What Are You Confident Of?
1 Thessalonians 5:18 In everything, give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
I have violated God’s will for me many times by complaining about a situation instead of giving thanks for it.
So, it would be a very honest confession on my part to say that I have known many times when I have not carried out God’s will perfectly in the details of my daily life since becoming a believer. I can assure you that this is not the only will of God I have ever violated. Hebrews 10 reveals another specific will of God for me that I seek to own every day of my life and am most grateful for.
Hebrews 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: 37 “For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. 38 Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” 39 But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.
I am not drawing back on having my faith rest in the finished work of Christ! He is my confidence and my righteousness. That is what I will stand on. It’s not my hit-and-miss track record as it pertains to the specific revealed will of God for daily living that tells me who I am in Him or whether or not I stand accepted. I will stand in faith that I might still approach.
I do not say this to diminish the value and importance of God’s will in specific areas of daily life. I share this simply to say that when we discover we have fallen short, we should not violate God’s major will, which is to believe and walk in faith in who Jesus is and what Jesus did for us.
Let’s allow our confidence to rest in Him and rejoice in the life He gives to us. Let’s do His will that comes after failure or in the midst of struggle.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
It is of great value to have confidence in His goodness and His invitation to approach at all times. Jesus gave His life to establish us in a relationship with the Father as sons. He did not die to enable us to improve our behavior and become loved and acceptable through our performance. Of course, knowing His love and being secure in it will definitely improve our behavior as we learn who he is and who we are in Him. But that is different than trying to behave in order to merit or earn His love and acceptance.
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We can’t love Him without knowing His love first, and we definitely cannot love others without the security of being loved by Him. I will confess I have not loved Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength and loved my neighbor as myself perfectly any more than I have given thanks perfectly. I need Jesus all the time, every day. I need His love and His merciful acceptance of me based on His finished work on my behalf. In this, I have confidence! He loves me all the time, and He has accepted me in the beloved (Christ).
We need to ask ourselves from time to time what we’re most confident about when it comes to our relationship with Him. If the answer we come up with isn’t His love and acceptance of us based on the completed work of Christ, then we need to preach the gospel of the New Covenant to ourselves again and possibly find someone preaching it to listen to over and over again until it settles in the depths of our souls concretely, restores our joy, and produces the fresh fruit of thanksgiving again.
