Absolute Surrender: Kept Through Faith

Absolute Surrender
By Andrew Murray 

Kept Through Faith
(Excerpted)

Believing.
“Kept by the power of God through faith.”

How must we look at this faith?

Faith Implies Helplessness

Let me say, first of all, that this faith means utter impotence and helplessness before God.

At the bottom of all faith there is a feeling of helplessness. And so 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. But in most cases it is utter helplessness; another must do it for me.

And 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!”

Do you want to enter what people call “the higher life”?
Then go a step lower down.

“I have learned a lesson that going down is often the best way to get up.”

Ah, yes, God will have to bring us very low down; there will have to come upon us a sense of emptiness and despair and nothingness.
It is when we sink down in utter helplessness that the everlasting God will reveal Himself in His power, and that our hearts will learn to trust God alone.

What is it that keeps us from trusting Him perfectly?

Many a one says:
“I believe what you say, but there is one difficulty. If my trust were perfect and always abiding, all would come right, for I know God will honor trust.
But how am I to get that trust?”

My answer is:
“By the death of self.
The great hindrance to trust is self-effort.

So long as you have got your own wisdom and thoughts and strength, you cannot fully trust God.

But when God breaks you down, when everything begins to grow dim before your eyes, and you see that you understand nothing, then God is coming near, and if you will bow down in nothingness and wait upon God, He will become all.”

As long as we are something, God cannot be all, and His omnipotence cannot do its full work.

That is the beginning of faith— utter despair of self, a ceasing from man and everything on earth, and finding our hope in God alone.


 


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