Confident

March 21, 2016

Devotions:

        “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."  Philippians‬ ‭1:6‬ ‭NASB‬‬

        Paul says I Philippians 1: 6, "I am confident..." Are you confident? Are you sure and confident about God's opinion about you, about God's commitment towards you? Paul was confident of God's salvation continually being perfected in the believers until the end. Paul says that this God's responsibility,  to perfect the good work in us until the day of Jesus Christ.  Paul is confident and He wants you to be confident of God working within you.  It is not dependent upon you but God and God's biggest problem is our trying to do what He is doing and our getting in His way because we are looking at our own effort and not relying upon Him.  Paul says in Corinthians that no flesh will glory in His presence.  His salvation is totally His work.  We are to just receive and rejoice in what He has done.  Jesus' death on the cross, burial and resurrection not only set us free from the power of sin and the devil but it also made us new creations, recreated in His likeness and His image but His resurrection life. That resurrection life in us, His eternal life, is the power working within us to do the good works in and through us that He has ordained us to do. 

        He wants us to be confident of His love for us and that love shaping us totally into His image.  He has the power to conform our bodies to be like His which He will do.  He had the power to make us new creations and give us the gift of righteousness in making us new creations.  He has the power to transform our souls to be like Him. 

          “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  ‭Romans‬ ‭12:2‬ ‭NASB‬‬

        The phrase ... But be transformed... Is in the passive and more accurately translated.....be being transformed by the renewing of our minds.  Is not something that we do but what the Holy Spirit does in us as we read and meditate upon the word of God.  When we are born again, God gives a hunger for His word.  As we seek to fulfill that hunger, the Holy Spirit is able then to give us revelation of His word which renews our minds as we receive it and act on it.

        I am confident, are you?