Confidence

 It’s one thing to hope. It’s another to know. If you’re waiting at the bus stop hoping that the 4:15 will show up eventually, even though it’s an hour late, how the time passes is not at all pleasant. Every minute drags on, anxiety growing because even though the bus should have been on time, it was late, and now questions of whether it will ever come begin to cloud your mind like so much ink in a bowl of water. You start playing the what-if game in earnest, layering scenarios upon scenarios in your mind until you talk yourself into believing that the bus was hijacked and you’ll have to find other means of transportation.

Hope is susceptible to external forces. Hope can be chiseled at, assailed, assaulted, and attacked to the point that it begins to weaken and wane. Knowledge cannot. If I know something to be true, no matter how much the enemy might attempt to sow doubt, it cannot work because I know what I know. I know what God said, I know what God promised, and I know that heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will by no means pass away.

I can tell by someone’s boldness and confidence whether they hope the Word of God is true or they know the Word of God is true. I can tell by their dedication, their commitment, and their willingness to labor on behalf of the Kingdom whether they have a full assurance that everything God promised will come to pass or they’re crossing their fingers, eyes screwed shut, trying their best not to hyperventilate.

I know that my Redeemer lives. I don’t hope it. I know that He will return one day; I don’t just think there is a possibility or a probability of it. The knowledge of it gives me confidence in every endeavor I undertake on behalf of the Kingdom, whether great or small.

If you know, then the waiting won’t affect you. If you hope, with each passing day, your confidence will wane, and you will allow doubt to settle over you like a heavy blanket. Because some people hope in the fulfillment of God’s promises and are not confident, they begin to doubt God Himself, and once doubt sets in, it is not exclusive to His promises but extends to everything else.

We were forewarned that in the last days, there would even be scoffers, walking in their own lusts, saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?” Do you think they’d do that out of spite or mean-spiritedness or because it may actually work on some? Perhaps both. Likely both.

If you are not confident, if you are not rooted in the truth, if you do not know that you know God keeps His word, the constant bombardment will have an effect. We see the stories every so often about some singer, preacher, or some such talking about how they left the Christian faith because the doubt they allowed to creep into their hearts took over the whole thing and choked off the knowledge of the truth.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve replaced knowing with hoping that there is so much confusion within the household of faith. What’s worse, maybe it’s because we’re hoping people are right and God is wrong that we are so quick to shun Scripture and ignore the signposts to the last days that are all around us.

So, how long do we wait? I mean, we’re all busy people; we have to make plans. We have to know a timeline of sorts. We can’t just take it on faith and keep pressing on until He returns, can we? Actually, we can. We can take it on faith. We can be confident knowing that God does not lie and that His word is true.

Luke 2:25-26, “And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”

What many fail to understand when reading about Simeon, as well as another of his contemporaries, a prophetess named Anna, is that they were no spring chickens. In his youth, the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ, and now, here he was all of one hundred thirteen years old, still waiting.

If you do a deep dive and study it for yourself, you’ll see that both Simeon and Anna had surpassed a century of life here on earth, something unheard of in those days. Yes, modern medicine being what it is, you can get some people close to the threshold of one hundred, but they’re still rare, and by the time they reach it, they’re likely half a robot. Between pacemakers, artificial hips, knees, elbows, shoulders, fused spines, and anything else one could think of, it’s not as though most folks see one hundred not knowing what Tylenol or Ampicillin was.

For most of his life, Simeon waited because the Holy Spirit revealed something to him. He did not forget what the Holy Spirit had said. He didn’t put it on the back burner or file it away; he was just and devout and waited for what he had been told to come to pass.

How long before you got antsy? How long before I did? Ten years, twenty, fifty, seventy? How long before you started questioning whether or not you’d really heard from the Holy Spirit or if what you heard wasn’t what He said?

The Bible doesn’t say God reassured Simeon of the truth of what he’d heard every year he got older. It doesn’t say he inquired of the Lord if he was still supposed to wait. He waited because it had been revealed to him that he would not see death before he had seen Christ, and as long as he had breath, all he could do was wait.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.