Faith                        IN MY HAND NO PRICE I BRING
 
        Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.  Titus 3:5.
 
    Ten men came to see Jesus.  Nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan.  But they has at least one thing in common.  They all had leprosy.  Jesus sent them to show themselves to the priests, and on the way to the Temple they realized they had been healed.  All ten began running--nine toward the Temple, and one back toward Jesus.  The Samaritan returned to say Thank You.  We are told that the other nine had hearts "untouched by the mercy of God" (The Ministry of Healing, p. 233). 
 
    Simon the Pharisee also had had leprosy, and was also healed by Jesus, "but he had not accepted Him as Saviour."--The Desire of Ages, p. 557.  Simon didn't feel his need for Jesus' healing of his soul until at the feast when Jesus told the parable of the two debtors.  Then he accepted Jesus as Saviour.
 
    Twelve disciple were sent out as evangelists.  One of the twelve was Judas.  Jesus "endowed him with power to heal the sick and to cast out devils.  But Judas did not come to the point of surrendering himself fully to Christ."--Ibid., p. 717.
 
    How much it would please our human natures if stories like these were omitted from the Bible record.  We would much rather have a God who rewards our great faith, and our great righteousness, with His blessings.  We are sometimes uncomfortable with a God who causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45).  But God's gifts to us stem from His goodness and His desire to bless us according to our needs.
 
    As you study the record of Bible healings, you find examples of the healing of people of great faith, such as the centurion.  Jesus marveled at his faith.  You also find people healed who had no genuine faith in God at all.  Some were righteous, some were unrighteous.  The only common denominators were their great need which only Jesus could meet, and their coming to Him with nothing to recommend them to His favor.  The Pharisees suggested Jesus heal the centurion because he had built them a synagogue.  But the centurion himself said, I'm not worthy.  As we come to know the love of Jesus, we will come to Him with our need, not with our supposed merits, and trust Him to respond in the way He sees best.

Faith                        FAITH AT THE BEDSIDE
 
        And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.  2 Cor. 12:9.
 
    During the first year of my ministry someone called me to the bedside of a dying man.  I thought that if someone could believe strongly enough, and work up enough nerve, to take the man by the hand and tell him to be healed in the name of Jesus, it would happen.
 
    After we had prayed and anointed him, I looked around among the older people to see who would have the courage to do such a thing, and guess where they were all looking?  At me!  And everything went black.  I couldn't do it.  I mumbled some pious clichés to the effect that God doesn't always answer prayer immediately, that sometimes it's later on, and I beat a hasty retreat.  The man died.  And I thought I had killed him! 
 
    There is probably no other time in the work of a minister when his personal relationship with God is called into account as closely as when he is asked to pray for healing for someone in need.  Many of us have held the opinion that the determining factor in whether or not a person is healed lies almost entirely in the faith of the one making the request.  We have felt that if a request for healing is denied, it is most likely because the faith of the intercessor is somehow lacking.
 
    Perhaps this idea has come from the few instances in the life of Christ where He commended the person for his or her faith.  But we need to remember that faith is trust in a Person, not in answers we expect to receive.
 
    The apostle Paul asked three times that the Lord remove his affliction, yet it was not removed.  It wasn't because Paul was short on faith; it was because God saw that greater benefit and blessing would come if Paul were given opportunity to find God's strength as the answer to his weakness.
 
    Moses' faith in God was strong--yet God refused continued life for him, and laid him to rest.  God had bigger purposes for Moses.  And Moses is in heaven today as a  result.  "Not Enoch, we was translated to heaven, not Elijah who ascended in a chariot of fire, was greater or more honored than John the Baptist, who perished alone in the dungeon."--The Desire of Ages, p. 225.  Genuine faith in God trusts Him just as much in the good times as in the bad.

Faith                        WHEN YOU KNOW HIM YOU WILL TRUST HIM
 
        The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.  Ps. 14:1.
 
    A man came to me one time and said, "I'm through with God.  I'm through with faith.  I'm through with religion.  You can have it."
 
    "What's the matter?" I asked him.
 
    "My wife just died.  I read in Scripture that 'Whatsoever you ask, believing, you shall receive.'  For two years I have asked and believed that my wife wouldn't die.  I told her every day, 'Don't worry--you're not going to die.'  And now she's dead.  There is no God.  Forget it."
 
    This misconception of faith has caused futile effort and discouragement for thousands of people.  There are whole churches, whole religions, that are built on this idea of self-generated faith.  They believe that if you can think positively enough, it will make things happen.
 
