Confidence vs. Certainty

I was listening to my friend, Ted Wueste, as he spoke on "Our Confidence".

Although he didn't put it in quite these words, I was struck with this:

Confidence and Certainty do NOT have-to go together.
I can have one without the other.

I have been swayed by the idea that being Certain about more and more of life will bring the Confidence that I so deeply long for, run after.

Yet Ted proposes (by way of Ecclesiastes) that Confidence comes from entrusting myself to a God that will not always look for my, personal benefit. Confidence comes from entrusting myself to a God that is wiser than I, a God whose wisdom draws me to better self-understanding, to less self-destruction, and ultimately to both a right-standing with Him and a desire for such right-standing above all else [which, ironically, is the essence of 'right standing']

the KEY to Jesus fixing everything

I'm coming to the conclusion that Jesus fixes all my problems and answers all my questions when I let Him define what the problem is, when I let Him give the question.

Or, more realistically, when I come to Him with my issues, I'm finding that He sometimes needs to rework them so that He can (1) be King of my life, (2) 'solve' them according to His intentions/will, (3) be allowed more fully into 'my' world.

Perhaps part of the issue is that I demand to be the One who defines the problem. God must enter my world and fix my problems: true, but not the complete picture.

A quote from this season: Take this problem away, PLEASE! But not My will, let Yours be done.

from Easter service

Two things struck me from the Liturgical (Lutheran) readings today. One personal, one mental:

1) 'You have made me worthy' - as I struggle to let God love me (read: dysfunction), I find myself naturally(?) going back to my self-definition of Unworthy, Unclean. Jesus' death making me "worthy" is extremely powerful to my self-destructing soul. I was deeply moved and felt deeply loved (both coming 'out of' my dysfunction)

2) 'See the grave its first-fruits giving' - yet another Great Reversal! Graves are NOT associated with producing, giving, creating... That Jesus is the first-fruit of the grave - how perfectly backwards, how perfectly God-like!

Is my 'Christianity' really worth it?

Just finished reading two posts this morning by
- Seth Godin
- Chris Maddox

Putting them together has me wondering this:

is there anything about God Himself

or what He has done in/to/through me (Chris' blog)

that is powerful enough for at least ten people (Seth's blog) I know

to uncontrollably want Jesus as King of their lives?