Reformed theology, in all its branches, bequeathed to the church a view of life rooted in the objective reality of God. While much Reformed and Puritan work is devoted to the need to look inward, the main thrust of Reformed theology is that we must look upward. Calvin himself warned that "If our faith does not ascend on heavenly wings, it will always stick fast in the mud of this world". Faith's great work is to endure, seeing him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27). The man of God is a man of faith, and the faith of the man looks to the God of the man.

It is all too possible, however, for our vision to be limited to the circumstances in which we find ourselves in God's Providence. Sometimes the wall around our playground is so high that we cannot see beyond it. Feelings of insignificance, of under-achievement, of depression, of despair, can set in when we do not look over the wall. We become tempted then to read God's promises in the light of our Providences, instead of the other way round. Faith can only be our strength and our guide as we learn to look to God and obey his word.

Challenges to Faith⤒🔗

The faith that saves does not go unchallenged. We are called to live in the world which is subject to the dominion of the prince of the power of the air. There is evil all around. God's law is flouted, his name despised, his word ignored. The course the world is taking represents a challenge to faith. That is to be expected.

What is not to be expected is that the church itself can become a challenge to faith. The church is where faith ought to be nurtured and nourished, where graces bestowed by Christ ought to be strengthened and sharpened, where the blessings of the covenant ought to be enjoyed and experienced, where the chief end of man ought to be realised. The church has taught us to glorify God, by honouring his word in purity of worship, purity of doctrine and purity of life. But it has also to teach us how to enjoy God by faith. Far too often the enjoyment of Christianity is missing from our religious life. And much of the problem here is the fact that what we see in the church is a direct challenge to the faith we profess in the church.

The church at the end of the twentieth century, in which we have been reared, whose traditions and institutions we revere, whose standards we profess, whose very name we regard as a symbol of orthodoxy, is in turmoil and in chaos. Brethren in Christ are polarised and estranged. Decisions of church courts are ignored. There is anarchy and lawlessness, and much else that ought not to be.

It is singularly ironic, therefore, that the church itself, which ought to strengthen faith, can become a challenge to faith. Can we truly believe in God in the face of the behaviour of some of those who profess to be his people? Can we believe in the reality of the Gospel amid the chaos of our circumstances? Can we believe in the power of the Word to transform and redeem when Christians behave in a cold and unfeeling manner towards others? When it is the professing church that discourages us, how can faith survive?

Comforts to Faith←⤒🔗

Faith, however, must look beyond men and beyond means to the God of all grace. At last what comforts faith is not the behaviour of men toward us, but the behaviour of God toward us in Christ. We are to root our faith not in the subjective experiences of our religion, and not even in the relationships we have within the church itself, but in the personal reality of God. It is in circumstances such as these that the Reformed view of life comes in to its own. It reminds me that whatever may shake my faith, my faith remains fixed on things that cannot be shaken.

It is this distinction that helps God's people, tried as they are between the cross-currents of worldly hostility and church controversy. We are to encourage ourselves in the Lord our God; we may have shakable faith, but it is in an unshakeable Saviour, faith which can rise or fall in a God who remains constant. Only God is the true friend of faith.

Where is such a faith grounded? It is grounded first, in the revelation of God in the Bible. It is in God's word that faith must feed if it is to be strengthened and to grow. There God trades with us, not in possibilities, but in certainties. There God honours his covenant commitments in a revelation that is suited to all our needs. The Word of God must be our song in the house of our pilgrimage, when the church of God becomes our grief.

Faith is grounded, secondly, in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The Word became flesh in order that flesh might look to the word. God came to us that we might come to him. And in the self-emptying of the incarnation, when Jesus Christ became man, by taking our nature to himself, we see God drawing alongside us. There He shares our pain, our disillusionment, our grief. He weeps with his people. He grieves over his church. He shows us how his own familiar friends, on whom he relied, lifted their heel against him (Psalm 41:9). He calls faith to realise that though it may feel alone, it is not alone.

Faith is grounded, thirdly, in the revelation of God at Calvary. It is at the cross that wrongs are put right. The blood of the atonement speaks to faith, and faith says "Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul". The acid test of our profession is that we are able to come to the cross in the most trying circumstances of all and to rejoice in him who was put to shame for his people. And although the greatest trial may be for us in the church, and not in the world, there is a port of refuge for faith in the embrace of a crucified Saviour. He is faith's one, true, lasting friend, who sticks closer than any Christian brother.