Sometime, in an airport, observe the difference between passengers holding confirmed tickets and those on standby. The ones with confirmed tickets read newspapers, chat with their friends or sleep. The ones on standby hang around the ticket counter and pace. The confidence factor causes the difference. If you knew that you would have to stand in judgment before the Holy God and learn your eternal destiny in fifteen minutes, what would your reaction be? Would you smoke and pace? Would you say to yourself, “I don’t know what God’s going to say – will it be ‘Welcome home, child,’ or will it be ‘Depart from me; I never knew you’?
Confidence
Seth Dahl
Twelve spies left the wilderness to go inspect the promised land God was giving them.
Ten came back focused on the giants.
Two came back focused on the promise.
Ten died in the wilderness and they only saw the promised land from a spy’s point of view.
Two not only entered it, but helped lead the nation into it.
We are all spies.
We are all looking at a land God is giving us.
We all would love to enter it and live there.
What we focus on will determine what happens.
So…what are you focused on?
What type of spy are you?
Jack Frost
Sonship is a heart that feels at rest and secure in God’s love; it believes it belongs, it is free from shame and self-condemnation, it walks in honor toward all people, and it is willing to humble itself before man and God. It is subject to God’s mission to experience His love and to give it away.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
The man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests. He is not always on the defensive… To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending… The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, “You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you.”
Jeremy Riddle
We’re no longer supposed to live in a conflicted state, unsure of ourselves, unsure about the God we serve, locked up in insecurity. We have a new nature, and at the core of this new nature is a thing called faith.
Floyd McClung
The kind of devotion that God delights in comes about when a person finds security in the pure, unselfish love of God. We don’t find our security or our value from the rules we obey or the way we live. But in the love of God, we know that there is nothing we can do to make Him love us more or less—He just loves us!
Henri J. M. Nouwen
As disciples, we find not some, but all of our strength, hope, courage, and confidence in God. Therefore, prayer must be our first concern.
Andrew Murray
Do not strive in your own strength; cast yourself at the feet of the Lord Jesus, and wait upon Him in the sure confidence that He is with you, and works in you. Strive in prayer; let faith fill your heart–so will you be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
A.W. Tozer
I do not advise that we end the year on a somber note. The march, not the dirge, has ever been the music of Christianity. If we are good students in the school of life, there is much that the years have to teach us. But the Christian is more than a student, more than a philosopher. He is a believer, and the object of his faith makes the difference, the mighty difference. Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation.
Horatius Bonar
Seeing that distance and distrust will do nothing for you, try what drawing near and confidence will do.