College Creek Meditations I.2

Good morning. And by “good” I mean blessed.

I was thinking about something as I walked down to the boathouse this morning. Last summer Jaipaul said something that I didn’t at first understand, but it has repeatedly come up in my thoughts sporadically over the past year. He said, “I have confidence in the fear of the Lord,” and, “The fear of the Lord is confidence, Philip.” I thought about it again this morning. What is it to be confident?
After practice I went into the Dining Hall for some breakfast. After I’d finished eating, Jesse walked by and we chatted briefly about practice. I told him that my crew’s row was decent this morning, but that we had a bit to work on. He was somewhat surprised; from his vantage (he was sculling in a single next to us this morning) he thought we looked solid. “It’s not the crew as much as it is me,” I said. “I’m simply not confident in my coxing.” As soon as I spoke my mind was a little stunned. What I said was an accurate articulation of what I was thinking, but I hadn’t acknowledged the thoughts until then.
The best coxswains are the most intense people in the boat. Their voices boom and strain, they are always full of energy, and they don’t stop talking from start to finish. I’m a talkative person, but I don’t have a commanding voice, nor an intensely competitive spirit, nor am I skilled at talking quickly with little thought. It usually comes out as a stuttered mess if I’m too quick. After this morning, I simply felt as if I didn’t have enough in me to be a really superb coxswain. No one criticized me, but my confidence was failing.
This confidence is a mysterious thing. Having been a serious athlete for at least the past six years, I know as well as any that confidence can “make or break” someone at any skill level. But how does one gain confidence where there is none? Is confidence simply self-assurance? In one sense, remembering what Jaipaul had said a year ago, I think Jaipaul was talking about self-confidence. What could this mean? The verse he had been quoting was the from the Old Testament:

In the fear of the LORD there is strong confidence,
And his children will have refuge. (Proverbs 14:26 NASB)

The Hebrew (mibtach) means trust, confidence, or refuge. The same ambiguity that belongs to the English word belongs to the Hebrew. It can either connote the act of confiding and trusting in another or the feeling of security and sureness with regard to oneself. But, ultimately, the second sense of the word is derivative from the first. Looking at the Septuagint Greek translation of the verse, instead of confidence (πεποίθησις) the word used (’ελπίς) means hope or expectation. Ultimately from context, this is a word with its source found in the fear of the Lord, not in the self. The confidence here is a sort of trust and hope in God that acts as a refuge to make a man secure. A refuge from what? The next verse may illumine more.

The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life,
That one may avoid the snares of death. (Proverbs 14:27)

The life and death struggle is certainly here. And now the former verse takes on a new meaning. Allow me to paraphrase: found in the fear of the Lord is personal security, under which person’s children learn and grow healthily and are protected bodily, emotionally, and spiritually, because the fear of the Lord is a source of bodily and spiritual vitality and a safeguard against harmful living that leads to both bodily and spiritual death. As is most clear, this “confidence” (as it’s called by most translations) is entirely derived from and focused toward God. But the ambiguity of the word comes to its full meaning when it becomes apparent that the “personal security” is manifested as a self-assurance and ability to act rightly and effectively; it’s this manifestation that can be a refuge for a person’s children. Confidence is trust in God, regardless of circumstance, that becomes strength in God, who is able to give us life and preserve us from death. It pertains both to daily living and to eternity, of course.
Am I secure in this way? Have I put my trust in the Lord? Have I been living according to the Scriptures, as when I am encouraged to boast concerning my weaknesses (ref. II Corinthians 12:9)? Paul certainly understood this mystery of confidence when he wrote, “I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (12:10). By this, of course, he testified of the power of God in Christ Jesus, as also when he wrote, “Indeed [Jesus] was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you” (13:4); and again, “Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God” (3:4-5).
This all pertains to the verses from the Proverbs. It has impact, as I wrote above, both on this temporal life and on eternity. It applies as much to my spiritual walk with God as it does to my work as the coxswain of a boat. I am not adequate in myself—indeed I am weak in many ways—but my confidence is found in the fear of the Lord, and from God I will be strong and capable to do the work He has laid before me.
Praise the Lord.