***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: And we praise you indeed that through your initiative and the great grace which governs and rules in your love and in your will, we have been washed in your blood. We are thankful to know that it is entirely out of our hands that Jesus paid it all and that there’s not a cent left, there’s not an ounce left, there’s not any unit left for us to pay, that entirely by your mercy you have saved us. Now Lord, strengthen us that we might grow in grace and that we might show forth your love and power every moment of the day as we live, as we sleep, as we eat and walk and play and work and use these moments now together over thy word for that end. For we ask it on behalf of Christ. Amen.
I want to speak to you this evening about confidence and I’d like to read the 46th Psalm to begin with and if you’d care to turn with that, to that with me. I’m really talking about strength but I’m not going to talk about it directly. I’m going to talk about where it comes from and I’ll give you my text in a moment but I’d like to bring the general picture before you with this great Psalm, Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed. Now I don’t mean to be clever in saying that this is a very appropriate verse as we’re living now through an experience in which many people are seeing the earth move out from under them and that’s a frightening prospect. These people knew what earthquakes were and he’s talking about a real life situation. And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, for there is a river the streams thereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy places, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved. He uttered his voice and the earth melted. The Lord of Hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Come and behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease under the ends of the earth. He breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder. He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I am exalted among the heathen. I am exalted in the earth. The Lord of Hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. The text I’d like to take this evening is in the thirtieth chapter of Isaiah and the fifteenth verse. Isaiah here is dealing with a group of people who are scared to death and because they’re scared to death they’re running all over the area trying to get some help. They are attempting to get help from other people, other nations. They are attempting to get help from technical innovations if you wish. They’re trying to get up a bunch of horses for cavalry to fight their battles and in the midst of this the prophet speaks for God and says, verse 15, For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall ye be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.
One of the things that strikes me most strongly as I attempt to minister in the churches and as I attempt to teach and live outside of the churches is how little confidence people have. Even in the things in which they are supposed to be experts, how very little confidence they have. If you take them outside of very narrow boundaries where their habits allow them to sleep through what they are doing pretty well and they never have to ask themselves deep questions about whether or not things are going to work well or if they’re going to bring off what they have at hand, they immediately lose all the confidence that they have. And indeed it turns out that what passes for confidence usually is not confidence at all, but perhaps is more rightly called unconsciousness. We live in our houses on the hillside in the dirt that will slide away when the rains come. What is it that keeps us there? Well, perhaps a confidence, but that confidence in so far as it is there rests more on ignorance and unconsciousness than anything else. Confidence is a very rare thing. Now may I just turn it to the point to where it concerns us and say that I find among the fellowship of the church a very great lack of confidence. For example, a very great lack of confidence in their ability to understand the simple teachings of Christ. A very great lack of confidence in their ability to pray and get an answer. A very great lack of confidence in their capacity to witness in an effective manner to other people. I find, I must say, a very great lack of confidence among Christians when they face the great questions of their own guilt and of how death is going to be and what it is going to be like when they walk through the valley of the shadow. And that’s why I want to speak to you tonight about confidence.
And I want to bring us to think about why we may be so weak and why we may lack confidence.
Let me give you a couple of other verses and I’m going to deal with these in more length in just a moment. But I want you to have these to go with the text which I’ve just read to you. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength. One of the most amazing verses in all of the Bible to me is in 2 Corinthians 5. And here we have a man talking who had faced everything. This is the Apostle Paul and it’s difficult to think of a situation in which life would be more difficult than the situations in which he had lived. And now he says in verse 6 of this chapter, therefore we are always confident. Always confident. Knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight. We are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Paul says he is always confident. Now I don’t know how many people you know who will be able to say that. Always confident. But I want to say to you, and I will turn back to this a little bit later if I have time, the same passage, but I want to say to you that if you wish to understand why Paul was the man and the minister that he was, you have to understand it was because he was always confident. It is confidence in God that allowed him to simply go ahead, that allowed him to speak with the certainty that when he spake, God spake.
