Where Is Your Confidence?

When was the last time you felt that sense that things have changed? Changed to the point of crushing your dreams, your hopes, and your desires? It feels like the end of the world.

Maybe you felt that after last week's election results. Maybe your neighbor felt the opposite, relief and celebration, while you felt the floor drop out. Or maybe it wasn't an election at all. Maybe it was a diagnosis, a layoff, a phone call. Whatever the cause, most of us know that feeling.

The Lincoln Memorial at night, Washington, D.C.

I was recently on Capitol Hill advocating for some things I care about. As I looked across the Capitol lawn and walked the hallways of the House and Senate, I had a feeling of gratitude for the freedom we have to go and have a voice. We could be living under much worse governments, as so many people throughout the world and throughout history have.

I am sharing this to say that I do love our country, and I am discouraged at times. But my confidence was never meant to rest in Washington.

"So that no one can boast"

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus some of the most famous words in the New Testament:

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2:8–10, NIV)

In verse 9, Paul says "so that no one can boast." The Greek word is kauchaomai. It means to boast, glory, or exult, and it carries the idea of taking pride in something or finding your confidence in it (Strong's 2744).

Paul wrote that to people living in a Roman world built on honor. People climbed ladders of status and carved their achievements into stone for everyone to see. Into that world Paul says: your standing before God isn't something you earned, so it isn't something you can boast in. Your confidence has to rest somewhere else.

Here's what I have found. When I place my confidence in things other than God, I end up disappointed, discouraged, and disillusioned, wondering what I can have confidence in at all. A candidate, a party, the economy, my own plans: none of them can carry the weight of my hope. They were never designed to.

The psalmist said it three thousand years ago: "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God" (Psalm 20:7, NIV).

We've been here before

Christians through the centuries have found themselves in this place, and often in far more oppressive circumstances than ours. Yet again and again, what looked like the end became the very place God's light shone brightest.

Rome, AD 303. Emperor Diocletian launched the most severe persecution the early church ever faced. Churches were torn down, Scriptures burned, pastors imprisoned. It looked like the end of the church. About ten years later, the Edict of Milan granted Christians the freedom to worship. The empire that tried to crush the church is gone. The church is not.
Rome, AD 410. When barbarian armies sacked the city of Rome, many people believed civilization itself was ending. Augustine answered by writing The City of God. His message: earthly kingdoms rise and fall, but the city of God endures.
New York, 1857. Banks were failing, businesses were closing, and the nation was sliding toward civil war. A businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier started a noon prayer meeting on Fulton Street. Six people came. Within six months, ten thousand people were gathering to pray every day in New York.
China, 1949. Missionaries were expelled, churches were closed, and believers were sent to prison and labor camps. Many wondered if the Chinese church would survive. It did. It held on quietly through decades of hardship, and today it numbers in the tens of millions.
East Germany, 1989. In an atheist police state, a small group gathered every Monday evening to pray for peace at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig. In the fall of 1989, those prayers spilled into the streets. On October 9, about 70,000 people marched with candles, and not a shot was fired. A month later, the Berlin Wall fell.

None of these believers knew how their story would end. Some of them never saw the light break through in their own lifetimes. But not one of those seasons was the end of the world. God was writing a bigger story than any headline could hold.

Sent as light into dark places

Jesus is in the business of sending his people with his light into dark places. Whether the darkness is government, the economy, war, or a culture that has drifted from God, he doesn't pull us out. He sends us in. "You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden" (Matthew 5:14, NIV).

When God's people were carried off into exile in Babylon, the most powerful and pagan empire of their day, God didn't tell them to hide or to rage. He told them this:

"Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." (Jeremiah 29:7, NIV)

God wanted his people to become great citizens. Build houses. Plant gardens. Pray for the city. Work for its good. That calling hasn't changed. Whoever holds office, we are called to be:

Great citizens who pray for our leaders by name and seek the good of our city.
Gospel messengers who make Jesus the headline, not a party or a candidate.
Good neighbors who show up with tangible love, especially for those who don't see the world the way we do.

Maybe this season isn't the end of anything. Maybe our situation has been prepared for us to be light.