We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, it may be so in the initial stages; but we do not earn anything by faith, faith brings us into right relationship with God and gives God His opportunity.

God has frequently to knock the bottom board out of your experience if you are a saint in order to get you into contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings.

Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sun-spot of experience that had as much of sense as of faith in it, full of light and sweetness; then God withdrew His conscious blessings in order to teach you to walk by faith.

You are worth far more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony.

Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our own minds.

Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabed isolation.

Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life, much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive.

Faith in the Bible is faith in God against everything that contradicts Him - I will remain true to God's character whatever He may do.

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him" - this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.

It is possible for believers who are completely willing to trust the power of the Lord for their safekeeping and victory to lead a life of readily taking His promises exactly as they are and finding them to be true.

It is possible to daily “cast all your anxiety on him” (1 Peter 5:7) and experience deep peace in the process.

It is possible to have our thoughts and the desires of our hearts purified in the deepest sense of the word.

It is possible to see God’s will in every circumstance and to accept it with singing instead of complaining.

It is possible to become strong through and through by completely taking refuge in the power of God and by realizing that our greatest weakness and the things that upset our determination to be patient, pure, or humble provide an opportunity to make sin powerless over us. This opportunity comes through Him who loves us and who works to bring us into agreement with His will, and thereby supplies a blessed sense of His presence and His power.

All these are divine possibilities. Because they are His work, actually experiencing them will always humble us, causing us to bow at His feet and teaching us to hunger and thirst for more.

We will never be satisfied with anything less—each day, each hour, or each moment in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit—than walking with God. H. C. G. M OULE

We are able to have as much of God as we want. Christ puts the key to His treasure chest in our hands and invites us to take all we desire. If someone is allowed into a bank vault, told to help himself to the money, and leaves without one cent, whose fault is it if he remains poor? And whose fault is it that Christians usually have such meager portions of the free riches of God? ALEXANDER MACLAREN

Barak said unto [Deborah], if thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go. God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan.

Gideon . . . feared his father's household, and the men of the city, that he could not do it by day, . . . did it by night. And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand as thou hast said, . . . let me prove, I pray thee. And God did so.

Thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.—Who hath despised the day of small things?

We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly.—Lord, increase our faith.—I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.

If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.—Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. I will; be thou clean.—Faith as a grain of mustard seed.

Cast not away . . . your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.—Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.—Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord .—The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.—So run, that ye may obtain.

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.

Peter followed him afar off.—Among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.—The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.

Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.—A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.—Faith as a grain of mustard seed.

God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.—Little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.—Whosoever . . . shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.