The Closet, The Battlefield of Faith

I Samuel 17

David had been preparing for public service, in the secret school of God. God will always have to do in secret with the soul which he intends to serve Him in public. In the desert he had learnt the resources which faith has in God. He had slain the lion and the bear.

Are not our failures invariably here that we have not been in secret with the living God? This is the essential and primary matter. Do we esteem communion with God our highest privilege? Our strength is in walking in fellowship with the living God. David had already gone through the trial, and had therefore proved the God in whom he trusted. There had been dealing between his soul and God in the wilderness. O beloved, where is it that the saints really learn to get the victory? I believe where no eye sees us save God’s. The heartily denying of self, the taking up the cross in secret, the knowing the way in the retirement of our closets to cast down imaginations, and everything that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God; these are our highest achievements. The closet is the great battlefield of faith. Let the foe be met and conquered there. He who has much to do with God in secret, cannot use carnal weapons; and this should show us the importance of coming forth from the presence of the living God into all our service, that we may be thus prepared to detect and mortify all the pretensions of the flesh. It is sad indeed to see a saint trying to fight in the Lord’s name, but clothed in the world’s armour.

David said moreover, “God hath delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear; he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine” He knew that one was as easy to God as the other. When we are in communion with God we do not put difficulty by the side of difficulty, for what is difficulty to Him? Faith measures every difficulty by the power of God, and

then the mountain becomes as the plain. Too often, we think, that in little things, less than Omnipotence will do, and then it is that we fail. Have we not seen zealous and devoted saints fail in some trifling thing? The cause is, that they have not thought of bringing God by faith into all their ways. Abraham could leave his family and his father’s house, and go out at the command of God, not knowing whither he went, but the moment he meets a difficulty in his own wisdom, and gets down into Egypt, what does he do? He constantly fails in comparatively small things.

Faith discerns our own weakness so clearly that it sees nothing less than the power of God can enable us to overcome in anything. So that faith never makes light of the danger, for it knows what we are, just as on the other hand, faith never faints at the danger, because it knows what God is.

From: Things New and Old, Volume 22