1. The Keeping Power

The power that is able to save you is also able to keep you. When you believe, you “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” 1 Peter 1:5. If your faith does not claim the power of God in the daily stress of sin it is not a saving faith. Whenever you fall into sin, it is because for that moment your faith has let go of the Lord, and you are not believing in Him.

For “whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” Being born of God by faith is not something that is done once for all time, but is a continual process. It continues as long as you believe. And through faith you are kept by the power of God. “We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but He that is begotten of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not.” 1 John 5:18, R.V.

It is a blessed truth that through faith you are shut in by the arms of the Lord, and the evil one cannot touch you. There is refuge, a haven from the storm. Oh, that you might learn to abide in the shelter; for you know well enough by bitter experience that you do not have the power to keep yourself—not for even one moment.

Even in this world of sin and wickedness, through faith you can be kept from the iniquity that surrounds you, that is even in your very flesh ready to spring on you. When the three Hebrew captives were thrown into the furnace of fire, the fire had no power on their bodies, “nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.” There was with them in the furnace One who had said, “I will be with thee,” and “when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.”

It is He that is pledged to keep you in the midst of the consuming fire of sin. You cannot endure it alone; you always fall, and the fiery darts strike into your soul. The prayer of David may be yours continually, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a constant spirit [margin] within me.” Thank God, when your faith has not held Him fast, and the enemy has found you and touched you, there is still the promise following the injunction, “sin not.” “And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” He releases you from the enemy and sets you free again. But He sets you free that you may hold steadfastly to Him by a firmer faith. In the bitterness of sin you are taught your own weakness and worthlessness, and in the sweetness of His forgiveness you are taught His power to save.

Read the second chapter called Light and Life.