Let me take you to an incident in Paul’s life. If you look in the book of Acts to the thirteenth chapter you will find on their first, what is called Paul’s first missionary journey, he comes to the isle of Cyprus and there they preach the word of God, verse five. As they go through the isle from the east end to the west they come to Pappas and there they found, verse six, a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-Jesus. And this fellow was associated with one of the political figures there, or military figures, a leader, and this leader called Paul and asked him to hear the word of God from him, verse seven. But the sorcerer withstood them and seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith. Now watch what Saul does in this case. Then Saul, filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him and said, O full of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee. Now this is a hallmark of Paul’s ministry. Paul never tried to bully anyone in his own strength. He never tried to get up a political movement to repress, suppress, change anybody’s mind, throw anybody out. He just simply said, Paul, I will come to you and the power of God’s word through me will set you straight. And he had to do that once in the Corinthian church, and we find interesting remarks in some of his letters indicating now, you don’t want me to have to do that again, do you?
Now what you have to understand is that this man, Paul, had power with God, which meant that when he spake, God acted. Let me ask you this, put yourself in Paul’s place now and ask yourself, you’re going to have to deal with Ilimas the sorcerer, and you say the words in verse 10. You are going to do it. You’re the one who must shut this person up. And you say verse 11, Now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness, and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand.
I’m afraid I would stutter a bit. I’ll tell you frankly, my confidence is not up to that. But Paul had gone through a process of preparation and training, which gave him complete certainty, complete confidence that he was working with God. I’m able to believe that if it is in God’s purposes for me, he will bring me to that place. But I haven’t gone through yet what Paul went through. I haven’t been taught his lessons. And what I’m saying to you is that when Paul says he is always confident, brother, you’d better believe he means he’s always confident. And I submit this to you as just an illustration of the kind of confidence that he had. And just in case it isn’t clear, I want to reread those words in verse 11. Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee. Now he didn’t say, Elamis, my hand is upon you. He didn’t say, I’m going to whack you. You see, that’s the difference between the work of the flesh and the work of the Spirit. The work of the flesh says very simply, I will have confidence in that which I can accomplish by my natural powers. But see, Paul had learned something which we all must learn, and that is when we’re in the work of the Lord, we’re in the work of the Lord. We’re not in our work. And consequently, when we go forward in the work of the Lord, we must not attempt to accomplish that by our own physical means. We must not use merely the instrumentalities of the strength of the flesh to accomplish what we set out to do for God. Well, another way of putting that is to say, we must insofar as the measure of our faith allows and dictates, we must put ourselves in a position where God has to bail us out. Right? That’s what we must do if we want to see the work of God. Now, I mean, suppose Paul had said, Elamis, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shall be blind for a season. And Elamis hadn’t gone blind for a season. What about Paul then? What you have to say is Paul wouldn’t have known what he was talking about, would he?
Now Paul was always confident. The grounds for that confidence was his experience of the cooperation of God in his life and in his ministry. In the passage in which I’ve read this statement of Paul’s, therefore we are always confident, Paul is specifically dealing with the issue of death. He is dealing with his confidence very specifically in the fact that whether he is alive or he’s dead, he’s in the hands of God. He says, opening the first verse there of the fifth chapter of 2 Corinthians, for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God and a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. You see, that’s the ultimate confidence. That’s the Paul who could say, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Because for him to live was Christ, then certainly to die was gain, not otherwise. But this was Paul’s confidence for life or for death. And the cry of Job, though he slay me, yet will I trust him, is a mark of that kind of confidence which Paul had. And it manifested itself in his ministry. It manifested itself in his imprisonments. It manifested itself in the beatings he got as well as in the power which he exercised over those who opposed the gospel.
