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D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
How faith grows
Faith does not work automatically ... you have to apply it. Faith does not grow automatically either; we must learn to talk to our faith and to ourselves.... Do you remember how the Psalmist puts it in Psalm 42? Look at him turning to himself and saying, ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?’ That is the way to make faith grow. You must talk to yourself about your faith. You must question yourself as to what is the matter with your faith. You must ask your soul why it is cast down, and wake it up! ... Your faith does not grow mechanically, you have to attend to it. To use our Lord’s analogy, you have to dig round and about it, and pay attention to it. Then you will find it will grow.
... a large part of faith ... consists of just refusing anxious thoughts .. . refusing to think about worrying things, refusing to think of the future in that wrong sense. The devil and all adverse circumstances will do their utmost to make me do so, but having faith means that I shall say: ‘No; I refuse to be worried. I have done my reasonable service; I have done what I believed to be right and legitimate, and beyond that I will not think at all.’ That is faith, and it is particularly true with regard to the future. When the devil comes with his insinuations, injecting them into you—all the fiery darts of the evil one—say, ‘No; I am not interested. The God whom I am trusting for today, I will trust for tomorrow. I refuse to listen; I will not think your thoughts.’ Faith is refusing to be burdened because we have cast our burden upon the Lord. May He, in His infinite grace, give us wisdom and grace to implement these simple principles and thereby rejoice in Him day by day.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 156–7
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