Confidence Through Christ

Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Song 8:5

The wilderness is a desolate place; a place of weeping; a place of cleansing; a valley of tears. It’s the place where we lose all self-confidence and learn to draw our confidence entirely from the life of Christ within.

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 2 Cor 3:4

The wilderness is the place where the treasured old hymns of past generations become ours. The wilderness is a desert transformed into springs and pools of water as we build hope anew in Jesus’ blood and righteousness and cherish afresh the old rugged Cross.

As they go through the Valley of Baca [the Valley of Weeping] they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. Psalm 84:6

When we truly come to the end of ourselves – our strength, our confidence, our abilities, our love – we are in a place to be flooded with the sweet Spirit of Christ. Our decrease facilitates His increase in our lives (John 3:30). And the Spirit of Christ has a fragrance – an aroma. How sweet! How altogether pure and reviving! In our broken and weakened state, this fragrance of the knowledge of Christ through us spreads everywhere.

For we are the fragrance of Christ… 2 Cor 2:15

Many of us spend a lifetime learning how to be strong, how to cope, how to dig deep, how to influence people and circumstances in order to make our way in the world. Then we re-learn through Christ how to be weak, how to surrender, how to rest, how to serve, and how to trust our God to make the way for us even through deserts and seas.

Then the thing, undreamed of in any Arabian Nights of fiction, becomes real in Christ. The desert turns into a trail of flowers; and the heart throbs pull at the bell-ropes of heaven until the music of the skies is heard again by mortal ears. The rocky hills are but the paths which lead upward to a transfiguration trysting place, together with the saints; as we love Him, who leads and guides us, more and more with every step of the way. - Charles S. Price (1940), The Real Faith.