Cast not away your confidence

Hebrews 10:35 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.

Variously in the book of Hebrews, Paul kept encouraging the church to not give up on the promises of God. To totally trust in God even in the face of persecution and discouragement.

He charged them to not lose faith in their confidence in God’s promise for the reward would be great if they held on.

This message is very true for us even to this day and needs to be reemphasized. That despite everything going on around us, we should consciously make effort not to lose focus.

What you continuously think about will ultimately influence what you believe and what you become.

There are several ways that we can lose our focus:

Drawing lessons from Gen 3:1-7: The interaction between Eve and the serpent.

1. Bad company = Bad Conversations

One way the evil one distracts us is to get us into the wrong company. Eve was having a conversation with the serpent. This is a mutual conversation. What was Eve doing holding a conversation with the serpent?

Getting into bad company/temptation the first time may be accidental, but staying in the company/temptation is deliberate. Wrong company brings about wrong conversations and bad character (1 Cor 15:33).

The world system, the way the enemy has designed it, is that we continuously get exposed to conversations/content that will get us tuned. For the enemy to get you, he will always gravitate you towards bad company.

This conversation between Eve and the serpent is what led to the fall of man.

Proverbs 22:24 – Be careful of the company that you keep, because it will influence you to be like it.

2. Reactions that get us out of the place of revelation

The serpent starts by asking Eve (about the trees from which they can eat from) makes her react and answer him.

Sometimes we are in situations that make us want to react wrongly out of logic… thereby shifting our focus from the will of God and the moment we make the shift, he takes us through a logical conversation that seems to make more sense than what God wanted for us.

The serpent spoke about the power that eating the forbidden fruit would give man, and because Eve was at a point where she was distracted, and that made sense to her.

An example is where you’re in a desperate need for money and the enemy presents an opportunity to make money illegally…and it all makes sense at that point.

Don’t let the devil get you into a system where you reason with him in a logical way.

3. Questioning and discrediting the goodness and will of God

The serpent (vs 4,5) tells Eve that eating from the tree would ‘surely’ not kill them and that God didn’t want them to eat from the tree because He didn’t want them to open their eyes and become like Him.

This is the point where Eve fell into the trap wholly. From the discrediting that the evil one outlined for her, she indeed looked and saw that the fruit was good, hence the sin.

The Israelites, while in the desert, started questioning if God would really provide them with food, hence the publishment – them not reaching the promised land.

The devil sets a trap for us to start questioning the integrity of God. When the doubt comes in, we lose all confidence in the promises of God.

Many times, the devil either makes us see certain things as normal when they indeed are totally against the will of God or see things that God promised as impossibilities.

Holding onto the truth that God doesn’t go back on His word, even when it logically doesn’t ‘make sense’ will bring great reward. Let’s not lose confidence no matter the distractions that get thrown at us.

Believe correctly in what you believe, and understand it very well.

(To be continued)