oh, I couldn’t keep it up.”  You say, “Brother, you mustn’t look at it that way.  You must just see you’re a hell-going sinner.  Get quick to Jesus, and get that Blood cleansing you.  Leave the future alone.  God sees to that.”  You don’t allow him to get out of present salvation by saying, “I couldn’t keep it up.”  We have no business to say, “Oh, I can’t really say that I’m crucified because tomorrow I’ll lose my temper.”  You have no business saying that.  You’ve no business to say that any more than a person can come to Christ and say, “I can’t take it because I shall lose it tomorrow.” 

            What is required of us is the obedience of faith.  That’s one of the great words of Romans.  It comes in the first and the last chapters of Romans.  “Unto the obedience of faith.”  Faith is obedience.  Faith means I accept, if you like, blindly—it isn’t wholly blindly, but better blindly than not at all—I accept blindly, absolutely, completely, determinedly, exactly what God says is so, and I stake my life on it.  And though I fail a million times, I still stake my life on it.  Though every man is a liar, God is true.  (Romans 3:4).

            So in I step, and I say, because God tells me to say it, “I am crucified with Christ.  I have died with Him.  I have been buried with Him.  And I have made a public show of it, somehow or other.  I have risen with Him, Christ in me, and have ascended with Him.”  We’ll touch that later. 

            Now that’s the obedience of faith.  Beware lest you are a disobedient soul because you’re looking this way and that and it hasn’t worked or something.  That isn’t the question today.  We’ll deal with that tomorrow.  It isn’t a question of whether it works or not.  It is a question of obeying today.  And obeying is faith.  It’s the obedience of faith.  So be sure that you are not a disobedient child, and be sure that God has shown you things in His Word and you’re not walking around them and making excuses and making wangles or something to get out of the flat obedience of faith.  The flat obedience of faith is to state with all your soul that what God says is so.  God tells you to reckon yourself dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God through our Lord Jesus Christ—the world crucified unto you, and you to the world.  You’ve crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts.  You’re crucified with Christ.  Be sure you say so.  Be sure you plunge right out like good old Peter did on those waves and found the waves held him.  He got a dipping.  But better get a dipping and walk than the other disciples who got no dipping and didn’t walk either.  I’d rather be the man on the water and get a little wet than the man who stays in the boat and just laughs and gets nothing.  Don’t you stay in that boat now.  Come out.  Walk on those waters. 

            So now we look a little further at this question of faith.  I just want to make a few observations to you on that question of faith.  We all know that the way is faith.  Let us remember, brothers and sisters, things are not so simple as they look.  Teachers have to learn that.  That goes back to the original text I’m using when I said, “It’s one thing to know a person’s acts and another thing to know a person’s ways.”  Science sees that today, doesn’t it?  Science opens up the fact that everything is infinitely complicated when you get inside it, even a speck of sand.  Look at the human body.  It looks so easy, doesn’t it?  I move my hands, move my eyes, and my tongue certainly moves, but behind it are infinite complications.  Things aren’t so simple as they look.  They’re only simple on the surface.  Now a young Christian may say, “Faith is simple.”  If we are teachers of faith, and practicers of faith, we shall not find it so simple. 

            Now we have to learn the hard way.  That’s how we learn.  We’re to be experts.  We’re to be specialists.  Specialists in the Spirit.  What a privilege.  Spiritual doctors, not with that silly D.D. stuff after your name.  Doctors inside the heart.  Our dear brother gave me “Doctor Grubb,” —Poof!  “Brother” Grubb that’s all I am, thank you.  You see, that’s our privilege, isn’t it?  Specialists.  Experts.  We must get inside the thing. 

            So faith isn’t so easy as it looks.  You begin to find that when you face the challenges of the present impossible.  That’s when you face it.  That takes faith.  When you face the challenges of the past or future, it’s not quite so difficult.  That’s why salvation by grace isn’t quite so difficult.  Because when you first come to Jesus for salvation, in the main you are concerned about those past sins which are damning you and your future security in heaven.  It is a little easier to believe something way in the past or the future.  But it is a much harder thing to believe in immediate possibility.  Now that’s why you begin to find that faith for sanctification isn’t so easy.  Because you’ve to believe you are what you are not.  That takes some doing.  We’ve to call the things that be not as though they were.  I Cor. 1:28.  And we’re people that slip away into sin and our lives are inconsistent.  We’re heavy one day and peaceful another, and all these things which we’ve gone into before.  We aren’t conscious of the purity of heart which we ought to have, and we have to believe we have it when we haven’t.  That takes some doing.  We have to believe the present impossible.  Now you begin to find faith isn’t so easy as it looks.  No it’s not.  So let’s look at faith for a moment.  I just want to give you one or two essential points on faith which have meant something to me. 

1.  FAITH PRODUCES REALITY. 

            The first is this:  Faith must produce reality.  Faith is a producer of fact.  Now get that home.  Faith produces fact or it isn’t faith.  The proof of that is Hebrews 11:1, and all of Hebrews 11.  Hebrews 11 shows faith producing facts.  God said in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance,” that’s fact, that’s reality, that’s experience.  “The substance of things hoped for”—it gives substantiality to hope.  It makes aspirations realizations.  You haven’t faith until you are on the realization level, until you have the thing and know you have it.  That’s the whole meaning of faith, because that’s so difficult in attainment.  We wangle around and say we have faith when we’re only hoping for a thing.  We mix up hope and faith.  We often mix them up.  Because it’s too difficult to get the other so we, like good fundamentalists, find a way out, as I told you before. 

