The Devil cannot take your calling. The Bible says the gifts and calling
of God are without repentance. He doesn't change his mind when you lose your way.
Since the Devil can't take your calling, he attacks your confidence. If he can get
you to give him your confidence, he can keep you from functioning in your calling.
If he can get you to believe that you're raising your kids just like your mom raised you,
and your mom raised you in a way that was detrimental and destructive,
he can get you to repeat the patterns and miss the opportunity for progress
because he stripped you of your confidence. You can have a great calling and no confidence.
Joyce Meyer says a believer without confidence is like a jet without fuel sitting on the runway. All
that equipment but no power to get up above the circumstances. That's how Sister Joyce
said it. Ask your neighbor, "Got confidence?" Remember they used to have, "Got milk"? Well,
I want to know, "Got confidence?" Christians without confidence. It should be an oxymoron.
The whole context of the gospel is confidence. If it doesn't make you more confident, it's not the
gospel. If you ever heard something preached to you and you walked out feeling like crap,
you didn't hear the gospel in the correct context.
Sometimes you've lost your relationships because you've lost your context. That is,
someone will do one thing to offend you, and in the light of that one thing they did to offend
you, you will walk away from the hundreds of things they did that caused you to love them.
The Devil is a master of trying to create a crisis in your life
by causing you to lose your sense of context. Touch somebody and say, "Keep it in context."
That's what you have to do, Eve, because the Serpent will come up to you and say,
"Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?" You have to remember
God didn't say, "You can't eat of any tree." He said, "Don't eat of that tree."
The Enemy wants to take it out of context to get you to look at all of the things you can't
do and miss all of the things you can do, to get you to think Christianity is boring
or that it's about rules and regulations, to take it out of the context of relationship.
How many of you know that we have a Great High Priest whose name is Jesus? The author of Hebrews
wants to help you get your confidence back, but you can't have confidence without context.
If I could, I would love to back up just a few verses
and provide a context for this admonition where he says, "Do not throw away your confidence."
That's a pretty powerful exhortation within itself, but when you give it its full context
it's even more powerful. Would it be all right if I backed up just a few verses and
gave you some context? I would love to give you the whole book of Hebrews. I didn't think
it would be good for us to do the whole book in one day, but maybe we could hit verse 19,
where he's encouraging this community of faith that is in an identity crisis.
They're losing friends because of their faith, suffering loss in their personal life and
their relationship with their possessions because of their faith. He says, "Therefore,
brothers and sisters, since we have confidence…" We may not be accessing our confidence right now,
but we have it. How many of you have a phone?
How many of you are talking on it right now? Just because you have it doesn't mean you're using it.
Sometimes we think we need more confidence when all we really need to do
is use the confidence we already have by virtue of the power of Christ in us. I feel like preaching
a little bit today, because somebody is going to get their confidence back by the time I put
my microphone down. The Lord told me some of you have been losing your confidence,
but he wants you to know that you have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place.
That was the place where only the high priest could go, and even he couldn't
go in the wrong way or he wouldn't come out. Well, he would come out,
but somebody would have to drag him out, because the presence of God was so strong
in the Most Holy Place that if you didn't go in ceremonially clean you would fall down dead
in the presence of the glory of God. How many are glad for a new covenant?
I think the whole top section of Blakeney would fall over dead
if you had to be clean to come to church today. I think the preacher would fall dead on the stage
if you had to be clean to come to church. He's talking about this new covenant and
he's excited about it, telling them, "Come on in to the Most Holy Place." How do you come in?
"…by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is,
his body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God
with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled
to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." I was only
going to read verse 19, but the context of this is so powerful I think I ought to keep going.
This is the covenant, the promise of God. This is your relationship with him described,
defined, and elaborated upon. "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess,
for he who promised is faithful." You haven't always been faithful to him,
but he has always been faithful to you. "And let us consider how we may spur one another
on toward good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing,
but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."
Before he tells me to keep my confidence, he's helping me to see where my confidence comes from.
Let's talk about where Christian confidence comes from.
There are three things he mentioned in the text I just read, and they all start with the letter C.
At least they will when I get done with them. It helps me remember them better.
He mentions your conscience. It's kind of hard to have full confidence when you have a troubled
conscience. It's kind of hard for me to get up and preach to you when I have areas in my life where
I haven't been obedient. Do you know there have been times where I've been getting ready to preach
and before I could come out on the stage I had to make a phone call and get something right?
If I come up here and my conscience isn't clear… I don't mean I have to be perfect when I get up;
I'm saying some of you lost your confidence because you violated your conscience.
So now in relationships you can't really look people in the eye because of what you're hiding.
Because of text messages you hope your wife doesn't see.
Because of unresolved bitterness and forgiveness that God has initiated but you have not
completed. The Devil is really masterful at this, because if he can't get your
calling without your confidence, he'll get to your confidence through your conscience.
He will tempt you with something he knows will defile your conscience,
and now because you have a defiled conscience you have no confidence.
To come into the presence of God requires confidence.
The presence of God is the only place where your conscience can be cleansed.
We just read it in Hebrews. He said that the Most Holy Place, the presence of God, that
place of surrender, that place of contact with God, is the place where the blood of Jesus is
sprinkled to purify your conscience, but if you don't have confidence you won't come in.
So now the only place where God can heal your conscience you don't go into because you've lost
your confidence. You stopped coming to church at the time when you needed church the most.
I'm going to look at the camera, because somebody is watching me online today. You almost came,
but you felt guilty about something and you let the Devil tell you that you couldn't come.
The context of my relationship with God is not my behavior.
It's the blood of his Son. It was already shed. When those drops hit the ground,
mercy hit my life. Grace covered my sin. His compassion covered all the wrong things I had
done, will do, and even the things I'm doing right now. So I can come on in to the presence of God
with my head held high like a child of the King. I'm not a slave to fear. I'm a child of God.
My spirit cries out, "Abba Father, I need your help. I'm in a crisis." Come on in.
I hear the voice of God saying to somebody, "Come on in." "I know
what you did last summer. Come on in. I know what you did in your twenties. Come on in.
I know what you did at 9:47 a.m. Come on in." Touch somebody and say, "Come on in."
We need you to know that the context of Christian confidence is not your ability
to conform to a set of behaviors. That's the old covenant. That's bringing a turtledove to
church and sacrificing it. We have a Great High Priest and he is the context of my confidence.
The context of my confidence is a clear conscience.