The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Confident"
"We will be faithful to God in direct proportion to how faithful we know and believe Him to be."
Left to ourselves, we are all helpless and hopeless. We did not make ourselves, we cannot sustain ourselves, and the Lord Jesus Christ stated the truth in the most stark terms: "Without Me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). This particularly applies to relationship with God, both in its origination and its maintenance. Our Savior came looking for us rather than we for Him in leading us to the new birth. He continues after we trust Him in terms of our flesh, which as the hymnwriter suggested, is "prone to wander" despite our Christ-inhabited spirit's desire to love, trust, and obey God. "I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind" (Luke 19:10; Romans 7:22-23). Thankfully, prone to wander does not characterize our faithful Shepherd, who ever fulfills His promise in working to motivate and empower our trust and obedience to God.
"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" (Philippians 1:6).
Persistent, insistent, and consistent characterizes our Lord. It is good that this is true because every one of us would wander completely out of His pasture if He did not fulfill His promise to "work in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Certainly, we play a vital role of response to such grace, whereby we "serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear" (Hebrews 12:28). However, our Father's role of leading and enabling must ever be known as the dynamic power of faith and faithfulness. God merits all glory for every step of obedience His sheep will ever take as He faithfully fulfills His relentless determination "to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (II Corinthians 9:8).
Are we "confident of this very thing?" To the degree we are will be the degree to which we respond to our Lord's presence and promise. We work out that which God works in as both recipients and responders to His grace (Philippians 2:12). Our confidence in His working empowers the consistency of our works as "the just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17). We will be faithful to God in direct proportion to how faithful we know and believe Him to be. "Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (II Corinthians 3:18).
Our Shepherd abides ever faithful in the execution of His loving purposes for us. He completes what He starts. He knows He can do this, and He has made a promise based on confidence in His own ability to finish the work He begins in all who believe in Him. We must join Him in the assurance of His capability. We did not begin our Christian life, but rather received by faith the gift offered by "the Author and Finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2). We no less require God's relentless execution for the living of our Christian life, and we no less require confidence in His faithful trustworthiness to keep His promises. He will not disappoint us, and our Shepherd's persistent, insistent, and consistent execution of His purpose will lead to our own faithfulness as we are "confident of this very thing."
"The Lord shall be thy confidence."
(Proverbs 3:26)
"We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works."
(Ephesians 2:10)
Weekly Memory Verse
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. (Philippians 1:6)
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