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Living a
Life of Faith
“The key to seeing the
glory of God, the key to
experiencing the life of the
Spirit, the key to having God
work in us and through us
powerfully is faith”
by Steve Clark
Beholding His Glory
“Didn’t
I tell you that if you would have faith, you
would see God’s glory?” These were Jesus’
words to Martha just before raising Lazarus
from the dead. And Martha did see the glory of
God when Lazarus walked out from the tomb. God
is glorified when he works in a powerful way
that people can see and appreciate. When Jesus
healed people, cast out demons from them, and
even raised them from the dead, men saw God’s
glory before their eyes in a way that they
could not easily miss. And the glory of God is
what we are looking for when we want the life
of the Spirit. We want a life which is lived
by the power of God, a life in which God is at
work in a way that can be experienced and
seen. We want to see the glory of God in our
own lives, and we want God to be glorified
among men.
The key to seeing the glory of God is
illustrated in the story of Lazarus. Jesus had
heard that Lazarus was sick, close to death.
He deliberately waited until Lazarus died, and
then came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus and
his sisters, Mary and Martha. Once there, he
went to the tomb:
“Deeply moved once more, Jesus went
to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone
placed at the entrances. ‘Take the stone
away!’ Jesus ordered. Martha, the dead man’s
sister, answered, ‘There will be a bad
smell, Lord. He has been buried four days!’
Jesus said to her ‘Didn’t I tell you that if
you would have faith [believed], you would
see God’s glory?’ They took the stone away,
Jesus looked up and said: ‘I thank you
Father, that you listen to me. I know that
you always listen to me, but I say this
because of the people here, so they will
believe that you sent me.’ After he had said
this he called out in a loud voice,
‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out
with his hands and feet wrapped in grave
cloths, and a cloth around his face. ‘Untie
him,’ Jesus told them, ‘and let him go.’”
(John 11:38–44)
The
key to seeing the glory of God, the key to
experiencing the life of the Spirit, the key
to having God work in us and through us
powerfully is faith. If we have faith, we will
see things happen that are beyond human power.
If we have faith, we will see God work in ways
that we had not hoped for.
Sometimes we think that faith is only needed
for beginning the Christian life, for getting
into a relationship with the Lord. Faith is
for the beginning of our Christian life, but
it is also meant to be a part of our lives as
Christians all the way through. Saint Paul
says:
“As therefore you received Christ
Jesus the Lord, so live in him, rooted and
built up in him and established in the
faith, just as you were taught, abounding in
thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6,7)
Whenever
we want to see God do something, whenever we
want to experience his presence or see him
improve a situation, we need faith. If we want
to live the life of the Spirit, we have to
live the life of faith. Faith makes it
possible for the Holy Spirit to live in us and
work through us.
God Wants
To Do It
Often, all too often, our attitude toward God
is more like the attitude of a Stoic than of a
Christian. A Stoic’s attitude is, “Whatever
happens is the will of God. Therefore, I’ll
just wait and see what God does to me, and
whatever it turns out to be is the best thing
possible.” Sometimes devout Christians say it
this way: “What I want most is what God wants.
Therefore, whatever God does is fine with me.”
It is true, we should want above all what God
wants. If we love him, we should want to
please him. But if we fall into a Stoic
attitude of accepting the things that happen
to us as God’s will, then we have missed two
important Christian truths. We have missed,
first of all, the truth that God has already
told us what he wants. He has shown us what
pleases him and what he wants to do.
Therefore, by what he has said to us we can
tell that many things that happen to us are
not his will; sometimes they are even the
result of what Satan has been trying to do. We
can also tell that there are things that
should be happening with us that are not
happening.
We have also missed the important Christian
truth that God wants us to ask things from
him, even demand the things from him that we
need or that he has promised us. He does not
want passive, quietly resigned children. He
wants eager children who want to know him, who
want to experience his presence, who want to
see his glory. Jesus himself said this to us
through a story in the eleventh chapter of
Luke,
“And Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Suppose one of you should go to a friend’s
house at midnight and tell him, ‘Friend, let
me borrow three loaves of bread. A friend of
mine who is on a trip has just come to my
house and I don’t have a thing to offer
him!’ And suppose your friend should answer
from inside, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is
already locked, my children and I are in
bed, and I can’t get up to give you
anything.’ Well, what then? I tell you, even
if he will not get up to give you the bread
because he is your friend, yet he will get
up and give you everything you need because
you are not ashamed to keep on asking. And
so I say to you: Ask, and you will receive;
seek and you will find; knock, and the door
will be opened to you.’” (Luke 11:5–9)
God
does not want us to be passively waiting for
him to do his will, but he wants us to be
asking, seeking, knocking. He wants to have us
hungry to see his glory. It is only when we
are anxious to know him and to see him change
us and to see him do things in the world that
we are ready to have faith.
