Faith does the impossible

'Practical Illustrations of Deliverance From Bondage Pt. 2…

'Again, if we have yielded ourselves to be servants of God, we are His servants, or in other words, are instruments of righteousness in His hands.

Read Rom.6:13-16.

Rom 6:13  Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
Rom 6:14  For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
Rom 6:15  What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
Rom 6:16  Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

 We are not inert, lifeless, senseless instruments, such as the agriculturist uses, which have no voice as to how they shall be used, but living, intelligent instruments, who are permitted to choose their occupation. Nevertheless, the term "instrument" signifies a tool, -- something that is entirely under the control of the artisan.

The difference between us and the tools of the mechanic is that we can choose who shall use us, and at what kind of service we shall be employed; but having made the choice, and yielded ourselves into the hands of the workman, we are to be as completely in his hands as is the tool that has no voice as to how it shall be used.

When we yield to God, we are to be in His hands as clay in the hands of the potter, that He may do with us a He pleases. Our volition lies in choosing whether or not we will let Him work in us that which is good.

This idea of being instruments in the hands of God is a wonderful aid to the victory of faith when it is once fully grasped.

For, notice, what an instrument will do depends entirely upon the person in whose hands it is.

Here, for instance, is a die. It is innocent enough in itself, yet it may be used for the basest purposes, as well as for that which is useful. If it be in the hands of a bad character, it may be used in making counterfeit coin. It certainly will not be used for any good purpose. But if it be in the hands of an upright, virtuous man, it cannot possibly do any harm. Likewise, when we were the servants of Satan, we did no good (Rom. 6:20),  (((Rom 6:20  For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. ))))but now that we have yielded ourselves into the hands of God, we know that there is no unrighteousness in Him, and so an instrument in His hands cannot be used for an evil purpose. The yielding to God must be as complete as it was formerly to Satan, for the apostle says:

I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh; for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. Rom. 6:19.

The whole secret of overcoming, then, lies in first wholly yielding to God with a sincere desire to do His will; next, in knowing that in our yielding He accepts us as His servants; and then, in retaining that submission to Him and leaving ourselves in His hands.

 Often victory can be gained only by repeating again and again, “O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid; thou hast loosed my bonds.”

This is simply an emphatic way of saying, “O Lord, I have yielded myself into Thy hands as an instrument of righteousness; let Thy will be done, and not the dictates of the flesh.”

But when we can realize the force of that scripture and feel indeed that we are servants of God, immediately will come the thought, “Well, if I am indeed an instrument in the hands of God, He cannot use me to do evil with, nor can he permit me to do evil as long as I remain in His hands. He must keep me if I am kept from evil, because I cannot keep myself.

But He wants to keep me from evil, for He has shown His desire, and also His power to fulfill His desire in giving Himself for me.

Therefore I shall be kept from this evil.”

 All these thoughts may pass through the mind instantly, and then with them must necessarily come a feeling of gladness that we shall be kept from the dreaded evil. That gladness naturally finds expression in thanksgiving to God, and while we are thanking God the enemy retires with his temptation, and the peace of God fills the heart.

Then we find that the joy in believing far outweighs all the joy that comes from indulgence in sin.

All this is a demonstration of Paul's words, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” Rom. 3:31. To “make void” the law is not to abolish it, for no man can abolish the law of God, yet the Psalmist says that it has been made void. Ps. 119:126. To make void the law of God is something more than to claim that it is of no consequence; it is to show by the life that it is considered of no consequence. A man makes the law of God void when he allows it to have no power in his life. In short, to make void the law of God is to break it; but the law itself remains the same whether it is kept or not. Making it void affects only the individual.

Therefore, when the apostle says that we do not make void the law of God by faith, but that, on the contrary, we establish it, he means that faith does not lead to violation of the law but to obedience.

No, we should not say that faith leads to obedience, but that faith itself obeys.

Faith establishes the law in the heart.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for.”

 If the thing hoped for be righteousness, faith establishes it. Instead of faith leading to antinomianism, it is the only thing that is contrary to antinomianism. It matters not how much a person boasts in the law of God; if he rejects or ignores implicit faith in Christ, he is in no better state than the man who directly assails the law.

The man of faith is the only one who truly honors the law of God. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6); with it, all things are possible (Mark 9:23).

Yes, faith does the impossible, and it is just that which God requires us to do.

