Today we continued looking at confidence in God, and focussed on two verses: Psalm 27:13 where David proclaims ‘I remain confident of this: that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living’ and Philippians 1:6 when Paul writes, ‘being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.’
Our confidence ultimately must be in God, and especially in His character. God is good (see Ps 119:68), and we need an assurance of His goodness and ability to work for good in all circumstances (Rom 8:28) if we are to remain standing when the storms of life hit us. So often, we cannot see what God is doing (think of how Joseph’s life went from bad to worse, being sold as a slave and then wrongly imprisoned, languishing in prison a further two years after his good deeds were forgotten or how David, anointed by Samuel to be king over Israel, was pursued by Saul and lived as a fugitive for years, even feigning madness to survive.) Nonetheless, both these men show us that they were in the right place at the right time, and God fulfilled His promises to them.
If we are confident in God, we know that He is Lord and will therefore begin the work He has started. Paul’s letter to the Philippians was written from a Roman prison. It would have been easy for him to feel frustrated and thwarted, but he remained confident that whatever happened to him would be for God’s glory (see Phil 1). When we are assured that God is in control and is sovereign over all, we can be confident that the storms of life will not have the last word.