Faith is based upon the knowledge that God
wants to do things for us and through us; he
has told us that he wants to do things for us,
and for that reason we can have faith that he
will. The scripture is filled with God’s
promises, his stated intentions of what he
wants to do for us and through us. For
instance, in the fifth chapter of John’s first
letter (1 John 5:3,4), it says “His commands
are not too hard for us, for every child of
God is able to defeat the world. This is how
we win the victory over the world; with our
faith”. A verse in the previous chapter (1
John 4:4) reads: “He who is in you is greater
than he who is in the world.” We have
confidence that we can keep God’s commandments
and overcome the world because God is living
in us, and he is able. Another promise is
found in John’s Gospel (John 14:12) where
Jesus says to his disciples, “I tell you the
truth: whoever believes in me will do the
works I do — yes, he will do even greater
ones, for I am going to the Father.” There is
a simple fact at the basis of our faith — God
wants to work in us and through us and he can
do anything he wants.
Not only does God want to work in us and
through us, but he wants to do more than we
usually look for him to do. A few years ago a
friend of mine and I were traveling on the
West coast. We had gone out for a conference
on evangelism, but one of our main interests
was to visit some people we had heard about
who seemed to know a great deal about faith
and spiritual gifts. These people invited us
to go to a Kathryn Kuhlman service. Kathryn
Kuhlman calls herself an evangelist, but most
people would describe her as a healer. Once a
month she holds services in the Shrine
Auditorium in Los Angeles. The Shrine
Auditorium holds about 7,000 people, and when
Kathryn Kuhlman comes, it is filled to
capacity. People are turned away at the doors.
The meeting we went to began with praise and
worship — 7,000 in a huge auditorium
glorifying God. Just that itself impressed me.
Then part way through the service, she called
some people who had been there the month
before onto the stage to share what had
happened to them. One man had had arthritis so
bad that, as he put it over and over again, “I
couldn’t even weed my garden.” In the course
of the meeting he had first come to, while he
was sitting in a back room in which he could
not even see the service, he had been totally
healed. A second man had come to the service
only because a friend had insisted on it. He
did not believe in Christ and had no
expectation that he would be healed of the
terminal cancer from which he was suffering.
Toward the end of the service, he felt
something like a rush of water go through him,
and afterwards, he felt much better. The
following week he visited his doctor who
certified that he had been healed and even
brought the X–rays to the service to show
everyone.
After the two testimonies the service turned
to prayer again, and then, all of a sudden,
Kathryn Kuhlman said something like: “Up there
in that balcony somebody is being healed of
arthritis,” and then, “Somebody down there can
walk now and if he will throw away his
crutches, he will find that it is so.” She
pointed out a number of other people in the
audience who were being healed. And I thought
to myself, “that sounds good.” But then people
started coming up to the stage, and they told
about the different things that had happened
to them. One was cured of arthritis (a number
of people in fact had been cured of arthritis
that night), someone came up with his crutches
to report on his cure, a boy deaf in one ear
could hear with it. Dozens of people came
forward with impressive healings.
One of the cases I found most impressive was a
woman who had had to wear braces over her
whole body and had walked on crutches. I had
just happened to see her and talk to her
before the meeting. As the different people
were coming forward, I saw a man carrying all
the braces and gear the crippled woman had
been wearing, while she herself was walking in
front. She told the people of how she had had
an automobile accident about five or six years
before, and since then had had a number of
operations, some of which had helped a little,
but no doctor could cure her. And yet here she
was in front of us bending and jumping and
walking back and forth.
I found that service a great experience for
improving my faith. It showed me that the Lord
not only could do things like that; he
actually did them in front of me. About a
month later when we were back home, a minister
form the East Coast, the father of one of our
friends, came to visit us. He told us the
story of how one time he had worked with
Kathryn Kuhlman in her service, and
afterwards, for the help he had given her, she
gave him a copy of her book, I believe in
Miracles. The inscription in it was: “There is
more, so much more.”
My reaction at that time was that if I could
only have as much of God’s working as I had
seen at the Kuhlman service I would be
satisfied. There is a tendency in me to rest
with what I have, to feel that this is enough.
