Confident – Part 2

John 14:18-25 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.”

 

Pastor Kyle continues: Be confident about how God wants us to live in obedience. In 1 Samuel 15:22 Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. Obedience is the primary function of a Believer. God’s prophet wrote what he heard from God to communicate to us in Jeremiah 7:23, saying, But this is what I commanded them, saying, “Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.” This is what is meant when the Lord said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”  and “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” There is a reason why polls show that the fourteenth chapter of John is the favorite chapter of most Christians in the world, because Jesus promises us here that God is good, God is for us, God provides for your today and tomorrows/this life and the next, God is where we will find our purpose, peace and confidence, and God is with us. In Matthew 28:20 Jesus told us: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Our all-seeing, all powerful and always present Lord God, Emmanuel, is with us. Our Savior and Lord Jesus made it happen. We can believe and stand upon the promises of God!

John 14:25-28 “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.”

 

The one thing that no one can take from us is our peace through believing faith. The ungodly world cannot take your peace. The peace of Christ is not as the world gives. Galatians 5:22-23 tells us, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” The gift of God’s peace dispels fears and doubts and produces blessed assurance and contentment. We can take a negative situation and look at it in a spiritually positive light.  We feel God’s presence and confidently build a closer relationship with Him daily. The most powerful type of confidence is the “quiet” kind – on the inside. We do not need to be the center of attention or express yourself. Talk with your actions and inaction at the proper times for the Lord. You and I have access to the promised peace of Christ. We may try to find peace and security in the God-rejecting secular world system that we live in, but we will not find it there. It is found in Christ alone. Our confidence is in Jesus Christ.

1 John 2:22-25 “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He has promised us—eternal life.

 

In Christ, Brian