The Confidence of More
Hebrews 6: 10-12 (10) For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (11) And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: (12) That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
There is no doubt, all of us relish assurance, confidence, and stability. Chaos and turmoil are seemingly always in motion, and we make our best attempt to put the fire out, and get back to a place where we are stable and comfortable. In all of this, our confidence takes hit after hit, and we just don’t have the assurance we desire, the confidence in what we are doing for God, and for one another. Our ministry among people can easily cause us to doubt, and even fear, we are not in the right place, doing the right thing at the right time.
A supervisor once told me regarding a piece of equipment...if you are running this pump, and the engine falls off, keep going like nothing happened! My reply, “Uh, but something happened, and it is not good, and disaster could be imminent!” The lesson was this, if the negative happens, don’t let it break your confidence and assurance in the bigger realm. Let the confidence in what you already know to be your assurance for the greater goal. Our confidence and assurance in the things of God will lead us to ‘more’, the miracle of the day should not pass by because we don’t have the confidence God is making a way where there seems to be no way!
Our daily walk with God strengthens as we continue to delve deeper into his spirit. Strength carries with it confidence, and our trust in the God who is our strength and buckler assures us, the assurance he is not only with us and cares for us, but he is there to help us fight our battles, overcome the works of the enemy, work through our weakness and insecurity, and pick us up when we stumble.
We may ask ourselves, what ‘more’ can God do for me? He already does so much; he is my provider, rock, joy, hope, and many other things. He continues to be all he said he would be. His promises and benefits he brings to our lives daily are such blessings. What else is there? After all, Hebrews 6: 10 is very clear God is not going to forget us.
With all God does for us, it is very easy for us to become complacent, even slothful (Verse 12). The common attribute of slothful is lazy, but there is a companion definition to slothful of “inert.” To be inert is “lacking the ability or strength to move.” Something inert can no longer move on its own and lacks the power to effect any kind of positive impact on anything else. We must not be inert children of God. This is why God, through the Holy Ghost, gives us power, but if we lack confidence in him, our power is circumvented, our effort lacks the diligence to go on, and our assurance becomes unstable.
Ephesians 3 speaks of the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” The knowledge God is always going to have ‘more’ for his people should now be undeniable to us.
Those things which were a mystery to us become clearer as we get ‘more’ of God. Our confidence, and thus our spiritual strength carry us to depths of his spirit to where finally, in Ephesians 3: 12 we understand, “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.”
Hebrews 10: 35 encourages us by telling us “Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.”
Phillippians 1: 6 gives us even more encouragement and confidence, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” God did not fill us with the Holy Ghost and power to not have the confidence he would carry us through, guide us through the course of our life, and then let us become inert, without the ability to move. The God of ‘more’ is the God of miracles we have not seen, the God of healings for diseases we have never heard of, the provider of spiritual gifts we didn’t know we could have, and the fullness of his promises yet to come!
Finally, let’s look at I John 5: 14-15, “(14) And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: (15) and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” Our desire for more of God is rooted in all of the confidence and trust we have in him. Pray for increased confidence and boldness in the Holy Ghost, God is faithful and sure to provide his will for your life to grow more and more!