“Lord, increase our faith.”
—Luke 17:5
“Do you belong to those who really profess Christian faith and Christian obedience and are trying, however weakly, to follow Christ amid an evil world? I think I know something of what goes on in your hearts. You sometimes feel that you will never persevere to the end and will be obliged someday to give up your profession. You are sometimes tempted to write bitter things against yourself and to fancy you have got no grace at all. I am afraid there are myriads of true Christians in this condition, who go trembling and doubting toward heaven, with Despondency and Much-Afraid and Fearing in Pilgrim’s Progress, and fear they will never get to the Celestial City at all.
My advice to all such persons is very simple. Say every morning and evening of your life, “Lord, increase my faith.” Cultivate the habit of fixing your eye more simply on Jesus Christ, and try to know more of the fullness there is laid up in Him for every one of His believing people. Do not be always poring over the imperfections of your own heart and dissecting your own besetting sins. Look up. Look more to your risen Head in heaven, and try to realize more than you do that the Lord Jesus not only died for you, but that He also rose again, and that He is ever living at God’s right hand as your Priest, your Advocate, and your Almighty Friend. Take courage, believer. The bolder and more decided you are, the more comfort you will have in Christ. You cannot have two heavens: one here, and the other hereafter. You are yet in the world, and you have a body, and there is always near you a busy devil. But great faith shall always have great peace.”
~J.C. RYLE