Confidence, the Only True Worship

It is intended that all creation should live in confidence to God. Without it, we had better disbelieve whatever we do not see, while we can do no better than acknowledge that all we see is a burdensome enigma.

It is worth our while to have lived, if only it were to have known the delight of trusting God. He is a living Being, who is not only in the most intimate relation with us, but who has a peculiar character of His own, upon which the whole of our love and worship of Him is moulded. Moreover, confidence in another is the surrender of self. We sit down no longer under our own shadow, but we go and rest beneath the sovereignty of God.

There is something so monstrous in not trusting God that we should have thought it must be a rare thing among Christians. But experience teaches very differently. Many persons live for years always intending to begin habits of prayer, or habits of particular examination of conscience, and never really begin the one or the other. The real cause of this procrastination is want of confidence in God. Believing prayer is by no means common. This is probably the reason why such an immensity of prayer remains unanswered. Many men content themselves with a mere indeterminate hope which can never carry heaven by storm. Confidence has an irresistible tendency to pray. It is almost prayer itself, that unremitting prayer of which the gospel speaks and which, of all things commanded, looks the most like an impossibility.

But, more than this, confidence seems to make direct prayer the necessary centre of the soul. It does not so much strive to pray so much that it lapses into prayer.

A special devotion to the providence of God is another means of acquiring confidence. Even temptations against the faith, which trouble it so terribly, leave an increase of it behind when they go, like a legacy from an unkind relation. But, above all, the habit of working for God only, of doing our best for Him and caring little about its success, and of doing it secretly, which we instinctively do when we do it only for Him, is the royal road to confidence in Him. We must extend it to everything that happens to us. All the events of life, all the things of this world, must come under its influence. In truth, there is a good reason for this, because, after all, human wisdom and worldly prudence are nearly as impotent in the common affairs of life as they are in our spiritual warfare. It is not our experience that it is always God who does things for us, even those things which we seem to do most ourselves. Yes, God be praised!

We must have a special trust in Him and in all that belongs to God or bears His likeness. Our trust must be universal, wise, and bold. It should be joyful and unafraid of difficulties; for difficulties are the stones from which God builds His houses.