This morning I sat with my coffee, and quite out of the blue, the quiet, strong confidence of Christ welled up and consumed me. It settled in and emanated a joy so quiet—and yet loud; restorative—and yet jubilant.
This confidence is ironic in that, in it, I abhor any thought of self-boast about it (wondering, even, if I can put into words the conveyance of its being completely unbidden by me, uncreated in any way by me, and solely the gifting of the indwelling Spirit, supplying what I acknowledge I have lacked).
I describe it as the meeting of a dire need, a supernatural imparting of an unequivocal knowing that this confidence of Christ is where I want—-need—-to be, but haven’t consistently been, and where I desire to stay and live out the rest of my days.
In this confidence, the world—and all that swirls in it—along with my own human feelings and discombobulations, including the struggles of the hour, don’t matter in the sense that any reliance upon the state of their circumstances is moot: any rassling I would attempt in these matters only morphs them into enormous illusions and undue heaviness, taking me farther adrift from Christ.
This is why I cannot boast. Because too many times, I have resisted this confidence.
Today, it arrives as a surprise visit from a dearly beloved.
Jesus said, in Mark 2:17 and Luke 5:31:
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus is including all of us here. And we make ourselves more diseased by ingesting—insanely at times—the placebo of worldliness, inner feelings, pride and discouragement.
Even on a good day, we have a pre-existing condition of being sick and in need of a Savior, and the absolute crazy truth is that Jesus “doctors” us in His comfort, teaching, correction, guidance, and His hearing and enduring reassurance—every minute, hour and day.
Christ is confidence and thus imparts confidence because He only does and speaks what His Father in heaven tells Him.
In John 5:19b-23 Jesus says,
“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent Him.”
Jesus goes on to say,
“By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30).
“For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say” (John 12:49-50).
And now, at this time, Jesus is advocating for us at the right hand of our Father, God. Advocating, I say! Nobody does that for us on a 24-hour basis! No earthy advocate even comes near to Christ’s perfect advocacy.
“But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:55-56).
“Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1:18-23).
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1).
Even when we fail, even when we try to wrest the reigns of our life away from Christ, rejecting the help of His Spirit in us, Christ is right here with us up there next to God.
“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27).
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
‘For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).
That is where this place of confidence arrived from this morning as I sat, with my coffee, in my own little corner of the world. It came from Christ alone, as He advocates at the right hand of our Father God in heaven.
Amen.
Copyright Barb Harwood
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