Growing Confidence

Security transforms the heart.

It's hard for us to progress as people when we don't feel safe or when we're not confident that our safety will last. 

And yet it's also hard for us to build that trust that we are safe. Often doing so means acknowledging where we don't feel safe, where we doubt our security, where we distrust, which brings all those feelings to the surface.

But trust is formed in the doubt.

This is not always the case. Many times trust is built in the deposit of positive experience after positive experience like a child who has never known anything except a parent meeting his every need. But in most of our relationships we come with baggage, insecurities, and uncertainty, not wanting to give our trust too quickly, and our trust is built, tested, and proven in the process of relationship.

When we don’t expect someone to show up, and they do, trust is built. 

When we don’t know if someone will want to know our soul, and they do and they steward it well, trust is built. 

When we’re unsure of where we stand, and our uncertainty and insecurity is met with pursuit and acceptance, trust is built. 

When we doubt that someone will show up, will love us well, will provide for us, will stay with us, and then they do, our trust is developed, our confidence is grown, our security is strengthened. 

That is the beautiful progression of relationship. That is a natural process. That is how someone goes from a stranger to an intimate friend. 

But too often this progression causes us shame when we apply it to our relationship with God.

Because unlike us, God is completely trustworthy and deserving of our trust. He has never done anything to lose our trust or cause us to doubt Him. We know that truth, and so we feel ashamed for disconnecting with it. But rather than condemning us, God uses that very doubt to teach us a deeper awareness of and pursue a deeper relationship with Him.

Over the course of the last year I've felt God intentionally pursuing trust in my relationship with Him.

Seasons of promise spurred seasons of fear, but as they did, God ministered to my heart time and time again. He drew me out of fear into confidence. That's what the promise has been for me: developing trust. God has taken the time, effort, and intentionality to earn my trust even though His trustworthiness has never wavered. To show me that He will keep showing up, He will keep chasing after me, He will keep growing me, He will keep stewarding my heart. He will keep me. He has traded my fear for His victory.

And in Judges 6 and 7 this is what I see reflected in the story of Gideon.

Gideon knows God's presence and has received His promise, but he is still uncertain. Over the course of this story, his fear is mentioned by name more than once. He asks for confirmation of God's promise because he is uncertain, and God gives it. God proves Himself out of love. My Bible's commentary states, "Our God willingly condescends to meet his servants because he understands our fear and frailty."

That's what shapes the story: Gideon is afraid, and God is faithful. 

God doesn't meet Gideon's request for signs with condemnation but by giving the confirmation He asks for. 

Our God is a God of clarity, not confusion. And what's more, He's a loving Father who wants our trust. He wants us to live out of confidence in Him, and He's willing to condescend to develop that confidence within us. 

When Gideon asks Him to stay, He does. When Gideon asks for a sign to know with certainty, He gives it. And when Gideon asks again, God is faithful again.

God pursues our confidence. 

Sometimes we don't ask for certainty because we are afraid of challenging God or of our own unbelief, but He is ever faithful even in our doubt. He wants us to rest in Him, to be at peace in Him, to know our security in Him without question. 

He does not depart from us in our fears but draws into us. He is patient and tender with Gideon and with us. He meets our questions. He brings confirmation. He desires our confidence in Him, and He moves to bring it about, taking the initiative for our very trust in Him.

Later in the story He makes allowances for Gideon's fear, sending him to eavesdrop on a Midianite soldier who dreamed Israel would defeat them, taking initiative and giving Gideon greater certainty in His promised victory. 

This has never been a story about a great warrior but about a great God. A God who holds our fear in His love, a God who is gentle and kind, and a God who gives us His victory.

In our fears He does not offer us shame but deepened trust, security, and confidence. He develops us in the moments of fear. He ministers to us time and time again. 

And when He meets us in that unbelief, uncertainty, and fear, and when we finally accept the beauty, safety, and security we have in Him, we start to change. Our hearts become free as He works that reality into our foundation. Because receiving His love and knowing His trustworthiness firsthand changes everything.