Confidence

“Good comes to those who lend money generously
    and conduct their business fairly. 
Such people will not be overcome by evil.
    Those who are righteous will be long remembered.
They do not fear bad news;
    they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
They are confident and fearless
    and can face their foes triumphantly.“
Psalm 112:5-8 NLT

To be a confident person in this day and age can be a wonderful place, and is even better if that confidence is based on our trust in the Lord. You see, to be truly effective, the confidence we have must be founded on a place of security, and that doesn’t include our own human understanding and abilities. Our prisons contain many confident people, but their confidence was misplaced and underpinned by wrong foundations and motives.

This Psalm presents a counter-cultural world, in which fairness, in this case in regard to money, is recognised and imputed as righteousness. And from that place, such people know that they are aligned with God’s Kingdom and therefore can trust God to look after and care for them. In today’s Covid-ridden society, bad news is also pandemic, and it induces high levels of anxiety in people, bringing on ever-increasing degrees of mental health challenges. But the “such people” in our Psalm are balanced mentally and “do not fear bad news“. And from their position of God-confidence, they can face the world fearlessly. 1 John 4:4 reads, “But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.”

So on our pilgrimage in this world, a journey full of the pandemics of life, we are in a position of unassailable confidence. Quite simply, we have a God who cares for us, and we have the knowledge that the Holy Spirit within us is a true foundation, stronger than anything to be found in this world. But what should we do with our confidence? Sit at home in a smug, warm glow, thinking like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11, “The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people…”? No. God has given us a confident ability to reach an anxious and sin-soaked world with His message of hope. Let’s do it!