“Confidence”

Having confidence in God's abilities is something I have wavered in repeatedly in my life. Most of the time I believe in my mind that God can and will do great things in and through my life but there is a disconnect between my mind and my heart. Sometimes I sense fear or a wavering of unbelief sneaking around within me. I want to be fully confident in God's abilities all of the time but that is not always the reality for me and I think for most people. I desire to be fully confident in all of God's promises.

A great example of the confidence I long to possess is found in Elijah! In 1^st Kings 18 the Bible reveals the kind of confidence Elijah had in God. Initially, in verse 21 Elijah is chastising the people to make a choice – "either God is real or he isn't but whichever you believe live accordingly!" How often do we need to get our lives in check to live according to what we say we believe? We believe or we don't, there seems to be no gray area here. Really we are to "Be Holy as I Am Holy!"

Elijah goes on to challenge them in a "my God verses your god deal" of whose god would show up in fire first. Elijah is bold enough and confident enough to say "look, here is the altar with my offering on it. Not only do I trust God to show up in fire on my altar but I am drenching it with water and confident enough to know that my God will show up in fire and he will dry up the water that soaks my offering and is pooled around my offering!" Now that is confidence! In today's systems that would be like us saying "hey, I know I have no money, no job and I have no idea what next month holds for me but I KNOW that my God will supply ALL I need!"

Then Elijah in verse 36 begins to pray so that God would answer and the people would know He is God. Sure enough, exactly as Elijah knew that He would, the Lord came with fire. It took Elijah confidence and boldness, it took him knowing and trusting God without wavering… this is an intimate relationship with the Lord, this is what I long for. As believers we need to be this confident in the promises of God, we need to walk intimately with Him.

Without skipping a beat Elijah moves on to the next thing at hand as if to say "good, now that you all know who God is let's get to work because a heavy rain is on the way". Again Elijah is fully confident of what God is doing moment by moment. Elijah tells his servant in verse 43 to go look for the rain clouds but the servant sees nothing. Elijah's confidence is so great that what is seen does not move him, he tells the servant to go back seven times! Never once, was Elijah moved by the fact that what they saw did not line up with what he knew God would do. How often are we so easily moved by what we see and feel? We need this kind of confidence to rise up in us and I believe it will as we draw near Him!

Once the rain clouds were upon them Elijah still continued to move with the Lord, he understood what the power of God in/on him could/would do and he was ready to do it! In verse 45 it tells us that Elijah "tucked in his cloak and ran ahead of the chariot…" Wow! Elijah recognized the power of God and was ready to yield to whatever God wanted to do. Elijah took physical steps to yield to God's power. Are we ready? Are we confident enough to trust and rely on God? Are we bold enough to stay the course no matter what we see or feel? Are we walking intimately with the Lord so that He can work through us that others could see who God is? I long to walk as Elijah walked fully confident of who God is, fully aware of what God would do and completely ready to yield to His plan!