.....the measure of real spiritual power-power to surmount difficulties--power to overcome the world--power to get on--power to possess ourselves of all that God has bestowed upon us,--the measure of this power is simply the measure in which God’s Word is mixed with faith. That Word is settled forever in heaven; and if it is fixed in our hearts by faith, there is a divine link connecting us with heaven and all that belongs to it; and in proportion as our hearts are thus livingly linked with heaven and the Christ who is there, shall we be practically separated from this present world, and lifted above its influence. Faith takes possession of all that God has given. It enters into that within the vail; it endures as seeing Him who is invisible; it occupies itself with the unseen and eternal, not with the seen and the temporal. Men think possession sure; faith knows nothing sure but God and His Word. Faith takes God’s Word and locks it up in the very innermost chamber of the heart, and there it remains as hid treasure--the only thing that deserves to be called treasure. The happy possessor of this treasure is rendered thoroughly independent of the world. He may be poor as regards the riches of this perishing scene; but if only he is rich in faith, he is the possessor of untold wealth--”durable riches and righteousness” --- ”the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
.....If you will only take God at His word--only believe what He says because He says it--for this is faith--then verily you have this treasure, which renders its possessor entirely independent of this scene where men live only by the sight of their eyes. The men of this world speak of “the positive” and “the real,” meaning thereby what they can see and experience; in other words, the things of time and sense--the tangible--the palpable. Faith knows nothing positive, nothing real, but the word of the living God.
C. H. Mackintosh
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