Two of my best friends are optometrists. Both of them have years of training and experience behind them. When they deal with patients who need eyeglasses, they know what to do. They can perform tests to identify what kind of problems a patient has with his or her vision, then prescribe lenses to address the problem. Within the area of their expertise, they are extremely competent and confident. Both of them, though, understand there are limits to what they can do to help someone see better. Eyeglasses won’t give sight to the blind, and some vision problems are not correctable without surgery. In my case, glasses help me read, but no glasses I’m aware of, short of binoculars, will help me see well at a distance.

Neither of these fine men is a surgeon, and neither can treat illnesses of parts of the body other than the eyes. They understand and accept their limitations, just as they understand the things that they can do. In this age, it is possible for a person to know a lot about one thing, or a little about everything, but not to know a lot about everything. Confidence in doing a job or carrying out a task requires both knowledge and the wisdom to recognize the limits of our knowledge and ability. In my own job, I am quite at ease in adjudicating a Federal Black Lung claim, but I have no business practicing law.

In some ways, serving the Lord is the same. God makes use of the talents and abilities we have, and uses us to the extent we can be used, based on our spiritual maturity. At a certain point, however, the analogy breaks down. God doesn’t have our limitations; his resources are boundless. If he puts a call on our lives that requires abilities and resources we don’t have, he is more than able to make up the difference. The world calls on us to be self-reliant, or self-confident; God calls us to have faith in him.

Our Lord Jesus used twelve very ordinary men to transform the world, and start a church that now stretches around the globe. The Lord used a young shepherd boy to defeat the mightiest warrior the enemy could send against Israel. He used Gideon and three hundred men to rout an army of tens of thousands. In every case, the confidence these men had was in God, not in their own abilities. Mighty Samson fell because of his pride in his own strength. Saul lost the throne because he thought he was as fit to offer sacrifices that he should have left to Samuel, and because he thought his own wisdom surpassed God’s when it came to leading his men.

Our confidence in serving God, then, isn’t based on our own abilities or knowledge alone, but in trust in God’s abilities and knowledge. That said, where does that kind of trust or faith come from? In part, it comes from taking God at his Word, believing that he will do what he says he will do. Mostly, though, it comes from our own experience in trusting God. He doesn’t test us beyond our limits; when our faith is weak, he sends easy tests our way. As we grow stronger in faith, the trials become harder, too. Using our faith is somewhat like using a muscle; if unused, it atrophies. If put to consistent use, it gradually grows stronger. That’s the principle behind bodybuilding, and behind faith-building.

God doesn’t make trials come our way, but he allows them to come for our benefit. If life were just a succession of triumphs, and always brought instant gratification, we would have no reason to trust God. People who achieve their goals too soon, or too easily, have nothing left to strive for, and often nothing left to live for. To paraphrase Romans 5:3-5; tribulations, or troubles, result in patience, and patience in the end leads to hope. Hope, in the sense it is used in the New Testament, means the confident expectation that something promised will come to pass. Peter speaks of a similar connection between our trials as Christians and the strengthening of our faith (I Peter 1:6-7).

But, as with secular things, part of our confidence lies in understanding our limits, the limit that God himself has set. Courage stops short of foolhardiness; running the race stops short of running ahead of God. In order to have confidence in the Lord, we must first understand what he requires of us, and what the limits of obedience are. Doing something good in disobedience to God is not good; it is sin. Jonah learned this lesson the hard way, just as Saul did.

Seek the Lord’s leading and direction in everything you do. If you don’t feel a prompting in your spirit that something is right, it probably isn’t. If you must, put out a fleece, like Gideon, but at its root this is an expression of unbelief and lack of trust. Spiritual confidence isn’t something we find or develop within ourselves; it comes from God. It comes hard, through a lifetime of trusting the Lord through trials, great and small.

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Beneath His Wings Devotionals - Vol. 1