kept for Him more fully than ever before, because
we trust Him more simply and unreservedly to keep them!

Here we must face a question, and perhaps a difficulty. Does it not
almost seem as if we were at this point led to trusting to our trust,
making everything hinge upon it, and thereby only removing a subtle
dependence upon ourselves one step farther back, disguising instead of
renouncing it? If Christ's keeping depends upon our trusting, and our
continuing to trust depends upon ourselves, we are in no better or safer
position than before, and shall only be landed in a fresh series of
disappointments. The old story, something for the sinner to _do_, crops
up again here, only with the ground shifted from 'works' to trust. Said a
friend to me, 'I see now! I did trust Jesus to do everything else for me,
but I thought that this trusting was something that _I_ had got to do.'
And so, of course, what she 'had got to do' had been a perpetual effort
and frequent failure. We can no more trust and keep on trusting than we
can do anything else of ourselves. Even in this it must be 'Jesus only';
we are not to look to Him only to be the Author and Finisher of our
faith, but we are to look to Him for all the intermediate fulfilment of
the work of faith (2 Thess. i. 11); we must ask Him to go on fulfilling
it in us, committing even this to His power.

For we both may and must
Commit our very faith to Him,
Entrust to him our trust.

What a long time it takes us to come down to the conviction, and still
more to the realization of the fact that without Him we can do _nothing_,
but that He must work _all_ our works in us! This is the work of God,
that ye believe in Him whom He has sent. And no less must it be the work
of God that we go on believing, and that we go on trusting. Then, dear
friends, who are longing to trust Him with unbroken and unwavering trust,
cease the effort and drop the burden, and _now_ entrust your trust to
Him! He is just as well able to keep that as any other part of the
complex lives which we want Him to take and keep for Himself. And oh, do
not pass on content with the thought, 'Yes, that is a good idea; perhaps
I should find that a great help!' But, 'Now, then, _do it_.' It is no
help to the sailor to see a flash of light across a dark sea, if he does
not instantly steer accordingly.

Consecration is not a religiously selfish thing. If it sinks into that,
it ceases to be consecration.