Let me turn to another passage now in 1 John, the third chapter. And here we have another classical passage in the New Testament writings on this matter of confidence. Now, as we saw previously, Paul’s confidence in God, which was with him always, deriving from his consciousness of God’s cooperation in his life and in his ministry. So we see here a confidence which stems from a certainty, from a knowledge of the conformity of the inward man and the outward walk to the will of God. John has just been discussing in verse 17 the giving out of this world’s goods to those in need. And he says in verse 18, my little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence towards God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments and do those things which are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us.
Now I read the whole passage because it is necessary to understand the basis of the confidence which is spoken in verse 21. If our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God. I find that there are three things which the heart uses to condemn people, and I find many folk in the church who are condemned in their heart. Now let’s try to be as plain as possible about this condemnation of the heart. What does it mean? It just means that there is somehow a feeling that we’re not right. And I find that the confidence of the folk in the church, young and old, of all kinds, colors, sizes, the confidence of the people in the church is severely undermined by a feeling of somehow, I’m not right. And I say I think there are three things and I want to mention them, then I’m going to return to this passage for some comments.
First of all, there is the condemnation of the heart for what we are, for what we are. I mean very simply for the fact that we may be a man or a woman. We may be from California or Wisconsin or Brazil or wherever it may be from. We may have a certain type of body. We may be fat or thin or tall or short or we may have a certain type of mind. This is a terrible condemnation that many people really labor under. They just feel they’re stupid. And that’s a great source of condemnation from the heart. Somehow I’m just, just me is not right. Oh, how we hurt people when we train them to believe that there’s something wrong with them just because of what they are. And the world is full of those who have something to sell or something to get, who will condemn others and build up associations in their minds that make them condemn themselves.
People are condemned because of the way they dress. They’re condemned because of the way they smell. They’re condemned because they don’t have any hair. They’re condemned because they have too much hair. They’re condemned because they’re too fat, they’re too thin. They’re condemned because they’re women. They’re condemned because they’re girls. They’re condemned because they’re boys, they’re condemned. How do you get out of that? You don’t. That’s the essential nature of a fallen world is that it is filled with condemnation. Everyone is wrong simply because of what they are. Now you don’t need to look deeply back at that to understand that that’s a part of the fundamental strategy of the devil to lead everyone to believe that God is not good. God made you, you are what you are, and you’re self-condemned because of what you are, and therefore how could God really be good?
And then we condemn ourselves because of where we are, not just because of what we are, but because of where we are. And I think this is a little bit easier to deal with than the other, but it is very rare that you find anyone who really feels completely right and good because of the job they hold, or because of the place they live, or because of the family they are in. There is so much shame in families, shame that has no place, by and large, but it’s there. Children ashamed of their parents, and parents ashamed of their children, husbands ashamed of their wives, and wives ashamed of their husbands. Shame in a family, and you will very frequently find people that just have this great mass of condemnation just because they’re in a certain family. Now I wish it were not so, and I would like to be able to say, oh, this is just an illusion, but it isn’t. Family, job, education, all of these things, where people are, constant condemnation because of somehow feeling, this is just not right, I can’t escape it, I can’t get out of it, and so on, but it’s just not right.
And then thirdly, there is the condemnation of what we do. This, of course, is one area where we have to say that much of the condemnation is completely justified, but you know, on the other hand, we have to say that a lot of the others completely justified too. If you just want to condemn and have a basis for condemnation, you can find lots of it in all of these areas. Condemnation because of what we do. See, one of these, one of the reasons why it is so difficult for people to witness to those who know them well and who are in their families is simply because of shame over the fact that those who know them well know the things they do and have done. You may have read the shocking statistics on wife beating. We don’t get them on husband beating because the husband is ashamed to own up, his wife beats him up. Today in the paper it indicated that one out of every two women will be beaten up either by a son or a husband, one out of every two. If you didn’t read the statistics on that in today’s paper, you ought to try to find it and read it.
