Faith is the full assurance of things hoped for. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. Heb. 11:1-2. Faith is not that God shall help me, but that He shall use me. This is how they understood it in the Old Testament. When they did their work in faith, they were offered so that God could use them for what was impossible and show His power through them. They were not courageous, thinking they could manage the situation with God’s help. Not at all! They were offered and gave their lives, and so God was able to do with them what He wanted. Abraham did not receive Isaac until it was humanly impossible. He did not become weak in faith. That would have happened if he had reckoned that God would simply help him. But he reckoned solely with God’s power, considering himself and Sarah as instruments. It was God who made it possible for Israel to cross the Red Sea and the Jordan River. Israel was an instrument by which He was glorified. David did not say that God had helped him against the lion and the bear, but that He had delivered him from the power of the lion and the bear, and that He would also deliver him from the power of this Philistine. The three men in the fiery furnace did not have a chance, but they were offered. They did not believe that God would help them, but rather that He would deliver them from the hand of the king. However, if God would not deliver them, they would give their lives. We could mention innumerable examples like that. It is exactly the same in the new covenant. The faith is exactly the same except that the area of faith now lies in the invisible realm rather than in the visible. Now sin in the flesh shall be overcome. This is the grace—the power—that has been given us in Jesus Christ. No one can live the life of the new covenant. The life of the new covenant is to live without anxiety, always rejoicing in the Lord, always blessing the others, etc. Here a man has no chance. Jesus doesn’t help us, but He who has called us, He “also will do it.” 1 Thess. 5:15-24. If Jesus is to do it, then we must be offered even as the heroes of faith of old were. To be offered means that we do not want anything or that we do not have any plans with which we want God to help us—we must have forsaken everything. He has chosen us to show His power and the truth of His promises through us. No one in the old covenant knew or could imagine the glory God had thought to reveal through them for their descendants, both in their time and in eternity. Neither Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, nor David knew what God had in mind for them. They were offered, and they believed God. Their lives were totally surrendered to God, and it was revealed to them as they walked in faith. All the nations of the earth are blessed in Abraham. They shall sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. Jesus will sit on David’s throne, etc. This also applies to us. Think if we knew what glory God wanted to reveal through us if He could only have us as a sacrifice. However, we are not meant to know it. We shall go in faith, and then it will be revealed to us little by little. If only the young people could believe! “Faith is the full assurance of things hoped for . . . .” Those who have the hope of the new covenant, they can believe. The others cannot believe. They entertain so many other hopes besides. Jesus does the work of the new covenant in all those who are offered. Those who do not attain to this life are not offered.Sigurd Bratlie