            But there you have it squarely.  “Faith gives substance.”  That’s one translation.  Faith is the giving of substance.”  I like that because it helps you to see it.  “Faith is the giving of substance of the things hoped for.”  It makes the vague aspirations actual realizations. 

            Now our faith is going to do that.  That’s exactly what your faith did for justification.  It made the desire to be saved the actuality of salvation.  So your faith produced the realization of a living Jesus and the efficacy of His Precious Blood a certainty in your heart—that, Praise God, you’ve passed from death unto life.  “Praise the Lord, I’ve eternal life.  Praise the Lord my sins are forgiven.”  That’s substantial in you.  And the substance comes out of you in a changed life so that other people see it as well.  It’s a faith which has produced actual substance within you, a spiritual substance.  Now that is faith.  That first step of faith will give us the standard for the rest.  We can see there, that faith produced substance.  You know perfectly well that if a person says, “Oh, I believe God,” and you ask, “Brother, are your sins forgiven?”  And he says, “I hope so.”  You say, “Brother you’re not there yet.” 

            You’re not there yet.  You must have more than to say you hope your sins are forgiven.  You have to say, “I know they’re forgiven.”  Faith produces reality.  Now be sure you don’t just get that on the child level and not on the adult level.  See?  Be sure you didn’t just have that on the justified level and not on the sanctified level.  Be sure that you don’t just have it on the level that your sins are washed away in His Precious Blood, and you haven’t got it on the level that you are crucified, dead to sin, and alive unto God, and filled with the Holy Ghost. 

            You see, you must have it on all levels.  And that’s why it’s so important actually to our ministry because, when we’ve learned how to work a practicing faith, we can then, not only work it for our own needs, but for other peoples’ needs.  That’s when the law of faith can operate.  And so these men in Hebrews 11 did all sorts of marvels, not merely for their own deliverance, but for the deliverance of others too, because they knew how to operate faith.  They could produce the goods; stop the mouths of lions, quench the violence of fire, bring out a child in the impossible, open the Red Sea, and so forth.  “Faith is the giving of substance to things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.”  It’s its own evidence. 

            Now if you say, “Oh, I believe I’m crucified with Christ.  I believe my heart is purified by faith,” you haven’t the evidence.  You are just lying to believe something.  When you stand in the witness box before the judge, you can’t say, “Well, judge, I believe so and so happened.”  He says, “I don’t want to know what you believe.  I want to know what you saw.  You’re a witness.  Tell me what you saw.  Wash out this stuff.  I don’t care to know what your theories are.”  See, now that’s what it is to have evidence.  So it’s no good me saying, “Oh, I believe so.”  I must be able to say, “Oh, I’ve seen it.  I know it’s so.  I tell you—God, man, devils, anybody—I tell you it’s so.”  That’s evidence.  That’s what faith reproduces within us. 

            The other great verse on the matter is that marvelous flash of insight in the Bible, I John 5:10, which tells us, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness within himself.”  Thus faith and witness are one thing.  Faith bears its own evidence.  Therefore faith isn’t faith until it has born its own evidence, because it definitely says that faith and witness are one thing.  If you have faith you have witness, but it often isn’t true.  A million times over we say we have faith and we haven’t witness.  We are only kidding ourselves.  God’s Word says faith always has its own witness, so it isn’t yet faith until it has witness, an inner witness.  And out of the inner witness, of course, comes the outer work.  Now, that’s the first observation of faith I would stress.  Of course I’m speaking particularly on the sanctification question, but it goes on far beyond that.  It has to be a faith which has produced it.  So I now live by nature in this realization, this actual inner certainty, inner knowledge, that this thing is so.  And then, as I say, the outer works follow.

2.  PARTIAL AND PERFECT FAITH. 

            The second thing is something I’ve touched on already.  Let us learn to discern between partial and complete faith.  Let us learn to discern.  If you discern you won’t kid yourself because a great deal of it is self-deception.  Discern between partial and perfect faith.  Now there are many instances in the Bible of partial faith which is not perfect faith.  It is in the Bible and out of it.  You take for instance, Zacharias and Elizabeth, the father and mother of John the Baptist.  Now Zacharias had prayed with Elizabeth for a child for, we’ll say, 20 years, maybe 30 years because they were barren.  He never believed his prayer.  He prayed 30 years and never believed his prayer.  The reason or proof is that the moment the angel said to him, “You shall have a son,” he said, “How can that be?”  And immediately the angel said, “You have unbelief.  That’s your trouble.  Shut up your mouth for a bit.” 

            Now Elizabeth believed her prayer.  Now that was an inner thing no one else could see.  How do I know Elizabeth believed her prayer?  For this reason.  They had the child.  You remember, the child was in her womb, and you remember that beautiful, holy incident when her cousin Mary, the mother of Jesus, came to see her, and the babe leaped in Elizabeth’s womb.  What did Elizabeth say?  “Whence cometh the mother of my Lord to see me for blessed is she that hath believed, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her of the Lord.”  Only faith can see faith.  And Elizabeth saw a marvelous thing—which no one else had seen—that the birth of Jesus wasn’t automatic, it was by Mary’s faith.  It was one of the triumphs of faith in history.  It wasn’t an automatic operation of the Spirit; it was the operation of the Spirit joined to the believing of Mary. 