You see, that’s a part of the secret shame of what we do, the condemnation. There’s this condemnation for sin, wrongdoing, then there’s so much condemnation for things that aren’t sin, just mistakes. For example, a failure in business. Many times the condemnation for having failed in business. Or a woman who has children but she can’t have any boys and there is a condemnation set up. I remember a dear Christian lady that I knew who had been divorced twice because she couldn’t get pregnant and she was married again. God gave her children, but she bore that in her heart and it will never be erased. The condemnation, the things we do, the things we don’t do,
all of this condemnation just heaps up. And the effect of that is to make people completely without strength, completely without power, completely without faith in God, beyond the bare minimum of believing that somehow God in his mercy is going to save them and get them into heaven when they die.
And now I want to return you to the passage that I just read. If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knoweth all things. I want to give you two senses of that verse and one you will have already thought of because we all tend to think of God as the all-time champion cosmic biggest condimmer, right? We think God can condemn you like no one can condemn you. And so when we read this verse and we say if our heart, our little dumb ignorant heart condemns us, boy, just wait till God gets started at it, right? I mean, he’ll really do it then. And that, you know, is there something to that reading. If our heart condemns us, think of how much better, more thoroughly God knows us than our heart knows us. And that’s a terrifying thought. If our heart condemns us, God really could condemn us. But let me give you another reading of that verse, and I think it is a legitimate reading. And that is sometimes our heart condemns us for things which God does not condemn us. Your heart may condemn you because you can’t have children. Your heart may condemn you because you failed in business. Your heart may condemn you for all kinds of things. Now I want to remind you that Satan is described in one important passage as the accuser of the brethren. He knows that accusation destroys. Unless you have got law insurance or a good friend in a law company, a mere suit or accusation before the law can destroy you financially today. And there are many, many times that people, especially the sort of respectable middle-class people such as you or I, we get in a situation where there’s some accident or something and we may be faced with an unjust accusation. But it is much cheaper to give people what they want than it is to fight it. Now let me tell you that Satan knows that if he can merely institute a constant accusation at you, he has practically destroyed you because you’re going to have to spend all of your time dealing with that accusation. That’s why it’s important to understand the second reading of this verse. It is important to be able to say when my heart condemns me on many occasions, it’s important for me able to say God is greater than my old condemning heart and he knows that on that point there is nothing to be condemned.
Now that extends all the way to my sins in the past. Many folk have been forgiven on the basis of their faith in the marriage of Christ and his death for them, but they’ve never forgiven themselves. They have never learned the release from the old accusing heart. I just share with you this one thing. I don’t know you folk very well and so I’m not talking to any of you in particular, but I can tell you in many of the churches I go, some of the some of the greatest grievances lie over failures in family life. Failures of children, failures with mates. And sometimes it’s impossible in the church to discuss these matters because of the condemnation which comes in response to it. I know a church over in West Los Angeles I used to be associated with and they have in many ways a fine work, but they will not allow a divorced person to teach a Sunday school class. Now they haven’t yet come to the place where they won’t take their offerings, but they will not allow them to teach a Sunday school class. They don’t seem to understand that it is not a matter of saying that divorce is fine and it’s a great experience and everybody ought to have one. They don’t seem to understand that somehow you have to get beyond the point of condemnation and you have to understand the great statement of Jesus, I am not come to condemn the world. Condemnation does not save anyone. You seldom ever condemn anyone for anything that they’re not already condemning themselves about. Normally they’ve been doing it quite a while before you got there. I find in trying to counsel with people that all I have to do is sit and listen. If they’ve done something wrong, in a little while it will come out and very shortly after it comes out, there will come a long and heartbreaking string of self-condemnation for their failure. And if you look at it, then you know why they’re weak. You know why they’re struggling. You know why they just seem they cannot go. It is because their confidence has been undermined and destroyed and they’re just barely hanging on. Confidence destroyed by condemnation. Very often many folk who are making the most noise and who are the most zealously driven and work the hardest are the very ones who feel most condemned in their hearts. That’s why in that verse in Isaiah you see, in quietness and confidence will be your stream. There’s this great connection between quietness and confidence. In the psalm which were read at the beginning of the discussion, we read those magnificent words, be still and know that I am God. In the 12th chapter of Matthew we see this great description of the Messiah taken again out of the book of Isaiah. Behold my servant, verse 18 of chapter 12, behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him and he shall show judgment unto the Gentiles. He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break and smoking flax shall he not quench till he sends forth judgment unto victory and in his name the Gentiles shall trust. And Jesus stood before Pilate and Pilate exhorted him to speak up in his own defense. The scripture says he answered him never a word. Never a word. You see, he knew. He had confidence. We should consider Jesus who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of God. Quietness and confidence go together.
