Guest Columnist for The Messenger

May - June 2022
The Messenger

"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you," - Exodus 20:12 (NKJV). During the months of May and June, we celebrate and honor our parents as well as those who served our country. Yet we have become lackadaisical and forgetful the rest of the year. We should always show our appreciation and encouragement to all those who are parents; in truth or in love, just like we show to those who serve.

That is why reading Proverbs has been so encouraging, even the ones that contrasts of good and bad, warnings and instructions. Proverbs 14:26 says: In the fear of the LORD there is strong confidence, and His children will have a place of refuge. In the last Messenger, I wrote about the first half of Proverbs 14:26. As I started re-reading it, I stopped at the words, "and his children..." I had always thought that those words referred to the father figure, like my father. But this time, I felt that they meant someone else, and that someone was God.

So I checked my other translations and by the late twentieth century, the New King James had capitalized the pronouns referring to the Triune God. Guess what I found in the New King James Version; Proverbs 14 :26, "The fear of the Lord is strong confidence, and His children will have a place of refuge." The first mention that we are God's children, those who believe and accept that Jesus lived, died and rose again for us. If you don't believe in what I just said, "search the Scriptures," as Jesus said in John 5:39. Our confidence is in Him, and our life is bound up in Him, if we are truly His.

Do you struggle with not having confidence? You can go buy books about it, hear Youtube videos about it, sit and hear motivational speakers on the subject of confidence – all these are good – but the best thing is something that goes deeper and wider and stronger and broader than any of that aforementioned stuff. What we need is confidence in Him, and then let that confidence be our unshakable confidence in this life. The world tries to make us insecure and not confident, to doubt and be afraid.  Jesus Christ, in us, makes us secure and confident and fearless – if we let Him do so. That is what we really need.

~Guest Columnist