Confidence

by John Comer

Parking at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport is a nightmare. Some days no spaces are available in any on-site locations. If you’re driving yourself down to catch a plane, this has a way of playing havoc with your confidence level because you know you may still be looking for a place to leave your car even as your plane reaches your intended destination.

Things are getting better, though. The parking garage at Terminal 4 is being expanded, which leaves me with the sad duty of reporting to you that before things get better, well, they’re already worse.

Signs posted by the garage   elevators are not very encouraging. They warn that construction activity may make it necessary to tow away your car while you’re at the airport. They give you a phone number to call in case your car is missing when you return. What they don’t take into account is that it’s hard sometimes even on a good day to remember where the car’s parked, so who’s going to know whether it’s really missing or not?

But none of this is intended as a complaint. It’s better to have a prospering city outgrowing its airport than a dying one; and there’s no way to expand a parking garage painlessly. These things just remind us that even in a gung-ho society, some things are still a little shaky.

Where it matters the very most, though, we can have the strongest confidence. God is rock-solid. He won’t create problems, and he won’t keep us doubting. The Bible tells us that we can have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.    This is just a way of saying that because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, heaven is wide open and we can confidently enter into the presence of God himself.

This same Bible passage encourages us to draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. We know that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Confidence. Assurance. Sure and certain. These are gifts from God.

Life is iffy. Who’s to say you’ll find a parking space, or that your car won’t be towed away? And many much larger issues than these can really mess up your day.  But even in an uncertain world that often leaves us wondering, we never have to be in doubt about finding our way to God. Jesus took care of that for us. We’ve got confidence.