THE FULLNESS OF FAITH: ITS EFFECTS Hebrews 11:33: Who through faith wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the months of lions.

Faith is always effectual: it eventuates in results; it brings something to pass. What it brings to pass, however, depends upon its aim. If it claims pardon or purity or power, according as it is, so shall it be done unto it. To say, Trust in the Lord and care nothing for results, is misleading. That would not be faith at all, for it belongs to faith to believe for something; it must anticipate results. Faith is always accompanied by effects. Some effects are promised to faith in its saving exercise, and other effects are promised to it in the exercise of its fullness. The effects possible to the one are different from those possible to the other Saving faith compasses pardon, regeneration, witness of adoption, and entire sanctification; while faith in its fullness compasses a range of spiritual experiences and states not possible to lower measures of faith. Faith in its fullness brings to pass conversions, and results in the domain of personal consciousness which would not otherwise transpire.

Let us consider the effects of the fullness of faith in two respects I. Its achievements.

It renders the personality of the man who has it effective for God; his finite capabilities are raised to superhuman power; it endows him with power for spiritual results. Barnabas was full of faith and of power. Power is the inseparable concomitant of fullness of faith; they are hemispheres of the same globe. The simplest definition of power is faith in God. He who is full of faith is mighty through God. Deprive D. L. Moody of this faith, and all his native personal force would achieve nothing in the great work of evangelization; he would be powerless.

Nothing other than John Wesleys superadded faith made his scholarship, culture, and marked individuality so effective and far-reaching for good as they have proved. This fullness of faith empowers all religious activities: it gives weight to our words of testimony, exhortation, and instruction; freighted with it they carry a spiritual avoirdupois which may break stolid hearts into penitence, or exert a spiritual force that may lift souls up to God.

With it a sentence often achieves more than a sermon without it.

An aged Christian lady visited a worldly, irreligious man at his home, and said to him: You ought not to lose your soul. Just what he had heard before in sermons and exhortations; but as they fell from the lips of that saintly woman, freighted with a great faith, they weighed, as he said, upon his heart so that he could not eat or sleep or work, or do aught else, until he had given his heart to Christ. Mr. Finney was a man of such faith that his words of reproof and appeal went in an airline to the heart, producing immediate impression in the soul. He met at one time a worldly young woman, who belonged to the family in which he was a guest, coming out of the Church at the close of one of his impressive services. He said to her: Where are you going? She replied: Home. Yes, rejoined Mr. Finney, to your long home.

Her countenance fell, she grew sober, walked silently and tremblingly to her home, and when Mr. Finney arrived she lay upon the floor in an agony of distress on account of her lost condition. I know a lady whose words in ordinary conversation have a spiritual edge which faith alone can put to language. Sitting one evening in the midst of a social company, she began to speak so impressively, in a natural and unpretentious way, of the Lords dealings with her soul that some began to weep. Noticing it, she modestly asked the privilege of praying. When they arose, a husband and wife had found the joy of a restored salvation, and a young lady had been enriched with the pearl of great price. Her words had been words of faith. Such a faith imparts an effectiveness to pulpit utterances, home counsels, and Sabbath-school instruction, as they can not have without it. The fullness of faith empowers the life of the child of God; it makes it tell; it invests it with a quietness of manner, a sweetness of spirit, and an earnestness of demeanor that is more influential in winning souls to Christ than any other thing. There was a young man who had become infatuated with the deceits of Ingersollism. He thought he had come to a full acceptance of its errors, and had about concluded that the Church was nothing to be respected, the Bible a human invention, and religion a mere fancy. Just about this time he went to write at the same desk in an office where there stood opposite him a devoted young man, full of faith and the Holy Ghost. There they stood facing each other, pushing busily their pens for several months.

Occasionally the young skeptic would flaunt out his reproaches upon Christianity, and his infidel objections. His godly associate refrained from any sharp retorts, and declined all controversy, but kept his soul so full of faith that he wore a bright face, carried a good spirit, and maintained an irreproachable life. One evening this skeptical young man fell in with the pastor of the Church to which his religious business companion belonged.

As they walked together this disciple of Ingersoll said very abruptly: I have made up my mind to join your Church. The pastor, much surprised, said: I am glad of it. Come next Sabbath and I will receive you; and now tell me what has changed your mind. O, said he, I have been writing for several months at a desk with a young man, a member of your Church. He never gets out of humor; he always seems so happy, and he is so kind that he has burned all my infidelity out of me, and I want just what he has, and I believe he has religion. The next Sabbath he united with the Church, and is now a happy and useful Christian. That Christian young man lived a life of faith, and it told. The fullness of faith always enables the Christian to live a spiritually energized life for God. The works and labors of love in Christian life are multiplied and enlarged under the power of a fullness of faith. It originates greater things, plans larger enterprises, inaugurates bolder endeavors, and compasses richer results than faith in its minor measures.

