47｜Why Faith Is So Difficult

Total Trust, Self-Emptying, and the Childlike Heart**

Jesus said:
“The birds of the air neither sow nor reap, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
He also said:
“O you of little faith!”

This shows:
Humanity’s problem is not “insufficient effort,”
but unbelief.

According to the promise: if we believe in Christ, ask as He taught,
and trust that we have already received,
we can experience God’s abundance in this life:

·       spiritual redemption,

·       and earthly provision and fullness.

Then comes the question:

If “believing in Jesus” is so “profitable”—
benefiting both this life and the next—
why do so few truly believe?
Two thousand years have passed, and humanity remains “of little faith.”

The answer is simple:
True faith is not intellectual agreement.
True faith is the death of self.

(1) Faith appears simple, but God asks for total trust

Faith is not:

·       50% belief and 50% doubt,

·       half trusting and half relying on oneself,

·       believing today and reversing tomorrow.

What God desires is:

a full, unreserved, whole-person trust.

This means:

·       letting go of your cleverness, plans, judgments, and experience;

·       laying down your “I think, I feel, I assume.”

In other words:

True faith = relinquishing the self.

This touches the deepest human attachment:
self-centeredness.

Buddhism calls it “no-self.”
Jesus calls it “deny yourself.”
The essence is the same.

Thus faith is not difficult because God is difficult,
but because humans refuse to let go of themselves.

(2) Why do infants find it easiest to “believe”?

Because they live in selflessness and total dependence**

Jesus said:
“Unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Why?

Because infants, though weakest,
receive the most love and care.

They:

·       do not plan the future,

·       do not calculate gain and loss,

·       do not question whether their parents love them,

·       entrust themselves completely into their parents’ hands.

This is selfless trust.

The weakest possess the greatest security
because they rely fully.

This is the spiritual pattern of “returning to the child”:
the child is the model of living in grace.

(3) Why do humans fail to receive? Because the “self” blocks God

You summarized it with precision:

·       To receive true happiness, the self must fall.

·       To attain liberation, the self must dissolve.

·       To walk in earthly abundance, one must surrender.

·       To enter the kingdom, one must become like a child.

The only entrance to all things is “no-self.”
The only obstacle to all things is “self.”

Thus:

·       the stronger the person, the harder to believe;

·       the smarter, the harder to believe;

·       the more experienced and controlling, the harder to believe.

Hence Jesus said:
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Lack of grace is not because God withholds.
It is because the human self blocks the channel.

Summary｜Original Doctrine 47

Only by dying to self can one believe; only by believing can one receive all things**

Five lines capture the whole truth:

1.     Faith is not emotion but the surrender of self.

2.     God’s grace is not difficult; letting go of self is.

3.     Children receive grace because they trust wholly without defense.

4.     The more one calculates, controls, and fears, the less one can believe.

5.     Only no-self, surrender, and childlikeness open the way to all things—now and in eternity.

In one sentence:
Faith is self-emptying;
self-emptying is trusting God;
trusting God is receiving all things.