    Faith is nothing more than trusting God.  Trusting that He is love, that He wants to bring us the greatest happiness.  Jesus is completely trustworthy.  If you don't believe that, you don't know Him yet.  The person who is not quite sure that he can trust Jesus is the one who has no relationship with Him.
 
    I went into a dry-cleaning shop one morning in a town in the Northwest.  There had been an automobile accident the night before, and the mother of four small children had been killed.  The lady at the cleaners said, "Some people want to die, and others ought to die, and they don't.  Others don't want to die, and shouldn't, and they do.  I don't think God knows what He's doing."
 
    I asked, "Do we blame God for this kind of thing?"  And she got mad at me and went into the back room and wouldn't talk anymore.
 
    This lady was advertising the fact that she didn't know Jesus.  Trust isn't a matter of believing that God will do everything we ask of Him in exactly the way, and at the time, that we expect.  He even allows death to come, sometimes at a time that seems wrong to us.  But if we know Him, we will not be found turning away from Him when trials come, but rather continuing to walk with Him because we know Him and trust Him. 

Faith                        SPONTANEOUS FAITH
 
        He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.  Prov. 28:26.
 
    Saving faith comes only through the faith relationship with Christ.  Perhaps the best single definition for faith is trust.  "Faith is trusting God."--Education, p. 253.  And if faith is trusting, then the moment you have faith, you have at least two parties.  There's no such thing as faith and only one person.  Faith has a subjective element--one depending on another.
 
    How do you learn to depend on another?  Well, there are two things needed.  You must have someone who is trustworthy, and you must get to know them.  If you have someone who is not trustworthy, getting to know them will not develop trust--it will develop distrust!  If you become acquainted with a person who is untrustworthy, you won't have to work to distrust them--the distrust will be automatic.  The opposite is also true.  If a person is absolutely trustworthy, all you have to do to learn to trust them is to get to know them, and you will trust them naturally and spontaneously.
 
    Saving faith is always the result of something else.  It is the result of a relationship with the One who is trustworthy.
 
    So, how do you develop a relationship?  By becoming acquainted through communication.  That's the way to have a relationship with anyone.  How do you communicate with God, with Jesus?  Through the Bible--that's how God talks to us.  And through prayer--that's how we talk to Him.  And through going places and doing things together--that's Christian service.  Through these simple means that God has given, relationship can exist.  When we get to know Him we will trust Him spontaneously, and when we trust Him we have faith.
 
    Therefore, faith is never something we work on.  It's the devil's idea to try to get us to work on our faith, because he knows that if he can get us to work on our faith, he can keep our attention from Jesus, the source of faith.  By getting us to work on our faith, he focuses our attention inward on ourselves--and if he succeeds in that, there is no chance for real faith.
 
    So if I want to have genuine faith--the kind that really counts, saving faith--I must learn to trust God.  In order to do that, I must get to know Him.  I can get acquainted with Him through the simple avenues of communication, and when I know Him I will trust Him spontaneously.

Faith                        THE GIFT OF FAITH
 
        God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.  Rom. 12:3.
 
    I grew up in a preacher's home.  My father used to borrow measuring cups from my mother's pantry--a big quart measuring cup, and little one-cup measure.  He's take them to his evangelistic pulpit, and he would say, "Suppose that God gave me a measure of faith, and gave you a measure of faith.  And suppose He gave you this size, and He gve me this other size.  It wouldn't be fair, would it?"  The Scripture says God has given to everyone the measure of faith!  He has given us all enough faith to get started with.  He has given us all the ability to believe in something not seen.
 
    But this is not saving faith.  In order to have saving faith, we have to have more than God gave each of us to begin with.  This is well explained in that further comment found in Education, pages 253, 254: "Faith that enables us to receive God's gifts is in itself a gift, of which some measure is imparted to every human being.  It grows as exercised in appropriating the word of God.  In order to strengthen faith, we must often bring it in contact with the word."
 
    Have you ever thought that the way to exercise faith was to ask God for hard answers?  Have you ever though that the way to exercise faith was to make yourself claim promises, whether you really believed them or not?  Have you ever heard that exercising faith is getting yourself into a tight spot and then waiting for God to bail you out?  Not so.  According to Scriptures, the exercise of faith has to do with getting often in contact with the Word of God.  That's the way you exercise faith.  "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom. 10:17).
 
    As we come in contact with God's Word, what happens?  We get in touch with a Person--the Man of the Bible.  All through the Bible, in every book, there is the Man.  His name is Jesus.  As we get to know more about Him, we begin to experience a saving relationship with Him.  Genuine faith comes from the faith relationship.  There is no such thing as genuine faith without a relationship.  Faith immediately involves two parties--one party trusting the other.  As we come to know the love of Jesus through communion with Him in His Word, faith in Him springs up spontaneously.

