Faith Unto Enlargement Through Adversity # 9

The Key of Faith (continued)

Faith The Key To Life And Enlargement

Now, you will see how true this is in the very clear instance that we have before us - the matter of enlargement by life through faith. It would be very easy to gather all the Bible into that, and to say that is what the whole Bible is about. Of course, it is not, but it is one very comprehensive angle. You will at once see how that theme runs right through. Btu suppose we change the metaphor, and say that there is a whole bunch of keys to the Bible - quite a large bunch of keys - every one of which seems to be a master key to open the whole of the Bible, and on this large bunch of keys there seem to be three that are linked together, so to speak, on their own separate ring. Those three keys are - faith, life, enlargement.

Faith opens the first door. That door leads to the next, which is life, and through life to the next, which is enlargement. Those three things always go together through the Word of God. Of course, this is clearly seen by the opposite. Unbelief is always shown in the Scripture to result in limitation. Where there is unbelief, you just do not get any further - you stop short and stop dead: there is not enlargement, and therefore there is no life, no greater, fuller life, beyond. You cannot separate these things; they always hang together - faith, life, enlargement.

All the great crises in the history of God's people, as recorded in the Scriptures, had these three features. Beginning right at the beginning, with Adam, in the first chapters of Genesis, it is perfectly plain there that the whole question of establishment, of enlargement and of life hung upon faith, and that when he refused, or ceased, to believe God, that was a dead stop, a full stop. There was no more. At that point death entered in. The possibility of fellowship with God, and of all that God can mean in the life, hung entirely upon his faith - or upon his refusal to believe. If only he had believed God , the way would  have been wide open to enlargement, establishment and life, continuous and unceasing.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 10)