            So Elizabeth said, “You believed you would have a Son in the impossible.  You have believed more than Abraham.  You’ve believed without a husband that you’d have a Son.  You’ve believed in the virgin birth.  You’ve believed something through eternity.”  “Blessed is she that believed.”  She believed it, and there will be a performance of it.  Now Elizabeth could only say that because she had faith herself.  Faith sees faith. 

            So we know therefore that Elizabeth believed for her John, the same as Mary believed for her blessed Jesus.  But, poor old Zacharias failed.  It’s always the husband in trouble!  I’m glad to say Abraham put it over Sarah, anyhow!  There’s one back.  But that’s just one instance of partial faith. 

            So you see what I mean?  It isn’t that that godly man Zacharias had no faith, he only had partial faith.  He had a sort of scrappy faith.  He just didn’t have the faith which produced the substance which produced the experience of reality.  Oh, no, he hadn’t that.  You see? 

            You take another typical instance.  You remember when that great Moses came back from the wilderness with a commission from God to deliver the Israelites with a rod in his hand, and he went to reveal Himself to the elders of Israel.  He gave his proofs, through the miracles of the rod and so on, that God had appointed him and that now was the moment of their deliverance.  And a precious little, almost revival took place where the people believed Moses.  It says in Exodus 4:31, they believed Moses and worshiped.  Now that looked like faith.  Oh, no, no, no, it was just a scrap.  The very next day when Moses faced Pharaoh and Pharaoh reacted by doubling the tally of bricks and taking away the straw and beating up the people, Moses was met by the elders of the people saying, “Why did you go to Pharaoh and say those things to Pharaoh causing him to slay us?  Why did you put a sword in Pharaoh’s hand to slay us with?”  Where was the faith? 

            And the next day God sent Moses back to plead with the children of Israel but they wouldn’t hearken for anguish of spirit.  Where was the faith?  You see, they hadn’t the faith  which had the inner witness that Moses was the Saviour, or of course they would not have moved.  You see, they hadn’t that.  They only had a partial thing, which the Bible calls faith, but which is not a real thing, it’s only a partial thing. 

            Now lots of our faith is partial.  It doesn’t stand the storm.  There is that faith which stands the storm because it has it, of course, and you can’t move it.  Exactly as I say I can’t move you from justification by faith, can I?  I can’t persuade you that your sins are not forgiven.  No storm on earth can persuade you of that because you possess it.  Your faith is substantial, nothing will move you; and, praise God, so with many of us on the sanctified level too.  Nothing can move us from the fact that we were sanctified by grace through faith, because we possess it.  I say “it,” but of course it’s Him.  You see, when faith is substantial, nothing can move you.  When faith is insubstantial, it is as a morning cloud, and with the first rising of the hot sun it evaporates. 

            And we have plenty of evaporating faith.  Not that it’s better than no faith either.  No, it’s no better than no faith.  I have met only one candid gentleman in the Bible.  I’ll shake hands with him one day and be glad to meet him, because we’re all dishonest except this man as far as I can see it; he’s the only man I know who confessed having a partial faith.  And that is the unknown father of the demon-possessed son who met Jesus when he came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, the man who had previously asked His disciples to deliver his son and they could not.  And you remember the incident when he said to Jesus in his agony, “If Thou can’st do anything, heal my son.”  And Jesus swung right around on him and said, “If you can believe all things are possible to him who believes.”  He put it back on him.  What did the man answer?  A delightful answer, a delightful, innocent, fresh answer.  He said, “Lord, I do believe, help Thou my unbelief.”  He said, “I do believe.  Honestly, I don’t think I do believe.  I do believe but I don’t believe.”  That’s how most of us are when we are honest enough.  That’s just honesty, that’s all.  That’s getting up to faith.  He looked in the face of Jesus, “I do believe that person.”  He looked at his poor son and he said, “I can’t believe anything can be done.”  And he was honest enough to say so.  We’d say, “I believe, I believe, I believe,” and in our hearts we aren’t believing a thing.  That’s our trouble.  And God will meet the honest every time. 

            So it’s good to recognize partial faith and perfect faith.  I had an instance which I often quote because it struck me as so very clear on that very point.  Some years ago when I was back in England I was speaking to some students at Oxford University.  And there was a group of students there from the China Inland Mission.  I spoke something along the lines of which I have spoken to you, Romans 6 and so on, stressing an experience of faith.  They wouldn’t take that at all.  They were good P.B.’s.  And, you know what that means.  No, they wouldn’t take that at all.  They said, “Brother, reckon, reckon, reckon.”  Well, I knew what that meant.  They mean reckon it isn’t so at all, really.  Just reckon, that’s all.  When people are in that condition, you can’t say anything.  Thank God you’re not in that condition.  At least you haven’t thrown the books publicly.  You’ve only done it in your hearts that’s all.  So I’ve not had to deal with that trouble.  But it’s no good going around talking like that, is it?  I left it. 

            But there’s an interesting little incident which followed.  Curiously, I met the brother in Indonesia a few weeks ago, a beloved brother now in the C.I.M., and I told him about it.  He was delighted.  He was one of these three men who went out to China and went through the language learning period. In the course of doing so, they seemed to get dried up in soul.  They’re not the only ones, are they?  And they said, “Oh, I haven’t what it takes to do my job.”  And so very rightly at the end of their language learning period, they applied for permission to have some days alone with God.  They were going to fight this battle out.  They hadn’t the necessary equipment to take the gospel to the Chinese, although they now had enough of the language to get on.  And they wrote back a circular letter.  That’s how I knew—I received the circular letter.  They wouldn’t remember the past incident—only I remembered that, of course.  In the letter, they made this remarkable statement:  “We weren’t long in God’s presence before He said to us, ‘You know, you say you reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus. What you really mean is, you reckon but you don’t believe it a bit.  That’s what you really mean.’”  And they saw then their imperfect—I wouldn’t say hypocritical—faith, for they had done their best but their faith was imperfect.  That self-deluding faith.  They said they had reckoned themselves.  In their hearts, they didn’t believe it. 

