Oswald Chambers: Hope - A Holy Promise Sample

Faith is our personal confidence in a Being Whose character we know, but Whose ways we cannot trace by common sense. Faith is the practical out-working in our life of implicit, determined confidence in God. Common sense is mathematical; faith is not mathematical, faith works on illogical lines. Jesus Christ places the strongest emphasis on faith, and especially on the faith that has been tried.

Every confidence, every love, every devotion that is not based on a personal relationship to God will be reprobate, not only in the experience of the individual, but in the history of the world. God will demonstrate to us in His patient way that if we are building on anything less than Jesus Christ it will prove useless, because we have banked on the wrong thing (see 1 Cor. 3:10-15; 9:27).

Reflection Questions: In what ways do I expect faith to work like a mathematical equation? In what ways do my interests and possessions keep me from being passionate about what is important to God?

Quotations taken from Studies in the Sermon on the Mount and Notes on Jeremiah, © Discovery House Publishers