I want to talk to you now on a little more practical level. I want to raise the question of how we begin to find the confidence that will allow us to stand before God in the manner in which Paul stood before God and lived before him and which will allow us to live in this manner that John speaks of here when he says, and whatsoever we ask we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. You see? What great confidence that was. Paul could say, Elamis, you’re going to be blind. The hand of the Lord is upon you. How could he do that? Well, he could do that because he knew that he was in God’s good will and that God’s will would prevail in the particular circumstances in which he was. You see, Paul called the Corinthians. He said, we are co-labourers with God. It is that knowledge of being in the will of God that gives the confidence which we see in these people. And it is that same knowledge, you see, that John has when he says, because we keep his commandments and do those things which are pleasing in his sight, as if somehow it was just like, you know, reading the morning newspaper. Well, this is why it is. This is why we have confidence. This is the way it works.
Now, let me say that if we’re going to know this confidence, we have to remember that the primary place that God works with us is in the particular circumstances of our lives. It is, first of all, where we live. It’s in our home. It’s there. And that doesn’t matter whether you live alone or you have a young family or a bunch of grandchildren living with you or just you and your mate or you and a sister or you and a brother or however your arrangements are. You have a home. And I find that one of the hardest things to get people to do is to understand that there is the will of God for you, your home. We make such a mystery of the will of God. But let me tell you very frankly that the surest sign that it is God’s will that you be where you are is that you are there. Now, if you say no that’s not true, then what you’re saying is God does not run my life. The surest sign that it is God’s will that you be where you are is that you’re there. You can find a million reasons for believing everything else, and if you do, you will lack confidence and be miserable until you die and go to heaven at least. It is at the point where you say this, where I am, is God’s will for me. It is here that I will see his blessings. It is with this body. It is in this place. It is with this job. It is with this education, this mind, with these children, with these relatives, these neighbors. That is the place. You see, until you accept it in that way, you can never move beyond it with confidence in the power and truth of God. You have to start there. If you keep throwing it away, you will never know the blessing of God. Why? Because the only place God can bless you is where you are, and you can’t be no place, and you can’t be nobody. See, you’ve got to be someplace, and you’ve got to be you. And until you accept that and start there, you will never have confidence. You will be condemned because you will never open yourself to the blessing of God so that you will know his power, both in accomplishing his will and in walking in his commandments. You can only begin where you are.
Oh, I wish I could make that not sound so trivial and silly, because it is the most profound truth at a practical level of knowing God personally that you will ever hear. Moses drew near to see the burning bush and had no idea what was happening. God had to tell him, take your shoes off, Moses, you’re standing on holy ground. Now, the measure of your faith in Christ and in God is whether or not you can believe that where you are standing is holy ground. Where you are now is holy ground. If you are going to know the quietness and confidence which is strength, you must exercise that quietness and that confidence where you are.
I must say again that one of the reasons that makes it so difficult for us to do it is because you see there, it is there where we are. It is in our family. It is in this place that we stand that people around us know our elemental shames and failures. They know it. They know all of it. And all the silly things as well as the justifiable thing which the accuser uses to constantly nail us to the wall, they know and they sometimes help. And even if they don’t help him do it, it’s enough that they know sometimes just to keep us constantly undermined.