            When you believe it you have it.  Faith produces reality.  It produces its own evidence.  It produces its own witness that you possess it.  And God challenged them then and they went through to a faith that had it.  But you see they learned to differentiate between that other thing which isn’t the real faith, which isn’t completely faith, and the complete faith.  I heard one young Chinese student quite recently in Australia say this which I thought was a very good illustration:  “Sir, isn’t this real faith?”  And he held up a book.  I think it was his Bible.  He said, “If I say to you, ‘I believe I have a book in my hand,’ the implication is I’m not quite sure if I have.”

            I believe I’ve a book in my hand.  The implication is that it might be a serpent or something.  See what I mean?  There’s a slight doubt in putting the words “believe in.”  But I don’t say that, do I?  I just say, “I’ve a book.”  That’s the faith that has. That’s the faith that realizes the fact.  I don’t say, “I believe I have it.”  I have a book.  Of course I’ve a book.  That’s faith.  And I said, “That’s the difference between faith which is the real faith and the imperfect faith.”  There you are.  Very right. 

            So you see we say, “I’ve a Saviour.”  We don’t say, “I believe I have a Saviour.”  And we say, “I have a Sanctifier,” not, “I believe I’ve a Sanctifier.” 

            “I have a heart which has been purified by faith.”  Not, “I believe I have.”  That little element of saying, “I believe,” which is really an element of doubt, has gone out.  The faith has become sight.  The faith has become realization.  Substance, that’s faith. 

            So let us notice these two observations:  first of all, that faith is not faith until it produces its substance.  I must produce a reality, an experience, a witness, an evidence; and second, learn to discern between a climbing faith and a Mt. Everest summit faith when you’ve reached there.  The other is a climbing faith and hasn’t reached there yet.  You haven’t got there.  Well don’t mistake the two.  When you’ve reached there you’ve got the thing.  You have it in your spirit; have it in the inner fact.  That’s the real fact as Brother Thompson pointed out.  Have it in the inner spiritual fact and later on it comes out in the physical and material fact, maybe in the change of life, maybe in this, maybe in that.

3.  EXERCISE OF FAITH. 

            Now I want to pass on then to another point or two.  How then do we exercise faith?  How do we exercise the faith which does produce a reality?  How do we exercise it? 

            (a)  Faith Is Action. 

            Now I just say this first of all—faith has an element of human action.  Faith is action.  That’s why I like James.  James says, “Faith which hasn’t action is a dead faith.”  Faith has an element of human action in it.  Of course we people of the Spirit know actually that human action has the Divine inspiration behind it, but I’m not touching on that side for the moment.  We know that it’s really the Holy Ghost giving us faith through the Word of God, and so on, but for all intents and purposes we say faith is human action. 

            Now I want to try and show you what I mean by a faith which experiences as against a faith which theorizes.  Now, of course, faith, natural and spiritual, is the same thing, only applied in different realms.  Now you take me.  I stand here behind this desk.  Now I see a bench down there, and I say to you, “I believe that bench will hold me.”  Now that may be genuine faith on my part.  I may really believe, and I do believe, that that bench will hold me if I sit on it.  You may stand there and say, “Oh, no, you don’t know.  That bench won’t hold you.  It’s got a broken leg under there.  It won’t hold you.”  Well, we can argue to Doomsday, and neither of us can be proved right.  I merely say, “I believe it will hold me.”  You say, “I don’t believe it will.”  Well, that’s the end of it.  Because there is no experience in that faith. 

            Now supposing I say, “I’m going to sit on it.”  Now then, the faith takes hold of me.  I proved it.  Here’s the bench holding me.  I know it, and he knows it.  The world knows it.  That’s faith in action.  It’s a particular action which has produced an experience in me and there it is.  I know it.  It isn’t just theory.  I don’t say the other wasn’t faith when I said, “I believe it will hold me.”  But it isn’t a faith which produces anything.  I’m not so sure there isn’t some differentiation in the Bible between faith and belief there.  I’m not so sure that belief isn’t saying it, and faith doing it.  The devils believed, but they never acted on their faith, and they got their punishment for it.  They couldn’t act, of course.  They believe and tremble.  That has nothing to do with it. 

            So I think there’s some difference in believing which may be on the theoretical side and faith which is on the action side.  Therefore, let us see that faith always means taking action on a statement.  “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”  (Romans 10:17). 

            Now that means that, on the basis of something that is given to me as fact, some spiritual fact—such as identification with Christ in His death and resurrection—some spiritual fact, I don’t merely say I believe but I take action and that action will be that which produces the experience within me. 