When Joshua said to Israel, “Ye cannot serve the Lord,” he told the truth, yet it was a fact that God required them to serve Him. It is not within any man's power to do righteousness, even though he wants to (Gal. 5:17)(((Gal 5:17  For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. )))); therefore, it is a mistake to say that all God wants is for us to do the best we can. He who does no better than that will not do the works of God. No. He must do better than he can do. He must do that which only the power of God working through him can do. It is impossible for a man to walk on water, yet Peter did it when he exercised faith in Jesus.

Since all power in heaven and in earth is in the hands of Christ and this power is at our disposal, even Christ Himself coming to dwell in the heart by faith, there is no room for finding fault with God for requiring us to do the impossible; for “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” Luke 18:27. Therefore we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.” Heb. 13:6.

Then “who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword?” “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” Rom. 8:35, 37. “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

(((Rom 8:35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Rom 8:36  As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Rom 8:37  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Rom 8:38  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Rom 8:39  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ))))

Christ and His Righteousness -  E. J. Waggoner

*******
(((Rom 8:35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Rom 8:36  As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Rom 8:37  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Rom 8:38  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Rom 8:39  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ))))

Christ's love for us is absolute.  We should never question God's love for us. Those who desire to question the love of God toward mankind should rather ask  this-- whether or not THEY love God.

The criteria people have for God to prove His love is a very selfish one. Give me everything I believe will make me happy and content in life and then I'll believe you love me. The opposite is true as well, if you give me only heartache, pain, and defeat I will believe you don't love me. Forget all about the end game- it's here and now that matters most. The end game calls for me to have FAITH, believing in something unseen, in something unknown.  The end game is asking me to endure all sorts of evil directed at me now, while still believing the end game that is unseen. We're asked to believe that you can control everything, and then to believe that when you choose not to control the evil raining down on us that you are loving and caring, what is that?

Again I say, Christ's love for us is absolute.

There is no doubting the love of God- He has more than proven His love for us. He has revealed the entire plan of salvation to us- we've seen the beginning, witnessed throughout history, the middle, and the end will follow right on through to all that He has revealed. We aren't left in the dark to know how it all will end for us. We know the outcome of life, the end game has been revealed. We have spoilers.  We aren't left to wander aimlessly under the impression that we can't know what the future holds. We have been told. We have been given this gift of foretelling.

And it's Satan's aim to get us to not believe what we've been told, to not believe in the One who has revealed the future to us, to doubt.

How often do we do things with the expectation of being rewarded for our effort?

We go to our jobs with the expectation that we are earning money for that effort.  Most people would stop working if they were not being paid to do so. You go to school with the expectation of gaining knowledge to enable you to live life as an informed human being. You go to a school of higher learning to gain even more knowledge - how frustrating it is when you enter into something with an expectation of a rewarding outcome and it never materializes.  We do the same with our relationships with others, don't we? We become friends with people with the hopes there will be mutually beneficial consideration for one another. We marry in the hopes of having a life long companion.  It's truthful to say then that we spend a lot of our lives with expectations.  When those expectations are unrealized we are filled with disappointment.  However, when those expectations are met, any hard work, any sacrifice we've made towards that expectation is deemed worth it, at least most times. You'll find some parents who have sacrificed everything for their children and are rewarded by their children succeeding in ways they only dreamed and hoped for. Some people suffer through a lot to make a success for themselves and then turn around and say it was ALL worth it, everything they endured.

If people can feel this way about success that is fleeting, if they can feel this sort of emotion towards things that will never endure for death is everyone's promise, then how much more should people be willing to endure to obtain eternal life?

Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, nothing, but we can separate ourselves. We can take our love from Him.

We are asked to believe.

We are promised a life we can never fully imagine, it's too wondrous for our minds to entirely comprehend.

Yet there are many people willing to simply throw it all away because they choose not to believe for some misguided reason, thinking it benefits them in this life not to believe.  Fools.

Nothing can separate us from Christ if we believe in Him, nothing!

Satan will truly throw everything he has in his spiritual arsenal at us, and he will never give up, he will never sleep, he will never let an opportunity pass by to get us on his side of eternity- which is the side of limited existence, not unending existence.

Under a constant barrage of spiritual evil we only have hope in clinging to Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior, our God, our High Priest, our King.

Truly we are servants to the one we choose to obey.  And if we are not obeying Christ then we are obeying Satan, there is no other option, it's one or the other and one offers love the other evil. While a person might wrongly believe they are choosing their own side by not picking a side, whenever we choose our own side we are in effect saying we are our own creator, and when we say that we are choosing the side of the one who wants you to believe that you are your own creator.

All of it has been explained in the Word of God.

Please Lord, let us be Your servants! We choose You even if that means suffering beyond our wildest imaginings. You are our ALL in ALL.