Heb. 11
We must remember that faith begins with God, and he who is walking really in a path of faith always brings God in, and this is the difference between it and unbelief; unbelief always leaves Him out. Again, faith is the individual soul alone with God, and any intervention of a third party destroys it. Any acting from secondary motives is not faith. It must be God and His Word alone before the soul for the act to be an act of faith.
Faith grows. This can be learned in the history of the children of God, and as detailed in Heb. 11 To bring God into everything is the privilege now of His children. There is nothing too small in our daily path for Him to notice who has numbered even the hairs of our head. It is this bringing God into all our matters that produces the walk, the life of faith, and which is the subject of the chapter I have referred to.
And it is just this bringing God into our matters that reveals to us the true character of-them; for "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." Thus this, by becoming the continual habit of the soul, becomes at once a preserving power for it in the midst of all the darkness and unbelief of our natural hearts.
The principle for the Christian now is found in the words, "He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible." We must see God in everything.
In the examples of Heb. 11, we see they reckoned on God. This is faith and this characterizes each one. In Abel's act, God's claim is admitted, and in the sacrifice, Abel confesses that he merited death as the sinner. He comes in the provided way and is accepted, "God testifying of his gifts." So God is before Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and the others. This settled everything for each in his day.
It is important just simply to grasp what real faith is, that it begins with God, and continues to have to do with God, and that it is intensely individual. We are glad and thankful to find others in the path of faith with us; but this having always to do with God now individually is the power to sustain us still going on in the path if others fail us, and still produces the works seen in a life of faith. When a trial comes, if there has not been this individual intercourse with God, it is often found that we have been merely imitators of others. We then, like Ephraim, "being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle" (Psalm 78:99The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. (Psalm 78:9)). But if we have been in the habit of bringing God in, we shall turn to Him in the day of battle, and turning to Him is not turning our back to the enemy.