            May I give a little illustration from my personal experience?  This wasn’t concerning the time when God did graciously meet me in sanctification.  I may refer to that later, but just an instance in our early missionary career.  And this is where I learnt that faith isn’t passive.  We are probably more advanced than that but do think some people have the idea that you sort of sit down and wait for things to happen, sort of ask for faith.  No, you don’t ask for faith.  You exercise faith.  The word that came to me was this.  I went home on my first furlough in 1923 but I didn’t know much of the things of the Spirit in those days, and I plunged into a period of total darkness.  You know what it is to do that.  You don’t do that when you know another Life, of course, but you do it before you know the other Life.  And then I just lost all sight of Christ.  I can’t tell you why.  Whether it was a nervous reaction, I don’t know.  It was just pitch black in my soul as if I wasn’t in Christ at all.  And I was taking deputational meetings.  Well, you know how difficult it is to take a meeting when you are speaking about something that isn’t real to you.  To speak about Christ when there is no glow in your soul is pretty hard, as if there is no Christ.  And I pondered about that for about 10 days.  I was trying to speak of Christ, yet in my heart I was as dead as a stone, and as black as ink.  Finally, I remember coming back to a meeting in London and crossing one of the bridges in London.  I remember on that bridge I said, “I’m finished.  I’m not going to open my mouth in a public meeting until this thing somehow gets adjusted inside me! I can’t go on talking in darkness about a Christ Who I say is alive and yet my own heart is as if He isn’t alive.”  Suddenly the Spirit of God spoke to me.  He said, “Who told you you were in darkness?  I am the Light of the world and I am in you.” 

            And I suddenly saw that I had received a lie from Satan that was an illusion, a delusion.  And for the first time in my life I took action.  As I walked out I said, “You get out Devil!  Christ is in me.  He is my Light.  And I affirm it now.”  I bit the devil for the first time with my teeth. I ground my teeth and bit him.  I did and I have bit him many times since.  Praise the Lord, he squeals when he is bitten too.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Amen. 

            But I learned something through that simple silly little action. I learned something.  I learned that faith is human action.  I learned that I am not to lie down under delusion and illusions and appearance.  I am to press right through into the actions of faith. 

            As far as I know, the most illuminating description of the action of faith in full analysis which is given us in the Bible is Romans 4.  That is where we get the great pioneer of faith in action, Abraham, and you get all the stages.  But I am not going to dwell on it at length now but you get all the stages put before you there.  There are three main stages of faith in action.  If you would like to look at it just for a second, we’ll do so.  Look at the last few verses of Romans 4 where it talks about the faith of Abraham. 

            (i)  Not Weak in Faith.

            Romans 4:19 says first of all that Abraham wasn’t weak in faith.  “And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”  That was the first action he took in faith.  To be weak in faith is to lie down passively.  That doesn’t mean you have no faith.  It just means it is passive.  He was just waiting for God to do things.  Now that is weak faith.  You begin to get perfect faith, strong faith, when you begin to take action.  The first action he took was when he deliberately refused to judge by appearances.  Now that takes some doing.  He says, “I will not accept you on appearances.  On God’s Word, I will not accept you on appearances.  Human appearances make it look ridiculous that I, a hundred years old, can have a child, and that Sarah who has never had a child at all at ninety years of age could have a child.  It is fantastic.  I will not be governed by appearances, will not judge by appearances.”  “Judge righteous judgment.”  “I won’t take it,” said Abraham.  He’s taking action in his spirit.  “I am not taking that.” 

            (ii)  Believed Promises. 

            He goes one stage further then and grips the promises.  Next stage says this.  Romans 4:20, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief.”  In other words, he turned his attention now away from appearances which he wouldn’t consider any further; and he put his attention under the promises, and said, “Now I am going to take a hold of that.  God has said that this hopeless and improbable thing would happen.  I have God’s Word and am going to believe in the veracity of God and in His faithfulness to His Word.  I am going to take hold of it.”  Now that is the next stage—taking the promises of God. 

            (iii)  Gave Glory to God. 

            The third stage is where he breaks through.  At the end of Romans 4:20, it says that he was “strong in faith giving to God glory.”  Now that is faith going right into action.  Deliberately he said, “Praise the Lord, I am going to have a child.  Praise the Lord it is a settled matter.”  The glory was in his soul.  Now that is the substance appearing.  That is the inner substance.  Faith has an inner substance and an outer substance.  The inner substance is the glory in your souls, the certainty, the assurance.  The outer substance is the thing that happens as a consequence.  If it is a question of sanctification, the inner substance is the certainty that you are sanctified; the outer substance is the changed life, and so on.  That is where he got through.  That was faith in full action.  He was led, and usually I think we are led, to take some actual human activity too.  In his case he went out to circumcise the family, starting with himself.  He had to take the covenant of circumcision in faith that the child of promise was going to come.  So he made some outward act as well.  But you see faith in action.  Abraham did not lie down; he went right into the statements of God and refused appearances against them.  He embraced them, confessed them, and praised the Lord.  Then the glory came to his soul, and the facts came out.  That is faith. 

            So I am saying, first of all, simply that important point—faith is action.  I am talking this morning peculiarly around what we commonly call sanctification by faith.  There the question of what I have a right to believe isn’t difficult because it is written.  We know what we have a right to believe because it is outlined for us in identification with Christ in all the texts we have been through.  The problem arises in the things of life.  “What do I have a right to believe?”  That is a question we will have to discuss perhaps another time.  We certainly haven’t time now.  It is not so hard as it looks.  It is a question of guidance to faith, the guidance upon which faith can base itself.  But in this matter it doesn’t arise at all, of course. 

