Confident and Courageous

In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; for we are as He is in this world. - 1 John 4:17

When I was growing up, my dad and my brother liked to scare me. They wrongly assumed that since they liked to be scared, everyone else did, too. I survived it, but didn't handle it very well and later on became an adult with some unhealthy fears. Of course, now I'm solidly in my senior adult years and have overcome such childishness.

Wait, did you hear that??!!!!

The apostle John said that one of the signs of a maturing faith was "being as God in this world." In context, this seems to imply an "in it, but above it" mentality. God is at work in this world, but obviously the things of this world do not trouble Him. In the same way, those of us who follow the Son should not be troubled either. We should remain secure in His sovereignty and our personal salvation. We should be "all grown up" in every sense of the phrase and no longer subject to ungodly fears.

To put it simply, confident and courageous, we go forth in the assurance of our Lord and Savior!

Being filled with the Holy Spirit, then, is a matter of obedience to the Word of God. The filling of the Spirit that all experienced at Pentecost was a matter of a promise being fulfilled. Today, the believer is to be filled in obedience to the command of Ephesians 5:18, continuously, not merely by a single, crisis experience. The Christian life is a growth process toward maturity. - Clarence Cramer