If the Spirit of God by the Word of God cannot move the people of God to action, who am I to try to play God and elicit a response? I can only help guide God’s people towards greater consecration and obedience in turn. That’s not to say I’ve arrived in any one particular area of my spiritual walk. Rather, it’s an opportunity to live in a constant state of spiritual readiness so to provoke others to holiness and faithful obedience to His Word. I must maintain my heart ready and yielded to Him—as the old song puts it — “at the impulse of Thy love”.
By acting in faith, I’m merely appropriating His promise to my life. As I move in a trajectory that aligns with His Word, I find greater and greater comfort in His immutable character. I learn that there’s nothing to fear. As the old beloved apostle keenly observed: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear”¹. A fuller grasp of love perfected in me is a deeper level of fear rejected by me. There is no domain where this fear will not be uprooted. The insidious tendency to fear chokes the nascent tendrils of faith. My faith will never produce fruit and action when I fail to comprehend His love. As a result, day after day, I miss the bounty of His love because fear arrests my heart and paralyzes my feet. When I realize just how much He loves me, how can I shrink from relentlessly following His steps?
These steps bear the awful cost of carrying through God’s plan. These steps take me beyond all human reasoning. These steps move in the reality of Who He is. These steps lead to the Cross. And even in His cruelest agony, He did not waver — “not my will but Thine.”
His example of self-abandonment confronts my personal comfort and security. The reality is: they are not His foremost concern. If prosperity were the measure of His desire for His own, Hebrews 11 would not be included in Scripture. While it’s easy to buy into the modern zeitgeist that values convenience, comfort, and safety, faith inherently unsettles perceived stability. Faith defies prevailing culture. Faith challenges any indolent notion of self-preservation or self-satisfaction. It pushes me beyond my limit—otherwise, how could it be faith? I must walk with my steps planted on the Written Word and my eyes fixed on the Living Word. Only then can I realize a life of faith. Only then can I please God.
¹ I John 4:8