            So I just stress that again and again.  When God has shown that to you, the fun of life begins, the adventure of faith, because you have begun to find that you have a human capacity.  It isn’t of course you.  That is what we are talking about in Galatians 2:20.  It is not you at all.  It is the Divine Believer inside you.  It is the believings of the Holy Ghost in this wonderful cooperation that appears to be Union, and you enjoy life as He enjoys it.  We enjoy it together and you have the sense, “Come on, we are going into this thing.  We can do these things.”  That’s that Union in the Scriptures.  I often quote, and doubtless you have, that grand word of Caleb, “Let us go up at once, for we are well able to overcome.”  So says this cheeky man.  There he was, this one man, and all the spies said, “You can’t go up.  There are giants in the land and they will eat us up.”  Old Caleb stuck out his stout chest and said, “Let us go up.  We are well able to overcome it.  They’ll be bread for us and we will chew them good and hard.” 

            There it is:  “we,” “we,” “WE the Union” . . . the UNION . . . the UNION . . . .  “We.”  Yes I can do it, praise God, I have Somebody inside me Who is Life. I have Somebody inside me Who is the Power.  Yes, we’ll go.  We’ll knock you out, Devil.  You’ll see.  That is the stuff of life.  That is where you get it yourself.  But there is human action in it.  Thank God, we don’t become automats.  We don’t become jelly fish.  We become human beings plus, plus, plus.  “Plus” when we have that One inside us.  So that is faith in action. 

            (b)  Faith needs Endurance. 

            The next observation that I make concerning faith is that there is an element of patience in it.  Hebrews 6:12 says, “Be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”  I don’t like the word “patience” because it is a feminine word.  I prefer a masculine word.  The masculine word for “patience” is “endurance,” what we in England call “guts.”  Sorry you are not quite so rude in America, I’m sure.  Endurance!  You get the idea.  “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”  (Hebrews 12:1).  No, let us run with endurance, endurance.  It is the idea that it costs you something—you have to go through.  Patience gives us too much the idea of passivity.  Of course, there is an element of passivity in it because there is the element of giving up to Him, but having given up to Him now you go on with Him, by Him. 

            Meekness has soldierhood in it.  It is only that meekness means that, instead or relying on yourself and your judgment and your way, you are relying upon Him.  That’s what meekness is.  Meekness is transferring yourself to Himself.  That is all meekness is.  Then you go forward. 

            And so there is this element of “through faith and endurance inheriting the promises.”  Now I can’t say—well, perhaps we can say why it is, but one can’t time limit it—the reason why sometimes, perhaps very often, we do not get the inner assurance as soon as we believe is because the faith isn’t perfect.  I told you before that it is a law of faith that faith has its own witness; faith bears its own evidence.  When I really believe, as I do naturally believe, that I have a book in my hand, it is its own evidence to me.  I don’t have to say I believe I have a book.  It is its own evidence to me. 

            So perfect faith has its own evidence . . . is its own evidence.  Therefore when I haven’t the evidence within me it means that I haven’t perfect faith.  Well, I mustn’t be alarmed.  I must just plod on because it means that there are elements in me that are not yet clarified on this faith matter and I say, “I believe,” but actually I am not quite really believing.  That is the bottom of it.  But in the end faith is a Divine impartation.  It is the gift of God.  So there is a sense when that light must come from Him.  But we can’t press that. 

            So there is an obscurity in our faith; there is an opaqueness in our faith.  That is where there is a need sometimes for endurance/patience.  In Abraham’s case it may have referred to the fact that he had the inner witness and not yet the outer substance.  Well, that is another way.  That very often takes place.  We have an inner witness of our conversion, but not an outer substance of it yet.  I am referring now to the condition where you haven’t even the inner witness.  For myself, it was two years after I actively believed in Galatians 2:20 that I received the witness.  I suppose in some ways that my faith was not a clear faith.  So not for two years did the Spirit of God impart to me the absolute certainty that, “indeed that is true of you.”  I have never doubted since then 25 years ago.  I have never doubted since because I have substance within me. 

            So I know that there is often a gap between faith and realization—which isn’t on His side, it is on my side.  But I can’t remove that.  All that I can do is to keep clean as best I know how.  Now sometimes I use this little illustration because I think it is a fair one.  Everything is done by faith in the world.  I need not stress that to you, but there isn’t a single thing that you do that isn’t by faith.  If you came to these meetings you came because you believed there were meetings and there is a hall to come to and because you believe that you have two legs to walk on.  It is all faith.  But now you take faith in its high reaches on an actual level.  Now we are language learners.  I say this first of all; you wouldn’t proceed into the language at all unless you had a spark of faith.  You have at least a spark of faith  that you will get it or you would give up.  That is obvious.  It may be a mighty little spark,  but it is there.  You have a spark in you.  Now what happens?  You faithfully endure, you plod on and that spark of faith just burns.  It might be a little low, perhaps, but it burns.  You plod on knowing somehow that God will help you through.  You plod on, you plod on—you’ve faith and patient endurance. 

            Now it happens.  Somehow or other, by some automatic mental means that you can’t describe, the thing gets into you, and you begin to find you start to talk in it, you begin to understand.  It begins to become part of you.  You tried to get it, now it is getting you.  Now there is the witness coming in.  There is the substance coming in.  That is faith.  That is faith being perfected on a natural level.  See what I mean?  It is so of any trade, anything you like.  If you want to learn electricity or carpentry or the like, you have to go through the inquiring, the plodding stage, but you have to have the spark of faith that you will get it somehow.  Then after a few years, it has you and you are a natural carpenter, a natural musician, or a natural anything.  That is faith.  Therefore there is room there for a plodding in our faith, and saying, “Now I am taking what God says.  I’ve entered in.  I have declared, praise God, that this is so.  I can’t rise and say that I just know for certain without a shadow of doubt.  I can’t say that.  Very well, then, plod on.  You haven’t got there yet.  Don’t deceive yourself or kid yourself.  Just plod on but don’t lose your faith.  Stand in your faith.  Stand square.  Declare it to God.  Declare it to man.  Declare it to the devil.  Just say, “I haven’t got there yet.” 

