Confidence in God
Verse of the Day
‘For I know that as you pray for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.’
Philippians 1:19
Today’s Devotional
Paul shows an incredible confidence and contentment in this one verse that I really admire and long for.
“For I know that as you pray for me”
There are people that I pray for, but not as often as I pray for my own heart to be transformed. I used to pray a lot for answers to specific prayers. These days I pray mostly about my heart, mind and actions being molded into alignment with God’s will. But Paul’s confidence in this verse convicts me that I need to be just as diligent in praying for fellow believers as I am in praying for my own spiritual journey. The current state of affairs in our world has made me especially aware of how much I need to be praying for people who are in leadership. Leaders of churches, leaders in government, leaders in our schools…they all need our prayers for God’s wisdom and discernment.
“and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me”
How content and confident are you that the Holy Spirit is helping you? This is a tender subject for me. I have been reading a book about the Holy Spirit that has really been eye opening for me about how little I know about the Spirit. It’s hard to have a healthy, functional working partnership with Someone who I don’t really know. In his book “The God I Never Knew”, Robert Morris reminded me that the Holy Spirit is tasked with speaking to us during this season in history, and yet I feel like I hardly know Him. (Which is why I am reading this book.) Many of us treat the Holy Spirit as a lesser member of the Trinity of God by not calling on His power in our lives. For me, it is due to lack of knowledge of how that works. Paul is clearly content and confident in the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
“this will lead to my deliverance”
Paul is content that God WILL deliver him. How many of us wrestle with IF God will deliver us? According to yesterday’s verse, God will use all of our waiting and struggle for our good. Then why do we doubt? For me, it’s usually because I can’t fathom how God might deliver me. I’m not sure why I wonder about this. Every time God has delivered, it has never been in a way that I had even considered. I also think that during a struggle or dilemma, I spend too much of my time and energy trying to struggle correctly. For instance: During some interpersonal struggles at work, I really wanted to figure out how to handle the situation correctly. (Let’s translate that. I wanted to fix it.) Instead of trying to get it right, or to struggle well, or to learn the lessons faster, maybe I should have been content to confess my struggles to God and then allow Him room to fight my battles. As soon as I stepped out of the way, things got better. Paul seems incredibly content that God will deliver him, in whatever manner He sees fit, in whatever timing He decides.
Contentment appears to be a state of mind that Paul embodies. Paul’s contentment seems to be directly correlated with his confidence in God. So maybe that’s where I need to start. How confident am I in God? And how does that affect my daily level of contentment? When I turn the faucet on in my kitchen sink, I am confident that water will come out. Even when our home flooded in Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the water supply never failed. (Until, of course, we ripped out all the sinks to replace them.) So barring some epic natural disaster, I am confident that there is and always will be running water in my home. My confidence in God should be even stronger than that. There is no natural disaster big enough to shut off the flow of God. God controls the natural world, so even hurricanes and tornadoes bow to Him. Perhaps in my quest for contentment, I need to build up my confidence that God is who He says He is. That His promises are true. That He looks at me and sees a beloved daughter in whom He is well pleased, all because of Jesus.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How confident are you in God?
How often are you praying for other believers, especially our leaders?
How confident are you in the Holy Spirit’s power in your life?
How confident are you in God’s deliverance?
How does your confidence in God affect your contentment today?