Lesson 48: Kept by the Power of God, part 6

Will our God, in His tender-hearted love towards us, not keep us every moment when He has promised to do so? If we once got hold of the thought: Our whole religious life is to be God's doing—"It is God who works in us to will and to do His good pleasure" —when once we get faith to expect that from God, God will do all for us.

The keeping is to be continuous. Every morning God will meet you as you wake. It is not a question: If I forgot to wake in the morning with the thought of Him, what will come of it? If you trust your waking to God, God will meet you in the morning as you wake with His divine sunshine and love, and He will give you the consciousness that through the day you have God to take charge of you continuously with His almighty power. God will meet you the next day and every day; and never mind if in the practice of fellowship there comes failure sometimes. If you maintain your position and say, “Lord, I am going to expect You to do Your utmost, and I am going to trust You day by day to keep me absolutely," your faith will grow stronger and stronger, and you will know the keeping power of God in unbrokenness.

And now the other side—Believing. "Kept by the power of God through faith." How must we look at this faith?

Let me say, first, that this faith means UTTER IMPOTENCE AND HELPLESSNESS BEFORE GOD.


At the bottom of all faith there is a feeling of helplessness. If I have a bit of business to transact, perhaps to buy a house, the conveyancer must do the work of getting the transfer of the property in my name, and making all the arrangements. I cannot do that work, and in trusting that agent I confess I cannot do it. Faith always means helplessness. In many cases it means: I can do it with a great deal of trouble, but another can do it better. In most cases it is utter helplessness; another must do it for me. That is the secret of the spiritual life. A man must learn to say: "I give up everything; I have tried and longed, and thought and prayed, but failure has come. God has blessed me and helped me, but still, in the long run, there has been so much of sin and sadness." What a change comes when a man is thus broken down into utter helplessness and self-despair, and says: "I can do nothing!"

Remember Paul. He was living a blessed life, and he had been taken up into the third heaven, and then the thorn in the flesh came, "a messenger of Satan to buffet him." And what happened? Paul could not understand it, and he prayed the Lord three times to take it away; but the Lord said, in effect:
"No; it is possible you might exalt yourself, and therefore I have sent you this trial to keep you weak and humble."

Paul then learned a lesson that he never forgot, and that was—to rejoice in his infirmities. He said that the weaker he was the better it was for him, for when he was weak he was strong in his Lord Christ.