‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ God blesses according to trust, whether at the start of the Christian life when we first come to him, or throughout the remainder of our earthly life as we go on from there. But we want it the other way. We want the blessing, and then we will believe. We seek the Lord and we don’t find him, and we complain. We want him to convert us, but we come full of doubt, with a divided attitude. ‘As he blesses me, then I will believe’, we think. No, we have to remember the belief system of the Bible. The terms and conditions of salvation are that we trust in Christ, in his redeeming work on Calvary.
Faith is the instrument of all blessing to men, the essential link between us and blessing. To another Christ said, ‘Thy faith hath made thee whole’, and to the bling man begging at Jericho, ‘Thy faith hath saved thee.’ Faith is instrumental in salvation. Faith is the means by which we secure all blessing. God gives us faith, but we must exercise it. Faith did not change Christ in any way. He is what he is, and he cannot become one wit more powerful than he already is. So what does faith do? It allows his power and blessing to come to us; it is the condition which God insists must be met by us in order for us to be blessed, and yet it is the gift of God. Don’t imagine that faith has some stupendous task to perform, some impossible weight to lift before we can be blessed. Faith only has to open its eyes to see the one who stands before it. Faith does not create anything; it merely recognises the one who is already there. That is not something hard but something easy.
Many ask for a blessing and wait to see if it will come. Instead we should say, ‘If I give myself to him I will be saved.’ In all prayer, faith prevails with God. Not that faith deserves blessing, or that given enough faith we will get all we could ask. It is without merit, without worth, but when we exercise faith, God answers perfectly. We pray convinced God can do it.
The Reformation preachers in Germany used various illustrations of faith. Faith is like a basket lowered into a well to draw up a blessing. Calvin said, faith like a purse, a cheap purse which does you no good at all, but when filled with money makes you rich. Faith believes only in what God says, not in human wisdom. God’s word is my authority, because I come to it and believe it. Faith embraces God’s truth like family members reunited after some time ay an airport. Faith is like resting on someone’s word and acting on it. Until recently, the largest deals in financial city were still done on the basis of a word; contracts are drawn up on the basis of a verbal agreement. God has almost written the contract with our souls in advance. He will keep it. Another illustration was of faith was a refuge. In the dark ages the people were intensely superstitious. A church was regarded as a consecrated place, and people feared to shed blood there. It therefore became a refuge for the murderer, being pursued. Faith was described as a knocker on a door, which is struck to get an answer from within. Other said it is the handle that opens the door.