The Energy of Faith

by JOHN HENRY JOWETT (1863-1923) There are different degrees and qualities of faith. But the greatest faith is that of the believer trusting fully in his Savior to fight the battle for him.

"Verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence, to yonder plain: and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible unto you." —Matt. 27:20

And this great and optimistic evangel was spoken, not to men who were marching with swinging jubilant stride in the paths of victory, but to men who were temporarily disheartened under the experience of defeat. "Nothing succeeds like success"; it is easy to be an optimist, and optimistic counsel is congenial, when one has the "open sesame," when the iron gate swings back at one's approach, and the obstructive mountains sink into a plain. In such conditions it is easy to engage in the winning shout. But is there anything more pathetic and depressing than the spectacle of men baffled in a noble enterprise and retiring beaten from the field? What can be more pathetic than to have watched some chivalrous knight, riding forth in the promising dawn, with waving plume and glittering lance, returning, in the melancholy evening, torn, bespattered, and ashamed, leaving the flippant enemy triumphant on the field?

And the tragedy of the home-coming is all the deeper and darker when the way winds through ranks of contemptuous crowds, who assail the beaten knight with ribaldry and jeers. Such was the pitiable condition of this little company of the first knights of the Lord's Kingdom. These disciples had gone forth with flying banners, gazed at by sullen and silent crowds: they crept back with drooping banners, to the laughing accompaniment of the crowd's contempt. They had met the enemy, and they had been overwhelmed in the fight. They had gone forth to battle, and they had been driven from the field. "I brought him to Thy disciples, and they could not cure him!"

I. THE BATTLE ENSUES

Let us get the scene into the imagination. Here is a man devil-possessed, writhing in the torment of his awful bondage. And here are the expulsive knights—the disciples. And around them is a great crowd, the majority of them hostile, many of them cynical, and all of them curious, watching this mysterious encounter with devouring interest. And the disciples get to work. They command, but they are not obeyed! One after another tries his power, but his power is proved to be weakness. The disciples become more vehement, their imperative rises to a scream, but the devil remains enthroned! Time after time is the attempt repeated amid the muttered comments of the suspicious crowed, and time after time are they repulsed, until at last these much-claiming knights have to confess their failure, and, to the accompaniment of laughter, they retire angrily or silently from the field, leaving the devil in possession. "I brought him to Thy disciples, and they could not cure him."

The victim was possessed of a devil. I will only pause to say I accept the explanation of his bondage. Some malign presence was making this man's life chaotic, and was driving him according to its own malicious whim. There are phenomena in human life which cannot be otherwise explained. I cannot explain mysterious emergencies in my own mind and soul except on the theory of subtle and active presences, who seek by illicit snare and fascination to entice me into degrading bondage. The glamour of the world does not account for them. The gravitation of the flesh is an insufficient explanation. They are only interpreted in the Scriptural suggestion that "our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." But here it is sufficient to insist that here was an evil in possession, exercising horrible control, paralysing its pitiable victim, and the disciples were incompetent to its expulsion. The evil was left on the field!

II. THE REASON FOR THE FAILURE

Now, our modern experiences very readily lead us to place ourselves in the depressed ranks of these defeated knights. Who is there who has not set out to evict an established evil, and who has not encountered bitter and ultimate defeat? It may be the evil possession was in your own body, or in your mind, or soul, or, maybe, it was housed in the life of your child, or in the life of your friend, or perhaps it was lodged in the corporate body in the shape of some social tyranny, some industrial disease, some national vice, whatever it be, and wherever its home, you have faced the intruder with the purpose of expulsion, and you have signally and utterly failed.

And now it is high time we hear our Master's explanation of the failure. "Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast it out? And He said unto them. Because of your unbelief!" There is no uncertainty in the diagnosis. The cause is not complicated. It is single and simple. "Unbelief!" There had been a want of confidence. There was doubt at the very heart of the disciple's effort. There was a cold fear at the very core of his enterprise. He went out with a waving banner, but the flag in his heart was drooping! "Because of your unbelief!" Our Lord is not referring to unbelief in any particular doctrine, but rather to the general attitude and outlook of the soul. There was no strong, definite confidence in the disciple, and such unbelief always ensures paralysis and defeat. Power belongs to the positive: our confidences generate our force. Energy is not born of denials, but of affirmations. Denials are only empty cartridges, possessed of no explosive strength. Negations are not potencies, even though we have sufficient to load a ship. What do we believe?

III. THE KEY TO VICTORY IS FAITH

What is the range and quality of our confidence? What amount of faith is there at the heart of our crusade? The answer to these questions will give the measure of our strength, and will reveal to us our possibilities in the ministry of expulsion. Faith is energy! Always and everywhere faith is force. Let a politician support a measure for the removal of some injustice, let him do it, not because of his conviction in its inherent right, but with his eyes fixed upon votes and popular distinction, and his support is altogether unimpressive and futile. But let a man speak with faith, with a solid core of definite confidence burning in his soul, and the glowing energy of his soul will get into his words, and his ministers will be a flaming fire. It is faith that tells. I need not elaborate the matter. On familiar planes the principle is evident. Faith is energy. "Lord, what shall we do that we may work the works of God?" This is the work of God, that ye believe! Energy for all work is there.

But there are different degrees and qualities of faith. There is faith in oneself, and such faith is by no means unaccompanied with some limited power. There is a faith in principles, in causes, in the tenacity of truth, in the indestructibility of virtue, in the invincibility of the righteous order of the world. Such faith is uninfluenced by bribes, undismayed by majorities, untroubled by threats and frowns: it tightly holds to the truth, and confidently waits its day. But still higher is the plane to which we can rise in the ascending gradient of faith. There is a faith in the living God, a faith in His love and good will, a confidence in His blessed Presence and companionship, an assurance that we are one with Him in the sacred inheritance, and that in Him we are partakers of all the mighty ministries of grace. That is the sublimest of all faiths, and it carries with it the most tremendous of all energies, for it has behind it the omnipotence of God.

"Faith as a grain uprooting a mountain! Such is its mighty energy! I do not shrink from the startling conjunction. Our scientists are telling us that there is energy stored in one grain of radium sufficient to raise five hundred tons a mile high. And I am not daunted when our Master, speaking of a finer power than radium, a subtler energy, a spiritual force, tells us of the enormous energy, the miracle-working energy that is housed in faith of a supreme quality, even though it be only "as a grain of mustard seed." "Ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence!" I believe that many an ailment would vanish if the unbelief went out of the soul, and if in its place there came a sweet, sound, strong confidence in the Lord. "Ye shall say unto this mountain. Remove hence! . . . and it shall remove!”

IV. THE ENERGY FOR OUR BATTLES

And so faith is key in the entire mountain-range of human difficulty and enterprise. Faith is energy, energy by which the mountain is to be removed. Enterprises born in doubt are smothered at birth. Can we sweeten and purify our streets? Everything depends upon our faith. Can we expel the devils of drunkenness and lust ? Can we cheer and enlighten and redeem the slums? Can the desert be made "to rejoice and blossom as the rose"? Can we ourselves be the ministers of a great salvation? "According to your faith be it unto you." "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder plain: and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible unto you." Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. What, then, cannot we do, if we march together, in the power and
constraint of a confident faith? We can still work miracles, in the name of the Lord of Hosts.

END

.

.

For a complete list of all our Classic Sermons, Click Here.

.

.

For the latest headlines, op-eds and Bible Articles…News For Christians

.

.

.

.
.