Confidence in God: Finding Peace Amid Conflict

but in the midst of all of these bad things in the midst of enemies and foes and armies we see david having these great statements of confidence david declaring that god is his light god is his salvation god is his stronghold and it's because of who god is that there isn't space for david to have fear david declareshis confidence in the lord and until i really started studying for this sermon i hadn't really thought about this link this connection between confidence and peace but i think confidence and peace go hand in hand confidence brings peace confidence doesn't leave any room for worry if we're confident in something we're not worried about it [00:52:18] (47 seconds)  #ConfidenceBringsPeace

``because our confidence can be misplaced we can be confident all we want that the world is flat but it just isn't true we can confidently vouch for someone else's character but it doesn't mean that they're not going tohave a moral failing so who and what we place our confidence in is important because humans will failhumans will fail our knowledge is limited and people are going to let us down but jesus won'tjesus is the one that is true jesus is the one who will not fail jesus is the one who is all powerful and who promises that there is nowhere we can go apart from his love [00:53:35] (43 seconds)  #TrustJesusNotPeople

all of us have things that we worry about but all of us also can be confident because all of us have a power to be confident in all of us have a savior we can trust so that we can face those enemies those things that stand against us with confidence that this life is not all there is we can have confidence that nomatter what happens god is greater there is a life to come and that life is greater still [00:54:51] (33 seconds)  #ConfidenceInSavior

and david is telling us why he can be confident in god what his confidenceis in in his opening line david calls god light and while scripture does associate god with light it's interesting because this is the only time in the old testament where god is actually called light it doesn't say god is like light it says god is light which i think is so significant when we think about jesus being the light that came into the world right that god light that became human flesh and dwells among us light always casts out darkness we can be confident in that every time we turn a light on in a dark placelight wins [00:56:34] (42 seconds)  #GodIsLight

i don't know if any of you have a flashlight on your christmas list this year i'm guessing probably not but a flashlight is a tool that gets rid of darkness it shines light into darkness and the darkness leaves but here's what you can't go and buy on amazon you cannot buy a flash darkthink about it there isn't a tool that you can use that projects darkness into light there isn't some kind of reverse candle that you can light in the daytime and then all of a sudden the space around it becomes dark because in the world that god created light always wins [00:57:18] (40 seconds)  #LightAlwaysWins

so there were points in david's life where he was literally hiding in caves he literally physically experienced the stronghold of god the stronghold ofthose caves as as protection as he was being pursued as his life was threatened and so this image of protection and refuge brought peace to him in the midst of new trouble and i think it's really fun that we see these three descriptions of god light salvation stronghold later become descriptions of jesus [01:06:08] (33 seconds)  #GodIsOurStronghold

so i had a night this week that i couldn't sleep and i woke up and just was anxious not for any particular reason but i was anxious and had kind of waves of anxiety washing over me and so i'm laying there thinking about all of how i was feeling and i couldn't sleep and i thoughtoh i'm going to be preaching a sermon that confidence displaces anxiety that confidence brings peace and so i started praying asking for the holy spirit to give me confidence and i started focusing on confidence and letting that be what i felt and all of a sudden it actually worked i felt confidence instead of anxiety [01:12:11] (45 seconds)  #ConfidenceOverAnxiety

peace is something that jesus brings to our world and we can experience it through our faith and our trust in him and it doesn't mean that our lives are going to suddenly become free of enemies it doesn't mean that we aren't going to face things that cause us toworry that we're not going to get distracted but we can bring ourselves back to that promise that whatever we face whatever challenges we find ourselves in that jesus promises he will bring peace [01:13:18] (30 seconds)  #PeaceThroughFaith