Faith                        YOU CAN'T MAKE YOURSELF BELIEVE
 
        Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  Heb. 11:1.
 
    The story is told of a country church that had called a special prayer meeting to pray for rain.  There had been no rain for some time,  and the crops were drying up.  One little girl who came to the meeting brought her umbrella.  The people smiled at the faith of a little child.  But it rained.  Now let me ask you something: Did it rain because she brought her umbrella?  Or did she bring her umbrella because she knew it was going to rain?  The way you interpret this story may show quite a bit about how you define faith.
 
    What about Peter and John at the gate Beautiful?  They said to the lame beggar, "In the name of Jesus...rise up and walk."  Apparently the lame man needed a bit of additional encouragement, for it says in Acts 3:7, 8, "And he [Peter] took him by the right hand, and lifted him up."  But he was healed, and he "leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God."
 
    Did this man receive healing because Peter and John had enough courage to walk up to a strange beggar and command him to be healed?  Or did they have enough courage to do what they did because they already knew that God was going to heal him?
 
    Perhaps the most common misunderstanding of faith is that it is something you work on--something you work up.  That the way to have faith is to try hard to make yourself believe something is going to happen, and that if you succeed, it will happen.  But the greatest evidence of genuine faith is that it is totally spontaneous.  It comes naturally, as a result of something else.  If we get that one point straight, it will save us from a great deal of difficulty.  Ephesians 2:8 says that by grace are we saved through faith, and that not of ourselves.  It is the gift of God.  If faith is a gift that comes from God, then the only way to obtain genuine faith would be to come into a relationship with God in order to receive His gift.  We don't work to receive a gift.  We simply come to the one who is giving and accept it.  So it is by coming to God that we receive His gift of faith.

Faith                        SEEKING JESUS FOR JESUS' SAKE
 
        For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.  2 Cor. 4:17.
 
    The person who quits seeking a relationship with God when trials and troubles come into his life is the one who was seeking God for selfish motives to begin with.  But often we are led to seek Jesus for selfish reasons.  It is only by getting a glimpse of the love of Jesus that we are enabled to seek Him for His sake instead of our own.
 
    A mature Christian is less concerned about his getting to heaven and more concerned about someone else's getting to heaven.  Remember Moses, who was willing to throw his own eternal life in the balance in order to intercede for people who would just as soon have crushed his head with rocks and left his body in the desert sands?
 
    We can't produce this kind of unselfish love.  But God can.  Love begets love, and as we go to our knees and see the issues involved, we can ask God to change our motives.  We can ask Him to enable us to follow the example of Job, and love and trust Him regardless of what happens to us--even at the cost of our very lives.  Outward difficulties will cease to affect the consistency of our relationship with God.  We will continue to seek Jesus for Jesus' sake, because of His love for us.
 
    It was God's contention that Job loved Him, that he served Him and trusted Him--and that whether or not things went well was beside the point.  Job proved God right.  It is our privilege today to prove God right again.  We can keep in communion with heaven because of our love for God, and because of what Jesus has done for us at the cross.  When we do that, then the rest of the story of Job can be fulfilled in our lives.
 
    One day you see God coming to the devil and saying, "How are things going?"  And the devil says, "I'm giving him everything I have."  And God says, "I know.  I've been watching.  He's still seeking communion with Me, isn't he?"  And the devil begins to fidget.  God says, "Could it be possible that this person is seeking Me out of love, because of what My Son has done?  That he loves Me?"  And the devil flees.  He has nothing further to say.  Will you join me today in choosing to continue seeking God day by day, until He comes again, regardless of what happens?

Faith                        SEEKING GOD FOR THE RIGHT REASON
 
        Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.  Rev. 15:3.
 
    Do you realize how fairly God has been conducting this great controversy?  Do you realize that the day is going to come when every knee is going to bow, and every tongue confess that God has been fair and just?  Even Satan is going to kneel down and admit that God has never overstepped Himself.
 
    You can almost see it as you read the description in the book The Great Controversy.  You can almost see Satan himself lifted up above the rest of the millions of people who are meeting for the first and last time.  And they look, and say, "Is this the man that made the nations to tremble and opened not his prison house?"  There, before God's throne and the Holy City, Satan, by his own choice, goes to his knees and admits that God has been fair.  Then he hates himself for it, and rushes to do battle.
 
    In order for God to be proved fair and just before the universe, there are times when He sees that it will be best to allow Satan to have his way in bringing trouble to us for a time.  And often Satan is correct in claiming that we were seeking God only for what we hoped to gain from Him, and that if things were to stop going smoothly, we would stop seeking God.
 
