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We live in a world struggling with the effect of lost certainties.
Truth is considered to be no longer 'out there' and verifiable, but 'in here' and personal.
Right is considered to be no longer revealed and certain but a man-made construct and variable.
Even 'love' is like a jelly-fish that wobbles away from definition any time you poke it with a rational stick.
In a world where being 'true to your own beliefs' seems to be the only remaining moral imperative, we are seeing quite a lot of violations of that principle being treated as inconsequential even by leaders in public life.
Fairness and integrity do seem to lie bleeding in the dust just now.
In a culture that thinks like that, no-one really knows where they are and anyone who steps outside the relativistic intellectual and moral morass MUST be demonised because their confidence and assurance seem just too threatening to everybody else.
So here's a plea not to buy into this dodgy thinking that leads into the loss of your certainties, truth, morality and even love.
This is important, because we can't live well without any of those.
In a world that decries the possibility of certainty, the letter to the Hebrews comes with relevance and force as it stands up for confidence and assurance ... values that the thought system of our culture attacks from the roots.
Let's hear Hebrews out, because its Biblical definition of faith puts believers at odds with our certainty-killing culture.
Here is the Verse for the Day:
“Now faith is
confidence in what we hope for and
assurance about what we do not see.”
Hebrews 11:1
https://www.bible.com/113/heb.11.1.nivuk
The Point
Faith IS confidence
... specifically confidence in what we do not see, but really do anticipate.
And we do not feel it, we PLACE it in reliable things, people and truths.
Faith is also assurance
... specifically assurance about things we have been told or even promised by One in Whom we have placed out trust.
And we don't feel that either, we PROCLAIM it to ourselves (first) and to others.
That really looks like swimming against the tide, so we'd better be clear about our basis for this!
The basis for both these things
Our culture may see our confidence as arrogance and our assurance as presumption ... but it isn't reckoning on the fact that we have had these things promised to us on the Word of the God Who cannot lie (Titus 1:2), which is more reliable than the philosophising of human thinkers and philosophers.
Does our culture have a problem with that?
It's of the essence of the faith a Christian lives and dies by, so if our culture IS going to have a problem with that, then we're all going to have to get over it!
The Takeaway
In a world that esteems doubt and uncertainty but cannot live well like that, the believer needs to model confidence and assurance in the dark, about the things that we believe but do not see.
And we need to be very clear about why we practise faith like this ... it's because we live trusting all our lives and holding to the promise we've received on the surety of the God Who does not lie.
Faith is not something we feel. Faith is something we set to and do, and the confidence and assurance that faith amounts to is something to set about and DO, today.
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