Christian Living

A Trusted Confidence

by Thomas Kirkpatrick
04/08/21
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A Trusted Confidence

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)

Is there hope in your life? Not just for a moment or a season but a hope that is present every moment. A hope the events of this world cannot drive down but a hope founded in the world to come. This world and the time we are here is but just a spot, a wisp in the measure of eternity. God breathed life into us, and we are eternal creations that are only here in this world for a whisper of time. Do you have hope in your eternal home? Is it the motivation of your life here, or are you caught up in this world? The eternal hope that we can have through the Lord Jesus Christ is a trusted confidence we can have an abundant life here and a glorious abundant life in the heavenly eternal home.

God is the author of hope, and without God, there is no hope for a person. Without God, there is no surety in any belief that we can have. The hope that God gives us will grow all the more as we draw closer to Him and will overflow in our lives and affect the lives that are around us. They, too, may come to desire the relationship that we have with our Heavenly Father through His Son Jesus Christ.

Do you remember the story of Jesus, who met the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob? Jesus had sent His disciples to town to buy food, and while He was resting, a woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus asked her to draw some water so that He could have a drink. The woman questioned Jesus why Jesus being a Jew, would ask a Samaritan woman for a drink. Jesus replied that if she knew who He was, she would have asked Him for living water. The Woman was puzzled by this as Jesus had nothing to draw water with. And Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14) It was an amazing thing for the woman to hear, and she was drawn into a life-changing conversation with the Savior of humanity.

Jesus was offering the woman the truth that would spring up from within her into eternal life. Each of us is living in a moment of an eternal time that God owns. No matter if we have a short life or a long life here in the world, it is but a moment in eternity. We are at this stage in our eternal lives in eternity, but we do not all have an eternity ahead of us? Some of us are bound for eternal destruction in a lake of fire. Some are bound for an abundant eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven with God the Father, who defines Love. Which is the choice of a wise person? The woman at the well made a wise choice, and through her faith in the words of the Messiah, she received eternal life. She didn’t leave for the Promised Land, but she possessed eternal life from the moment of her belief in Jesus. She was no longer born of the flesh but born of the spirit. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” (John 3:36)

Jesus is the hope that the Christian has. It is not as the world gives, which is nothing more than a wish because a passing world cannot promise anything eternal. Never in this world has anything been forever, and therefore all hope in this world is fleeting. But when we call upon the name of Jesus and have full confidence that His Word is the truth, then we can trust that we have eternal life at this very moment and evermore. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13)

Eternal life is not some far-off distant time, and it is something that we have now through our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He is the way to the Creator, and through Him, we can have a relationship with our Heavenly Father. Righteousness is eternal life; it is the life we long for in a land that is free from sin, a land of righteous living, and land where God dwells with us. It is not something that will be; it is something that is now. We have the Spirit of God living within us upon our acceptance of His Son Jesus Christ. When we allow Jesus into our life, His Holy Spirit comes to dwell with us, and through Him, we have a relationship with Jesus and the Father. Here is the definition that Jesus has given of eternal life. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)

Eternal life is not only a future living in Heaven, and it knows God the Father and His Son Jesus intimately in a personal friendship. We are partnered with God. Through this relationship flows the living water, our hope, and it bubbles up into our life and overflows that all may see the glory of our God.

Many people have trouble having faith in God or having faith in Jesus. They may say they believe in God, but they would have faith in Him if they did. People have a problem in what they call blind faith, and yet some of these people play the lottery or other risky ventures. Christianity is not blind faith. Our faith and trust in Jesus is a learned response to the experience that we have had with Him. We have seen Him work in our lives, we have seen Him work in the lives of others, and we know the power of His presence. The faith of the Christian is not blind but the conviction that His Word is true. Our hope is based upon this conviction, and it is our confidence. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Each step further in our walk with the Lord, we learn more of His desire and will for our life. There’s tremendous joy and peace in the presence of Jesus. There is no greater peace than walking with the power of the universe. The joy of the Christian is the source of their happiness. It is not a feeling we have in a circumstance but a state of existence in every circumstance. The Psalmist wrote that God anoints the believer with the oil of joy. “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of joy above Your fellows.” (Psalm 45:7)

Peace is harmony in relationships and can also be seen as an agreement to stop hostilities between arguing factions. When people live in rebellion to God’s Word and have an affair with the ways of the world, they are at war with God. “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”(James 4:4)

The one who submits their life into the hands of Jesus has a restored relationship through Jesus with God the Father. They have been redeemed by the Blood of Jesus and reconciled by the forgiveness He gives us in that our sin debt is paid. “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) Reconciliation restores us into a fellowship with God, and the hostility between us has been removed.

God no longer sees us the sinners that we once were and sometimes still are but sees us in the same way that He sees His Son Jesus, righteous. By the power of His Word, we are transformed from the wretched creature that we were into the glorious creature that we will be. God does not see us as we are but as we will be. “And put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” (Ephesians 4:24)

In the world that we are momentarily in during our eternal life,          we need the hope that the author of hope will give us through our trusted confidence in His Word. This hope overflows and pours out into the community that we live that others may see the light of His truth shining in us. We become the torch barriers of His light that the world may be enlightened and need not walk in darkness. We have learned to trust Him by our faith experience in Him, and others may see the joy and peace of our confidence and be drawn to our Savior. “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the Day of Judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17)

Thomas N Kirkpatrick

First Baptist Church of Durant, February 3, 2015