    "We are often led to seek Jesus by the desire for some earthly good; and upon the granting of our request we rest our confidence in His love.  The Saviour longs to give us a greater blessing than we ask; and He delays the answer to our request that He may show us the evil of our own hearts, and our deep need of His grace.  He desires us to renounce the selfishness that leads us to seek Him.  Confessing our helplessness and bitter need, we are to trust ourselves wholly to His love."--The Desire of Ages, p. 200.
 
    When we understand this, we will understand why Satan comes at us with all his guns blazing when we begin a relationship with God, and we will also understand why God has to let him.  God is big enough to keep him from it.  But in order to be fair, God has to let him work.  As we see our problem and choose to come to Jesus day by day regardless of what happens, we will find the grace of heaven to change our selfish motives, and to enable us to seek Jesus for the right reasons.

Faith                        JOB, PART II
 
        Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.  Eph. 6:11.
 
    Often a person who begins a relationship with God will find that things go worse, for a time, than they did before he began.  And he wonders what is wrong.  We can learn from the experience of Job that Satan is the one responsible, and that God permits him to work his will for a while in order to prove to God, to Satan, and to ourselves whether or not Satan's charge that we are seeking God for selfish reasons is correct.
 
    Satan says to God, "You see that person there, seeking You?  He' only interested in himself.  He wants to get to heaven, and get over his problem, and he wants that peace that he hears others talk about.  He wants victory over his sins, and to get rid of his ulcers.  He's not seeking You because he loves You--he's seeking You because of what he can get from You."  It's the same charge the devil made against Job.
 
    Satan comes at us with all guns blazing.  It's Job, Part II.  All four tires go flat on the car on the same day.  There's physical trouble.  Perhaps you live a worse life than before.  Suddenly you fail over things you though you had the victory over long ago.  What do you do?  Do you say, "This relationship with God doesn't work--tomorrow morning I'll sleep in"?
 
    So the next morning you do sleep in.  Guess what happens?  You have a good day.  The air goes back into the tires!  Your troubles seem to be over.  At the end of the day you congratulate yourself on what a fine life you lived that day.  And the devil and his angels have a laugh-in.  They don't care what you do or don't do as long as they can keep you from your knees.
 
    Well, you would think that when this happens, the devil would be smart enough to leave it at that.  And he does, for a short time.  He may leave us alone for a couple of weeks, even though he has us because we're not seeking God.  But then he comes and brings trouble again--just for the fun of it this time.  And it drives us to our knees!
 
    What is the secret in the story of Job?  When Job proved before the universe that he was serving God not for selfish reasons, but because he loved God, and that he would trust Him regardless, then God could come in with His blessings and cause the devil to flee.

Faith                        THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT DOUBT GOD
 
        The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.  Job 1:21.
 
    Satan was sure that the only reason Job was serving God was because of God's protection and blessing.  God saw fit to give Satan permission to try to prove his point.  He hurried from the presence of the Lord, and destroyed all of Job's property.
 
    Job misunderstood.  He thought it was God who had taken away everything that he had.  But in spite of his misunderstanding, he still maintained his trust in God.  Satan secured permission to afflict Job further, by bringing pain and sickness to him.  But still Job maintained his integrity.
 
    Mrs. Job, however, did not.  Job lost everything he had except his wife, and perhaps she should have been the first to go!  But the devil knew that she would be a useful tool in his hands.  As soon as he got Mrs. Job, he must have smiled, and reminded his evil angels that if they kept at it, they would surely get Job as well.
 
    Satan doesn't care what he causes us to do or not do, as long as we are self-centered.  Often he gloats not so much over what we do wrong as over what we don't do wrong through our own strength.  He evidently arbitrarily chooses to leave some people in luxury while he pushes others into the gutter.  He gets just as much mileage out of a Pharisee as out of a demoniac.  A person can be just as lost while glorying in his success as while wallowing in his failures.  The one thing that causes Satan deep concern is when a person chooses to come into fellowship and communion with God, for he knows that that is what will vanquish him.
 
    When a person becomes interested in knowing God, Satan shakes his fist at God and makes the same charge he did with Job.  Sometimes the Lord sees fit to allow him to try us--to prove whether or not our seeking of Him is prompted by selfish motives, or whether we will love and trust God regardless of circumstances.  This is the reason why things often seem to go worse, for a time, when we begin to seek a meaningful relationship with God.  If we understand this, we will continue our communication with God, continue to trust Him no matter what happens, and then Satan is defeated.