            I am always thankful for one little thing in my life along that line.  I am thankful that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth.  It is interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus never called Him the Spirit of Love.  He said He was the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth.  That is interesting, I think.  Since He is the Spirit of Truth, He won’t lie to you and He won’t let you lie unless you deliberately do it. 

            In one matter I’m always thankful that He didn’t let me lie.  I was a pursuer of holiness for a long time.  Even up from my university days right through about the first 10 years of my missionary career I was in pursuit of something which I didn’t have.  I examined this way of teaching and that way of teaching; I took this by faith and took that by faith; but I slipped off again.  I didn’t have it.  I hadn’t got it.  But I tried to have.  But what I am thankful for was that the Holy Spirit always said to me, “Now don’t kid yourself.  That bell hasn’t rung inside.  When you have you’ll know you have.  Now don’t deceive yourself.  You don’t have it yet.”  I am glad of that.  I tried to make out that I had it a dozen times over.  “Now don’t you tell any of those lies.  You haven’t got there yet.” 

            When the bell rang, it rang.  Not in a noisy way, but an inner bell sometimes rings louder than an outer.  Praise His Name it rang, and I saw Galatians 2:20 as my own position in Christ.  Not that wretched “standing” and “state” business.  Excuse me.  That is one of our pet wangles.  We call a thing our standing and not our state.  We have no business to divide the two and say “that is my standing but of course my state is not that.”  You had better get there then, because that is what this Bible is.  Excuse me!  That’ll arouse opposition too, I expect.  Never mind.  It is lovely not to be answered back—on the platform anyhow. 

            Well, that is that point.  Now I don’t know that I have much more to say on it.  There is the patience side and then there is just the realization.  That’s all. 

            (c)  Faith Brings Realization. 

            Faith always has its realization.  It isn’t faith until it has its realization.  The aspiration becomes realization.  Therefore, secondly, don’t deceive yourself about faith.  Understand the difference between a partial faith and a perfect faith.  There is plenty of room for a partial faith, but don’t mistake it for the perfect faith. 

            Then the way you get into faith is by human action although it is the Holy Spirit behind as He stirs your heart to see a need and to see its supply in God’s Word such as we read here.  Romans 6 is the supply.  Galatians 2:20 is the supply, and so on.  The fullness of the Spirit, or whatever expression you want to use.  As you see the supply there, enter right in by human action and say, “I am going to obey God and fulfill the obedience of faith.  I enter in by faith though I feel nothing.  Now I declare that that is what I am according to God’s Word.” 

            Now there you have it.  In some cases the release, the inner release, may come at once.  Often it does.  It didn’t in my case—it doesn’t in some.  Well then if you have to go through the patience period, go through the patience period and the endurance period and go on walking until the realization comes.  In my own case I was out in Africa as I told you when I was so hungry and my wife and I were together there.  We were so desperate after a few years that we went out into a little village, visiting where there was just one bright convert, a chieftain.  We went to visit him, a dear old fellow named Bambani, and we spent the evening with him and then he went to his little hut as they do about 8 or 9 o’clock.  He hadn’t a hut to give us so we were sleeping in his little kitchen, putting a few banana leaves around.  We didn’t get as far as our camp beds because we had this burden on our souls and sat on our little chairs like you have in Africa out in the banana plantation.  And we grasped hold of this verse and we took action.  Of course there is a background of two or three years of searching, hungering, seeking, and finding the meaning of identification by faith from God’s Word, and so on.  But now we took action.  We went into Galatians 2:20. But we didn’t know much about quick action, because after all faith is quick action.  So it took us about four hours.  We didn’t go to bed until about 4 a.m.  Just the best we knew how, we took hold, “This is what I am.”  Finally, we wrote our names against it—Galatians 2:20—and put our names and dates.  I’m not a draftsman, but I know the next morning I took a postcard and drew a tombstone on it and said, “Here lieth Norman Grubb.  Buried with Christ.”  It is a good thing to visit your own funeral occasionally.  “Stay where you belong you independent wretch!  Go on there, you are buried with Christ.  Clear out!  I won’t have you inside me.”  Amen.  Praise the Lord! 

            But I didn’t have it and neither had my wife.  For me it was two years.  For her, it was shorter.  For her I don’t know whether it was a few weeks afterward, but in the middle of the night apparently the Lord woke her up.  In her case it was almost like a physical light as the Lord spoke to her heart and she knew she had entered in.  I never had such a thing happen in my life.  I never heard an audible voice.  I’ve never heard any noises yet.  But it’s in here.  Ah, praise the Lord, for That One inside.  With my own case, simple as anything, in some missionary needs two years later when I was at home, I went to a great teacher of the Spirit, a lady through whom I had learned much.  Really, I went to discuss missionary needs with her, but I think she discerned that the need was in me and not in the mission.  And all that she gave me was her testimony of how she had entered in.  Well, to this day she doesn’t know, but as she spoke, I saw.  That’s all.  Inwardly I saw.  Oh, I saw.  It is a fact—Christ lives in me!  It’s a fact.  I am crucified with Christ.  Oh, my!  That’s all.  Silent as the dew.  Silent as light is silent—but the Light of God.  And I knew.  There was no question of believing this, that, and the other.  Oh, no, no, no, NO!  I am by His infinite grace. 

