"Quietness and Confidence"

"Quietness and Confidence"   

    

     

   Excitement can be a wonderful thing, as led, motivated, and tempered by the Holy Spirit.

   "The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth" (Proverbs 28:7).

   Stirred emotions, however, can also lead us down paths of destruction.  This is especially true regarding spiritual matters.  Emotional stimulation can be a deceiver.  Our spiritual enemies are not above tempting us with deceptions about God and Truth that excite us while misleading us.  The carnal Corinthian believers were clearly thrilled by experiences that seemed valid, but which actually revealed their immaturity and ignorance (I Corinthians 14:12).  The Bible calls us to live "by faith" rather than by excitement (Roman 1:17).  Elation can accompany genuine spiritual experience of God and His ways.  However, this is not the norm.  Most of our Christian experience involves no feeling whatsoever.  Troubled emotions also frequently characterize our walk with the Lord.  This is exactly what we would expect in a life lived by faith in a God whose working in our lives so often occurs beyond the scope of our awareness and understanding.  Spiritual stability requires the capacity for reasoned, Biblically-based thought and decision.  "Let us watch and be sober" (I Thessalonians 5:6).  Excitement often does not coincide with such deliberation, and may in fact greatly hinder it.  Personally, I wouldn't enter a building designed by an architect who I knew to be greatly excited when he designed the blueprints for the structure.  Nor do I expect that my best moments of faith and faithfulness will occur when I'm thrilled rather than temperate.  "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15).

   Certainly Heaven will often sound and resound with sounds of joyful elation, elicited by the goodness and greatness of God.  However, I also anticipate much quietness of contemplation among the saints in eternity.  Both aspects of our Lord's working in our hearts will be perfectly guided by the Holy Spirit.  Presently, we have our moments of genuine and beneficial excitement for which we give many thanks.  Moderation of emotion, however, will guide most of our walk with the Lord as the Holy Spirit leads us in the self-control that necessarily emphasizes thought rather than feeling.  Few truths more prepare us for the Christian life as it actually is, and for walking with our Lord in the peace not dependent on emotion, but on Truth.

"The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever."

(Isaiah 32:17)

Weekly Memory Verse 

   The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse."

(Romans 1:20)