The Stairway of Faith

For people who have met God, the life of faith begins with putting down their own greed and craving at the foot of the cross; and grasping God’s will and putting your own load down takes some time. Growing in faith while loving him, leaning on him and serving him takes a process that everyone goes through. You have moved through the world as you pleased and as you thought best, and now you must live by God’s will, so giving yourself up and taking hold of faith demands a resolve. And the conflict met in that process is, it must be said, considerable. Only when you feel the pain of being cut down as you read the Bible, and can hear something inside you collapsing as you listen to the Word, do you come to know God’s will.

God and human nature stand on opposite sides from the start. The road that leads from letting go of human nature to standing before God is plainly rough and painful, and it is also a road that has to be walked.

Where is your faith passing through right now? As you climb, leaning on Christ the ladder, are you helping a brother whose faith is weak, pulling him up, taking him in?

You look into the strength and the splendor of the world every day and you trip over stumbling blocks, and you are still in a believer’s place because there is a God who keeps hold of you; so take that love as your pattern and care for a brother whose faith is weak.

Faith can grow at all only because God gave grace and love, so you must not boast as though you had built it by your own effort, and you must not judge anyone else’s faith.

Glory to God, who held me to the writing of these sermons on *The Stairway of Faith*, and my deep thanks to the believers who labored over it.