When we are baptized, we have confidence that the person who immerses us into the water will not drown us but will raise us up from the water too. This is how we must have faith (confidence) in God too in all situations of life. When He arranges a situation, in which we have to die to self, or in which we are being "crucified" by others, we must see God Himself beyond the human instruments that He uses.

The pure in heart, Jesus said, would see only God ( Matt.5:8) - and not any human instruments. When we see only the people who crucify us, that would indicate that our hearts are not pure. Then we will have complaints against those people.

But when our hearts are pure, we will see God alone, and then we can have the confidence (just as in water-baptism) that He Who allows us to be immersed into death will raise us up too. " If we die with Christ we will be raised up by God as Christ was raised up " ( 2 Tim.2:11). Then we die in faith (in confidence in God). Then we can enter into a glorious resurrection-life. Otherwise we will always live the same old defeated Adamic life that we have always lived. When we refuse to die to Self, it indicates that we don't have faith (confidence) in God.

The man of faith is the single-minded man, as we read in James 1:6-8 . Such a man has only one goal in life - to please God and to glorify Him. Only such a man can be said to live by faith - for he lives recognizing the fact that the things that are unseen alone have eternal value. In other words, He believes what God's Word says.

Many "believers" believe in Jesus only because they don't want to go to Hell. But they don't LIVE by faith. They are not convinced that what God says in His Word is true. They don't believe that they will have to give an account to God for everything that they have done and spoken in their lives. They don't believe that if they live to please themselves, and to enjoy the pleasures of this world and to pursue after money, they will have regrets for all eternity after they leave this world.

The rich man (that Jesus spoke of) who died and went to Hell, had regrets as soon as he died, and wanted someone to go and tell his brothers not to make the same mistake that he had made in his earthly life of not living in daily repentance ( Lk.16:28, 30). We are all on probation here on earth and God is testing us to see whether, like the animals, we will live for the dust of earth, or whether as sons of God, we will live for the things that have eternal value - a life characterised by goodness, love, absolute purity and humility, etc.

May the Lord give you grace to live for the things that have eternal value.