subjective confidence

There’s a one-panel cartoon, featuring a very stylish couple about to enter a cocktail party.  There’s a balloon above the man’s head which reads, “Yipes!  Grownups!”  I remember the same feeling when Hallie and I brought our first child home from the hospital.  We were ready for parenthood, we’d even been trained, but my thought on entering our home was, “Where are the grownups?”

Though we may exude outward confidence, often there’s an inward insecurity, not only about specific circumstances, but about life in general.  On the day of my wedding, I remember asking myself, “Will I be able to love Hallie for a lifetime?”  Now that she’s gone to glory, and that question has been answered, I wonder if I’ll be able to sustain a good and holy life until my “graduation”.

 If God is indeed our King, then we are meant to have a subjective confidence, a sense of security deriving from our being His subjects.  In days when kings ruled, an annual ritual played out between the royal and his subjects.  They would kneel before him in a posture of submission, putting their palms together and extending them upward.  He, in turn, would come to each subject, placing his hands around theirs, responding to their submission with his assurance of protection.  When we pray, perhaps we could imagine ourselves doing that with our Divine King.

Being subjects of His Kingdom gives us the virtue of confidence in uncertain times. Together, as subjects of the King, we can “approach God’s Throne of Grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His Will, He hears us, and if we know that He hears us … we know that we have what we asked for” (1 John 5:14-15).   Let’s ask Him to grant us in the Holy Spirit that subjective confidence.