Confidence

So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. Hebrews 10:35,36 NIV

In our youth, we feel that we can take on the world, and nothing will be able to get in our way. But as we get older, we start to realise that our confidence ebbs as we find out that there are some things, no make that many things we just can’t do anymore. It’s a stark truth and reality, and something we can’t change.

This verse gives me some comfort because the rich reward is not limited only to those who have boundless confidence. For me, the key word is not ‘confidence’, but to ‘persevere’ doing the will of God. Then, and only then it becomes certain, that we will receive God’s promise.

However, there is a serious note of caution. I started out to say that our confidence can ebb, and that is true as life affects us, but we are warned ‘do not throw away your confidence’. As with many things in the Christian life, we have choices, and here we have a choice to make too. If our God given free will allows us to throw our confidence away, thus losing the promise, we must also have that same free will to retain our confidence! With the strength given by God, we have the certainty of receiving the promise of God. What could be better than to be in the will of God, and in His favour?

Groans

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. Romans 8:25-27 NIV

The KJV Bible uses the word ‘groanings’ in this passage, and in some ways this carries the feelings in a little better manner. It’s the Spirit that intercedes for us in this way, but it doesn’t take much imagination to show that we also find ourselves praying in wordless groans! We don’t know why, but we feel that something isn’t right in our lives, or family, or church, or leadership, so we adopt a groaning for our petitions because we can’t put it into words.

I’m sure you will get the feeling at times that something isn’t quite right, but you can’t put your finger on it exactly. At work, school, or in the house that old red light comes on and for the life of us, we don’t understand why. Then a few days, or weeks, or perhaps even years, the truth emerges and your 6th sense was shown to be right. The question is, did we act on that ‘feeling’? Or did we just file it away under ‘it will pass’?

It would serve us well to take note of the warning light, and if possible check it out, or even act on it when we feel strongly enough that the feeling will grow bigger until it takes over. We have the God given senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste, but we are also granted some foreknowledge of something wrong. It is called discernment, and is often wrongly and sadly abused to malign and castigate fellow believers who think or act differently from us.