Now, I have to tell you, you see, where we go for help on that, because if we don’t solve that problem, we’re constantly ruined. And what we have to say is that when we feel the brunt of those shames coming upon us, we must remember that the basis of our confidence is not our self. You see, it’s at this point that we really come to know whether or not we believe that we’re saved by the merits of Christ. It is at the point where we can completely rest upon that justification in the presence of those who all know all about us, who know the elemental things that we have failed in. In their presence can we say, as Paul says, it is Christ who died. It is Christ who justified. If we can come to that place of faith in the merits of Christ so abundantly that we do not justify ourselves before men, then we’re in the place to say, Lord, this place where I am, this is the house of God. This is the holy place. I am the light of the world. I am the salt of the earth. If my salt has lost its savor, there won’t be any. If my light does not shine where I am, it will be darkness. And to take that place, whether it’s working in a Taco Bell or a machine shop or teaching some school somewhere or running a home or running a bank or whatever it may be, and say, this is it. This is the place, the holy place that God has given me.
Pray that your ministry will speak to you in such a way as to create faith in that fact. The function of the ministry is to speak the word of God in such a way that people believe. Pray that you will be given such a ministry from your midst or whoever comes by or on the radio or wherever it may be, that God will speak the word and you will see as Moses saw that burning bush and heard that voice. And you will know, pray, that you will know that where you are is God’s holy place. And when you do, you will begin to experience, as a result of that faith, you will begin to experience the good will of God being accomplished in you in such a way that you will have confidence and you will be able to walk and speak and act in the manner in which Paul spoke and in the manner in which John spoke as you grow up into the image of men and women in Christ.
You can begin by offering your family. You can begin by offering the tacos you make at the Taco Bell or whatever it is you do, offering them to God with his blessing. I remember once long, years ago, back in Missouri, I was preaching in what used to be called protracted meetings. I was preaching in a protracted meeting and I said that no matter what you were doing, if you were plowing corn with a double shovel and a mule, you ought to pray that God would bless that mule and bless that double shovel. And the preacher who was the pastor at that church was flabbergasted with this idea, the idea that you should pray over everything, that you should surrender everything to God. You see, we keep looking for the big thing to come along. You say, Lord, send me something big so that you can bless it. You know what is under that? Under that is the rejection of the you that God has already made. You say, I’m not good enough to just be blessed for what I am and what I’m doing. It isn’t good enough to be making good tacos to feed hungry people. It’s got to be something big. You know what the name of that is? Well, there are a lot of names of it. The one name of it is just simple egoism. Just simple egoism. It leads to the rejection of the small thing. There’s a lovely passage in the book of Jeremiah in which the scribe of Jeremiah, a man named Baruch, was really thinking about whether or not he ought to change jobs. Jeremiah was having a very bad time, and it’s a wonder he was alive. And Baruch was suffering because Baruch was associated with Jeremiah. And he got to thinking about this, and Jeremiah read his mind. And Jeremiah said to him in effect from the Lord, he said to him, Baruch, you’ve been taking on pitifully. You’ve been really moaning and groaning, saying, oh, what’s going to happen to me, and so on. And the word Jeremiah gave to him was, seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not, because I will destroy all flesh that I will give your life to you. You’ll have your life wherever you go. You assured Baruch that he would have a life before him. We must learn to accept that life which God has given us, just where we are, and say, this is the household of God. And when we meet God with that faith, and that means when you go out of here tonight, that means when you get up in the morning to surrender that day to God where you are. And as you do so, you will see your confidence growth because your faith will be met by God in the small ways of your life, and he leads you to greater things. That’s the path of faith. That’s the path of confidence and quietness, which is your strength and mine in so far as we walk in the way of Christ. Let’s pray together.
Lord, we are thankful for these good words from the scripture which you have left for us, and we pray that you will speak in our hearts and minds as we go home this evening and as we walk through this coming week. May we learn the lessons which these great soldiers of yours, Paul and John and others, learned as they walked in the way, the lesson of confidence because the will of God is accepted by them where they are, and they’ve learned to walk in your will by your grace. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.