Confident Living

I have often shared the basic principles of supply by which my wife and I have lived on over the past thirty plus years. We have found our Father to be extremely faithful. Like Paul we “know how to abound and how to be abased,” i.e., how to live abundantly regardless of the level of our income. We didn’t learn that overnight but step by step over time. This verse of one of the promises we have depended on.

We have learned to LIVE CONFIDENTLY. The foundation for answered prayer is the confidence we have in Him. We cannot believe in a person whom we do not trust and we cannot trust a person in whom we don’t have confidence. Faith is like a muscle that is strengthened as we use it. A number of years ago, I broke my right elbow. My doctor put it into a splint where, although I did a daily routine to keep it flexible, it was mostly immobile for several weeks. When the splint finally came off, my arm which had always been fairly large and muscular resembled a piece of rope. It took time, effort and use to restore it to its previous size and strength. So it is with our “faith muscle!”

I firmly believe that God loves us enough to keep us in a mess (or at least to permit it). (Of course, many of us don’t need much help with that!) If we were not confronted with the vicissitudes of life our faith would be flabby, being of no tangible service to us or to God. It is the purpose of God, by way of the trials we face, to bring us to the place of confident living. The message of the old song is very true: “If I never had a problem, I wouldn’t know that God could solve them” (Through It All by Andre Crouch).

Confident living is based on HIS COMPETENCY. One’s faith is no better than its object. Paul settled the question of our Father’s competency when he said: “Now unto him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20). He also said: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, always having all sufficiency, in all things, may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). It seems that the Father’s credentials are impeccable.

Confident living is also dependent on our TRUSTING HIM COMPLETELY. Regardless of the greatness of His competence if we don’t acknowledge it and accommodate ourselves to it through total dependence on Him we will never experience it. The old acrostic says: Forsaking All I Trust Him. The extent to which we abandon our self-dependence and turn with total dependence on Him will be the degree which we will experience His abundant care.

Most of us have never had to totally depend on Him. We have jobs, income, insurance, retirement, police, doctors, firemen, etc. What more could we ask? Actually, while these things are a blessing and may be the basis of His abundant provision, our dependence on them may also be keeping us from depending completely on God. Am I suggesting that you quit your jobs and presume on God? God forbid. What I am saying that each of us already face greater trials than we know how to handle. It is time to cast our all our cares on Him. He is greater than all our fears and anxieties.

His competence is OUR COMFORT. Paul comforted Timothy: “For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Timothy 1:12b). What is the “that” he is speaking of? It is the very thing we are concerned about!

Finally, living our lives confidently requires us to LIVE COMPLIANTLY. We can’t resist and struggle against life and live confidently at the same time. A drowning swimmer can prevent his rescue by his resistance and his struggling. The more we question the faithfulness of God the less we will experience His care. Our resistance and struggles will require that He be distracted from the very thing we want to provide us with what we need. Peter said it well: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:6, 7).

Confident living is not based on any human resource but rather all of Heaven’s resources. It is learning the wonder of totally focusing on Him while realizing that He infinitely cares for us.

Be blessed this day. Jeff

• Jefferson H. and Norma R. Floyd, CO-directors • Jubilee International • P. O. Box 572 • Noblesville, IN 46061