10月31日 信心的辨识

你们若有信心像一粒芥菜种（太十七20）

我们往往认为神会因我们的信心报答我们。初时可能是这样，但其实我们不能藉信心赚取什么。信心使我们与神的关系正确，以致神有机会作工。你若是圣徒，神往往要把你的经验底板抽去，好使你直接与他接触。神要你明白，这是信心的生命，而不是情感化地享受他祝福的生命。你早期的信心生命是狭窄的、紧张的，环绕着一小撮光明的经历，满了阳光与甜蜜，可是其中信心的成份，与常理的成份差不多同等。后来神把可见的祝福挪开，教你行信心的路，你如今在他手上更有价值，远超那些感觉喜乐、满有激动见证的日子。

信心必须经过试验。信心真正的考验，不是在于我们觉得难以信靠神，而是在于我们对神的性情必须有清楚的认识。信心的实现，必须经过一连串个别孤立的考验。不要把信心的试验与一般生活的操练混为一谈。许多我们成为信心的考验，不过是活在地上无法避免的事情。圣经中的信心，是在一切违反神自己的事上，还持定信神－－“不管神怎样做，我必定忠于神的本性。”“他虽然杀我，我仍要信靠他。”－－这是圣经中信心的最高表现。

祈祷◆主啊，今天早上，一堆微小但实际的事情挤进我的思想，我将它们直接带到你的面前。你以智慧说：“住了吧！静了吧！”愿我们那接受你吩咐的生命，承认你的平静是何等美好。

October 31 Discernment Of Faith

“Faith as a grain of mustard seed. . .” Matthew 17:20

We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, it may be so in the initial stages; but we do not earn anything by faith, faith brings us into right relationship with God and gives God His opportunity. God has frequently to knock the bottom board out of your experience if you are a saint in order to get you into contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings. Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sun-spot of experience that had as much of sense as of faith in it, full of light and sweetness; then God withdrew His conscious blessings in order to teach you to walk by faith. You are worth far more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony.

Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabled isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life, much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. Faith in the Bible is faith in God against everything that contradicts Him – I will remain true to God's character whatever He may do. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” – this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.