- We Must Have True Faith

TO MANY CHRISTIANS, CHRIST IS little more than an idea, or at best an ideal— He is not a fact. Millions of professed believers talk as if were real and act as if He were not. Our actual position is always to be discovered by the way we act, not by the way we talk.
We can prove our faith by our commitment to it and in no other way. Any belief that does not command the one who holds it is not a true belief— it is only a pseudo-belief. It mmight shock some of us profoundly if we were suddenly brought face-to-face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the fires of practical living.
Many of us have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We fix things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the Lord but carefully watch that we never get caught depending on Him. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “
Pseudo-faith always arranges a way out in case God fails. Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be stripped of any second ways or makeshift substitutes. For true faith, it is either God or total collapse. And since Adam first stood up on the earth, God has not failed a single man or woman who trusted Him.
Those of pseudo-faith will fight for their verbal creed but flatly refuse to allow themselves to get into a predicament where their future depends upon that creed being true. They always provide themselves with secondary ways of escape so they will have a way out if the roof caves in.
What we need these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they must at the last day. For each of us the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God. Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all be swept away, and we shall have only God. To those of pseudo-faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain.
It would be tragedy indeed to come to the place where we have nothing but God and find that we have not been trusting God at all during the days of our earthly sojourn. It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether or not we really trust Him. That is a harsh cure for our troubles, but it is a sure one. Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work, and time is running out on us.