Its works for the salvation of men are wonderful; it always abounds in the work of the Lord. It carries forward a sustained work of prayer. The man full of faith is pre-eminently a man of prayer; he, like Payson, is audacious in prayer; asks large things, and asks with a boldness whose demands God never denies. Said one who listened to one of the simple prayers of that prince of faith, Bishop William Taylor, He isnt backward in asking the Lord for great things. No man of faith is. Success crowns the man full of faith; he doesnt fail; his labor is not in vain; whatsoever he doeth prospers; fruit appears; results follow. The fullness of faith accomplishes the grand achievements of transforming its possessor into a power for God, and of precipitating divine movements in the Church, the world, and human hearts, which eventuate in marked results in the salvation of souls.

II. Its experiences.

All the effects of faith within the domain of personal consciousness are real and precious. The conscious experiences which result from saving faith, such as a sense of pardon, adoption, and a new life, are not to be undervalued; yet there remain coexistent with these disagreeable elements of consciousness, such as doubts, fears, and clouds. These commingle with the peace, joy, and light of the converted soul, so that it often sings Een the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears.

And the cup of rejoicing with sadness and tears.

Its enjoyments are, at best, variable. The particular improvement in the realm of experience which the fullness of faith brings is that it clears the skies of the soul, disperses its shadows, and secures to it a sustained light, warmth, and enjoyment in God. There are several new elements of experience which it ushers in. 1. Full assurance.

It so fully persuades the soul of its acceptance with God, makes it so conscious of his indwelling presence, and so assures the soul of the verity of spiritual things, that the soul walks in the light and sings, Not a cloud doth arise To darken my skies.

Doubts vanish; their hideous specters never even flit across the soul; and the experience of the seraphic Faber becomes verified to the heart: I know not what it is to doubt; My heart is always gay.

The soul stands on the solid ground of conscious certainty respecting its salvation and hope. It walks now by faith. Some speak often of walking by faith as though it were a rough, dark way. They say: I have many doubts, much darkness, no joy, but I am walking by faith. By no means are they.

Faiths way is not such; it is a cloudless way, a smooth way, a joyous way.

The way that is cloud-cast and doubt-strewn is the way of sight. The fullness of faith is a vision of soul, where its eye, as it sweeps the horizons of time and eternity, Reads its title clear To mansions in the skies, rejoices in hope, walks above the world and sin, and to it The invisible appears, And God is seen by mortal sight The exclamation of one when faiths full orb had risen within his soul was, Lo, what a witness! Clearer than that of my adoption it is a perfect globe of assurance. 2 . Freedom from fear is another new phase of experience of soul which attends the fullness of faith. The dread of duty which haunts so many Christian lives, and which paralyzes the souls sensibilities for enjoying God, quits the soul. Crosses become delights, service joy. Faith in its fullness emancipates the soul from the bondage of doing duty in the dread of it, and brings it the liberty of doing duty in the love of it. This is accompanied by a freedom from the fear of Gods will. The chief reason why so many Christians hesitate to offer themselves living sacrifices unto God, is that they fear to say, Thy will be done. They fear that he may choose some suffering or disappointment or persecution or bereavement for them. But the soul full of faith adores Gods sweet will; it is so persuaded of the divine all-lovingness, that he will not choose for it what is not best, as that it has no concern about what his will is concerning it. The bondage of dreading a loving Fathers will is supplanted by the liberty of delighting in it.

This embraces, also, no fear for the future. Said a Christian woman: I have grace sufficient for the present, but I don’t believe I could endure the trials and temptations some have, should they come to me. Had she been full of faith she would have been quiet from the fear of evil. The soul full of faith fears neither coming age or service or death. It lives in no fear of backsliding or spiritual decline, or fruitless years to come; its confidence is like Pauls: I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him. A Christian woman was in the habit of saying in the presence of her saintly colored servant, who was always happy: Dinah, suppose this should happen, or that should come to you, some great sorrow, accident, or misfortune. Why, missus, said Dinah, I never sposes any thing; its your sposes that make you so miserable. I knows all things work together for good to dem what loves de Lord, and that makes me happy all de time. Dinah was full of faith. Such a soul never supposes any thing about the future, and so rejoices in hope. 3 . Heavenly mindedness is another new element of experience in the soul full of faith.

Heavenly mindedness is a state, not a mere emotion of soul. The heart becomes possessed of heavenly thoughts and feelings. It lives on a celestial altitude of experience in the midst of pressing duties, cares, and perplexities. It is an experience akin to what some saints have realized during long periods of decline, as they anticipated their early translation to heaven. Said Mrs. Professor Lacroix, days before her death, I am done with earth; I have begun to live in heaven. Thus by the power of a fullness of faith, the soul, not waiting for the near approach of death, may be lifted into an experience where it begins to live the heavenly life while yet in the body. Then, as one has beautifully written: It goes to heaven before it gets there locally. God transfers his kingdom and glory to the heart, making it a province of the land of light in advance. The whole realm of its inner being is annexed to the heavenly empire, and its citizenship is transferred from earth to the heavenly city. O glorious, wondrous faith, which enables us to know Our heaven begun below!

Dear reader, may the Lord lead you to this fullness of faith, so that having your conversation in heaven you may exultantly sing Yet onward I haste to the heavenly feast: