The Continuous Challenge of Faith

The following is from Norman Grubb's autobiography Once Caught, No Escape:

"Faith is the whole man in action: therefore it involves our bodies, and there is a sense in which we answer our own prayers. 'It all depends on God and it all depends on me' has truth in it. That is the faith James speaks of, which without works is dead: 'I will show thee my faith by my works.'

"Having spoken the word of faith, we expect to be involved to any limit in fulfilling it. Salvation was by the offering of the body of Jesus. If love belongs to need, and we are an expression of that eternal love, then it will involve our time, our money, our physical labours, our homes, our earthly security.            

"There is a law, a principle at work in this, to which Jesus referred when He said, 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.'

"Whatever form it may assume, this we take for granted—that the whole of us will be involved. Not by self-effort, not by pressing ourselves to get into action, but we shall find ourselves compelled: 'the love of Christ constraineth me'. We have to, and love to, right in the midst of the cost of it. For the joy set before us, we too endure our cross.

"Faith works by love in action. Yet through it all we know it is not our efforts, our so-called sacrifices, which bring the results. It is the faith which even through years of waiting has already declared the outcome."