            Now where do we stand?  Maybe there are some of you, possibly some of you here, who had imperfect knowledge before.  Thank God many of you didn’t, I know, because many of the Bible Schools are well taught these days.  Thank God.  Paul said you have to know!  “Know ye not that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?  Knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him that the body should no longer be a body for sin to dwell in but a body for the Holy Ghost to dwell in and so on.  Know these things!”  Therefore we must have knowledge.  Maybe there are some who have imperfect knowledge.  Maybe these very days if God has not perfected your knowledge, He has given you enough knowledge to act on anyhow.  You have enough knowledge to act on.  You do see clearly now that your given place in Christ, as God regards you now, is a person who was crucified with Christ, was buried with Christ, was risen with Christ with the other Person within you as the Risen Life.  Actually, we are ascended with Him too, but we haven’t touched on that. 

            And God requires you to declare, to believe, and to accept what He says you are.  Otherwise you are disobedient.  Maybe you see that.  Well now, do you do it?  Do you take some way in your heart, as we did, of gripping this, saying, “Very well, Lord, I don’t care what the future holds?  I may fail a thousand times.  I don’t care.  I am what your Word says.  I cease to own myself.  You live in me Your Life, your Blessed Life, the good perfect, and acceptable will of God.  You work it out in me.  Now I am not going to fear”—fancy fearing that One, that One Who loved me and gave His Precious Life for me.  That is the One who dwells and lives in me—the One who loved me and gave Himself for me.  “So, Lord, I take that plunge.”  That lovely hymn we had last night about “Launching Out Into The Deep.”  We ought to sing it again.  It’s a good hymn.  Maybe you need to do that now in your spirit.  If you do it in your spirit, as God gives you opportunity, you must clinch it.  A burial is a public thing.  A burial is putting you in a coffin and taking you out for everybody to see.  Now you have a good burial tool.  Now come out in the open and take the opportunity of saying, “I clinch this thing and I affirm that I have clinched it.  To the glory of God and before all the devils in hell I confirm it.  I confess with my mouth the Lord Jesus as well as believe in my heart that God has raised Him from the dead.” 

            Well maybe some of you need to do that.  Maybe there are some here who have taken but have not gone through.  Maybe God has given you light there.  You have perhaps many times, as I did many times, taken by faith, but honestly you have not come clear.  Now maybe you have to start again.  No, you have to start again, that’s all.  There is no easy way around.  You have to start again until God has clarified your faith.  You have to say all over again, “I go back to where I am and stand on God’s Word.  I reaffirm God’s Word and I stand on it until the Light is in me, and I know.” 

            As I say, there may be some of you who set forth just because you say it hasn’t worked.  Well, I am not asking you whether it works or not.  God isn’t saying that to you.  We’ll discuss that tomorrow.  God is saying, first of all, “You believe that you are in Jesus”—what He says you are.  Don’t you fiddle around with it.  God’s hand is on you if you see light and don’t take it.  Or you may be in the third category.  You may be one who has gloriously entered in and received but you have slipped off.  Maybe you have cooled off somewhere, and you haven’t gone through with all the glory of your experience of Jesus living in you, both for yourself and for teaching those around you.  Maybe you have just slipped off there.  Maybe there is a coming back needed. 

            Well, may the Lord just divide His Word to us severally as He will.  That’s all.  We’ll now bow for a moment in prayer.  This is a very deep thing and so I don’t feel inclined to ask for an open response.  This is deep, it’s deep.  This is a life’s foundation.  So I prefer that we just have a moment of quiet and maybe if God has spoken to you and you have a transaction to make in your hearts, make it in your hearts.  God knows just those He has spoken to, that’s all.  But I shant ask for any further outward response.  There will be other times of opportunity for testimony if you are called upon to give testimony. 

            As we are bowed quietly now just think these things over and answer these questions, will you?  Are you one whose knowledge was imperfect but you have really seen now your place in Christ, crucified, buried, risen, He living in you in His fullness—your independent self out?  You have seen that now and because your knowledge was imperfect you never actually grappled with it by faith.  You have never taken human action.  But as you sit there now, in your heart do take it.  You say, “Lord, I take my place in the obedience of faith.  I take my place by deliberate faith, crucified with Christ, dead indeed unto sin . . .” or whatever other expressions there may be.  If so, do it.  If you are one maybe who has often heard this in your Bible School days, have seen it, known it, and have taken it, but honestly haven’t acted, you have never come through to the full light of assurance, will you reaffirm in your heart and say, “Lord, I have slipped up there.  I do I stand on my faith, I stand on what I did so many years ago.  I stand now.  Give me grace, enable me to stand on until there is no standing left because I am just there, because I know.  Give me grace Lord.”  Will you do that if you are one? 

            Or maybe there is one who has known but has slipped away.  The brightness of that testimony isn’t yours now.  And you say, “Lord, I slipped up there but by God’s grace the Blood is there.  Praise the Lord.”  We don’t have to moan and groan but praise the Lord in the Precious Blood.  “Praise the Lord.  I reaffirm now.  Hallelujah, it is true of me.  With all of my heart I say, Praise the Lord, it is so.  As the Lord gives me enablement, I’ll bear my testimony and I’ll teach those precious souls around me through ministry.”  Now just do that. 

            So, Lord, just impart and engraft your Word into us according to need.  We ask it all for the glory of our Blessed Lord Jesus.  Amen.