Confidence

I wonder… have you ever chosen to have confidence in your own human effort?

Have you ever jokingly said, “Don’t pray that prayer…it’s a dangerous one.”? I know it’s a joke, but I do not find it funny. I struggle when I hear it, because I want more change in me.  I want to know His love for me even deeper still.   I want to love Him back with even more of my being.  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.  Why would we not ask Him? Why would we joke about His goodness like it is not good? What could we be protecting a little bit in our hearts that makes His love for us dangerous? Why would we not cast aside that kind of thought? Do the words in that joke have confidence in His Word or not?

I believe our response to His grace in our lives should be a joyful “YES, I need that! I have no confidence in my flesh.”  God has planted all that I need for Godly living in me, but He is working it out changing my soul from the inside out.  (Because of His grace in my life I can rejoice when I fall into various trials…because He is doing a great work in me.)
His Word says that we have been given all things that pertain to godliness.  It is only by His Spirit that we are enabled to walk and steward this supernatural gift. How much more then should we be desiring to receive the implanted word in its strength; and receiving it in meekness?

Strength does not come from ease.  Strength comes from resistance. 

One of the amazing things about God’s love is that He never leaves us.  So as we are walking through trials, times of testing of our faith, times of resistance; we can know that He is going before us, with us and even carrying us.  He has hedged us in behind and before and not a word is on our tongue before He knows it all together.  He never leaves us, nor forsakes us.  There is a verse in Isaiah 46 that says “Listen to Me…Who have been upheld by Me from birth, who have been carried from the womb, even to your old age I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you.  I have made and I will bear; even I will carry and deliver you.”

This thought of His protection for us reminds me of some verses in Exodus:  “Behold I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place I have prepared.  Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions, for My name is in Him.  But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries….I will send my fear before you…Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land…

It is by His grace that we are shown our lack.  It is by His grace that we can ask Him for the provision that is already there, that we need to receive in a greater measure.  He DOESN’T show us our lack and say “HA HA you are on your own.”  He carries us through.    Little by little He drives out the things that don’t belong and strengthens us in His grace.

We are confident in Him, knowing He is faithful to finish the work that He started in us.  He is not finished with us yet, we press on, that we may lay hold of that which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of us.  We do not count ourselves to have apprehended; but the one thing we do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead…we press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.