FULL OF FAITH AND POWER.
By Charles Inwood
“A man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost.” Acts 6:5. That was God’s estimate of Stephen. Is it God’s estimate of you? A man!—not an angel—a man, fallible, liable to err, with a nature offering as many points of access and attack to the devil as yours or mine—a man with passions and appetites, and temper and feelings, just like ours—a man with a real human body and real human feelings, with thinking powers and willing powers, just like you and me. Beloved, sanctity does not change our physical and mental structure; and I pray you to remember that, in view of some errors current just now. It simply places these under new and divine control. But, however completely possessed by God we may be, we are men and women still. Stephen was a real man, and not a whit less a man because he was really and truly a saint. God does not torture our manhood in the process of making us holy. God is not at war with man; he is only at war with the sin and self which are darkening and defiling and paralyzing the man, and preventing him from realizing God’s purpose. One of the greatest comforts to my own soul in the study of the word of God is to notice the intense humanness of Bible saints. Stephen was a man just like you and me. Let me now point out the two distinguishing features that constituted him a saint; and I praise God for the intense simplicity of the Scriptural conception. I fear some of you get a little bewildered. You have heard this, that, and the other view presented, until you hardly know where you are, and what is and what is not possible. Oh that, with the power of the Spirit, God may just bring you back to the simple conception expressed in this single sentence! What is it that makes a man a saint?—Full of faith, full of the Holy Ghost—that is all: faith, the human side, the attitude of the man toward God; the fullness of the Holy Ghost, the response of God to the need of man. If you have that, then praise God with all your heart, and don’t trouble about trying to square this, that, and the other little bit of theology which has, perhaps, troubled you.451 “A man full of faith.” What does that mean? It means, manifestly, one who trusts God fully; one who believes all God says; one who believes all God says about experimental holiness; one who believes that God means him to prove it in his own soul and life day by day; one who believes God without reservation and without questioning; one who believes God in the utter absence of feeling and emotion; one who looks God in the face, and with his broken heart says, “O God, thy promise is enough for me,” and who shows that he means it by resting content with the promise of God alone. That is trusting fully—trusting has become a habit. We talk a great deal about the power of habit; and a more solemn and awful truth for an unconverted man I do not know. But the power of habit is as great in the realm of right as in the realm of wrong. How does a man form a bad habit?—Simply by repeated single acts. And as surely as a man by a series of acts can form a wrong habit, so by a series of acts he can form a right habit. Some of you would not be in a chronic condition of doubt, if you had not repeated single acts of doubting until the habit of doubting holds you as much as the habit of strong drink holds others. Praise God, the power of habit is just as strong in the realm of what is good; and if by persistent acts of doubt a Christian forms the habit of doubting, so, I believe, by simple persistence in trusting, a Christian can form, through the Spirit of God, the habit of trusting; and there comes into the whole realm of our spiritual life a new ease and rest and sweetness when once we come under the habit of taking God at his word, and trust him, no matter what men say. But there is the other side. It also means one whom God can fully trust. There is the idea of faithfulness, and only those who trust God fully can be fully trusted by God; but they can, for God knows them. What a precious word that was which God uttered long ago about Abraham: “I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him.” Gen. 18:19. That simply meant, I can lean on Abraham, I can trust him; he is faithful. I can trust him with great duties, great crises, great honors, great difficulties, great trials. Yes, yes, it is a sign that God has confidence in us when he lets great and overwhelming trials come to us. And I tell you, beloved, God will do anything up to the limit of his promise, for the man who will trust him, the man on whom he can lean. And if God can trust you fully, everybody who deals with you in business or in daily life can trust you, too. “A man full of faith”—one who trusts God fully, and one whom God can fully trust. Now a word about the other, “Full of the Holy Ghost”—not a transient and temporary inspiration, but a permanent and abiding endowment. As the tree in spring time is full of sap, as the white-heat metal is full of fire, so it is possible for you and me to be interpenetrated, possessed, mastered, held by the power of the Spirit of God, who is dwelling in us—so possessed by him that every thought we think, every word we utter, every act we perform, and the whole influence of our life, are all on fire through the indwelling of the Spirit in our soul. I dare not say that, if God’s word did not reveal it. “Full of the Holy Ghost.” Stephen had learned the secret of abiding in fullness—in the sixth chapter—before the storm came on, and at the end of the seventh chapter,—when he had gone through the terrible storm,—he was still filled with the Spirit.