Confidence

DEVOTION

2 CORINTHIANS

CONFIDENCE

2 Cor 7:13-16

In addition to our own encouragement, we were especially delighted to see how happy Titus was, because his spirit has been refreshed by all of you. 14 I had boasted to him about you, and you have not embarrassed me. But just as everything we said to you was true, so our boasting about you to Titus has proved to be true as well. 15 And his affection for you is all the greater when he remembers that you were all obedient, receiving him with fear and trembling. 16 I am glad I can have complete confidence in you.

NIV

It is a good thing to invite someone to join a group of believers knowing full well that group will behave in such a manner the visitor will come away completely delighted by their visit. That is probably why we invite so many visitors to come to church with us. We have so much confidence that all the others at church will make them feel so welcome, so delighted to be there. That is also why we boast so much to all the people we know about our particular church, knowing full well they will receive anyone we send there to visit and not embarrass us by standing around in their little clichés ignoring everyone else, especially a new face. We also can be sure that whenever we ask someone to visit our church they will come away completed refreshed because all of us, that is everybody, joined in the refreshing. Unfortunately all that may not be so true about us as it appears it was about those in Corinth. Why is that? Could it be due to a totally different culture? Could it be because of the time we live in compare to then. Could it be because of the way we conduct church? Could it be because we all sit facing the same direction and only see the backs of people’s heads? Could it be because we really don’t want to know knew people because we just want to stay in our little clichés? Could it be because we are scared to meet new people or just don’t care about them enough to introduce ourselves and find out about who they are? Maybe that is why we don’t invite our neighbors, or co-workers to visit our church. We know they will be ignored, or we might be embarrassed of how they will be treated or worse yet, we might be embarrassed of the gospel. It would be a great thing to have complete confidence in our fellow believers, in our church, in our small group or in our cliché as to how they would receive a visitor we sent, or invited. The question is, do we have that confidence?