Confidence

Happy New Year! I’m sure that many of you are still recuperating from the holiday season as we are. In spite of all the hustle and bustle, it was great to be with our families again.

As the saying goes: Christmas is the season for giving. It’s also true that the new year is the season for returning. Statistics show that people return around $380 billion worth of goods each year. Of this amount, $90 billion is processed during the holidays. Many returned items have been damaged to an extent where they cannot be resold. This amounts to roughly 5 billion pounds of returned items ending up in a landfill. When someone returns a gift, they are basically stating that their gift is not considered valuable enough to keep.

On the spiritual side, it seems that the return lines are just as packed. As one lady told to us, “You just don’t realize how bad I was hurt.” It sounds to me that her confidence in God was about to make a trip to the spiritual returns department.

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.

Hebrews 10:35

What is the author speaking of here? The history behind this verse references a cowardly soldier, who throws away his shield and runs away from the battle. The ancient women, when presenting the shields to their men going to battle, had this saying: “Either bring this shield back, or be brought back upon it.” It was the custom of bringing back a slain soldier on his own shield, as proof that he had clung to it until his last breath, and had been faithful to his country. So Paul is telling us to cling to our confidence in God because there is an eternal reward waiting!

There was a young family who were faithful members of their church and were always there every Sunday. One Monday morning, the husband was on a job site delivering building supplies. As he waited in the line of trucks, he sat with his Bible in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other hand. At that time a crane was moving a massive steel beam over the job site. At the moment it was over the cab, the massive beam slipped. It landed directly on top of the husband’s truck and drove his body through the cab and four feet into the ground.

After the funeral, the wife called the pastor. “Pastor I want you to schedule a praise service at church. I just want everyone to thank God for how He’s helping me through this tragedy.” A few weeks later, her parents were coming to visit and were hit head on by a drunk driver and instantly killed. Now there was a double funeral to get through. Afterwards, the young woman picked up the phone and called the pastor again. “Pastor, I need you to schedule a second praise service. I just want everyone to thank God with me for how He is helping me through this.”

Friend, the trial that threatens to break you can become the trial that makes you. No matter what this new year may bring, resolve in your heart to get a tighter grip on your confidence in God.

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow, because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future, life is worth the living because He lives!

God bless you and Happy New Year!