Since I have already gotten more from the
Christian life that I had expected, I am
tempted to just sit back and enjoy it. But
Kathryn Kuhlman was expressing an attitude of
the Christian life that we all need to have:
that God has more for us and that we should
desire it and expect it from him. If we put an
upper limit on what the Lord is going to do
for us, or if we say that we have had enough,
God has a harder time doing what he wants to
do for us.
“When the servant of the man of God
rose early in the morning, an army with
horses and chariots was surrounding the
city. And the servant said, ‘Alas, my
master! What shall we do?’ He said, ‘Don’t
be afraid, for those who are with us are
more than those who are with them.’ Then
Elisha prayed, and said, ‘O Lord, open his
eyes that he may see.’ So the Lord opened
the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and
behold, the mountain was full of horses and
chariot of fire round about Elisha.” (2
Kings 6:15–17)
We
are surrounded by the power of God, by armies
of angels and saints, and once we see that,
once we see that we not have to depend on our
own personal resources to live the Christian
life, we are on the way to living the life of
faith.
Faith is simply the way to tap the spiritual
power which is available to us. At this moment
there are all kinds of power in the room we
are in. There are magnetic waves, radio waves,
even nuclear power. Two thousand years ago,
the same power was on the earth, but people
did not know how to tap it. Since then, we
have learned how to make contact with that
power so that we can have electric light or
can hear music that is playing hundreds of
miles away. But in the same room, there is
even greater spiritual power than there is
physical power. The power of God is with us
right now. We need to learn how to tap that
power; we need to learn how to have faith.
Now for some people it seems unfair that God
should make faith the way to tap his power.
They feel that it is as difficult to have
faith as it was for people two thousand years
ago to hear music that was being played four
hundred miles away. They feel that God is just
trying to make it hard for them, that he is
trying to set up an insurmountable obstacle to
their receiving his gifts. Faith seems as out
of reach as miracles do. And yet the Lord is
not asking for faith because he wants to make
the Christian life hard for us. He is asking
for faith, because his intention is to make
the Christian life easy for us. Or perhaps a
better way of saying it is, he is asking for
faith because he wants to make it possible for
us to do more and to see more happen than we
ever thought was possible. Faith is what he is
asking for because faith is simply the way we
let him do things in us and through us. Faith
is a way of yielding to God so that he can do
things through us.
Perhaps a brief analogy will help illustrate
how faith is a key to letting God work in our
lives. Suppose we took someone who did not
know how to swim, a person who had not yet
experienced how it was possible to stay afloat
and move through water; if we were to throw
him into a lake, odds are that he would
struggle so hard to stay up that he would not
be able to stay up at all. He would be so
afraid that “it wouldn’t work” (after all,
everyone knows that bodies are heavier than
water), that he would thrash around until he
went under. But if we can give him faith
first, if we can give him faith in the buoyant
power of the water, he can easily stay afloat.
His faith in the buoyant power of the water
will let him relax so that he can allow the
water to hold him up. Then he will be able to
move around in the water and learn to swim.
We need the same kind of faith to live the
life of the Spirit. The power of God is there
to hold us up and to let us move in ways we
did not think possible. When we struggle the
hardest to stay up or to get results, we have
the hardest time. What we do when we struggle
that way is to act as though the only way we
can make progress is by our own power. But
when we learn how to trust the Spirit in us,
when we learn how to relax and let God do with
his power what he wants to do in us and
through us, then things begin to happen.
Faith makes it possible for us to count on and
cooperate with what God is doing. Let us say
that we want to get into a locked closet. If
someone were to come to us, hand us a key and
say “that is the key to the closet,” it would
be a simple matter for us to take the key and
use it to open the door. Even if we
encountered some difficulty in getting the key
into the lock the first time we tried, we
would not give up. We would approach the
situation as if we had the key — and we would
be able to unlock the door. We have been given
the Holy Spirit as the key to living the
Christian life. We need only to approach the
Christian life as if we had the key. We need
only have faith in the Holy Spirit living in
us. If we do that, then we are able to see his
work in us; we are able to count on it and
cooperate with it.
We have to know and believe a simple fact
before the life of faith is possible: that God
wants to do things for us and through us. Once
we know he wants to, we know that the power
from God is available, then we will be able to
rely on it, expect it, and act on it.
This article is excerpted
from Growing
in Faith, copyright © 1972, 1980
by Stephen B. Clark, and published by Tabor House. Used with
permission.
Steve
Clark
is past president of the Sword
of
the Spirit and founder of The Servants of the Word.
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