Don't Throw It Away

“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.” (Heb 10:35 AV)

The writer of Hebrews commends his audience for their care for him.  They suffered loss at the hands of the persecutors of the writer.  They suffered just because they were Jewish and because they had accepted Christ.  Their loss was significant.  Having non-stop issues, it might be a temptation to let one’s zeal cool.  It might be tempting to let someone else fight the good fight for a change.  The Hebrews, having endured for so long, might become weary in well-doing.  The writer tells them not to cast away something they had.  No man can steal our joy.  No man can take our confidence, wither.  If we lose our confidence, we have chosen to do that ourselves.  Confidence here is translated as boldness earlier in the chapter.  I don’t believe this is a mistake.  Confidence does manifest itself as boldness.  The less confidence we have, the less bold we are.  Confidence is the emotion that is foundational to boldness.  It is the core belief of something is true and dependable.  Confidence is what gives us boldness.  Casting our confidence aside means all boldness ceases.

I find the whole idea of casting away confidence an interesting concept.  The Greek word means to throw away or to cast off.  When we think of confidence, we usually think of someone who loses it.  Not someone who throws it away.  We think of circumstances being the reason.  Someone who loses confidence might have suffered one too many failures.  Therefore, he lacks confidence.  If he suffers diminished confidence, perhaps hope has been stolen.  When we think of the loss of confidence, we seldom think it happened as a deliberate choice by the one who lost that confidence.  But this is what the writer implies.  HE encourages his readers to hold fast to their confidence.  He encourages them not to throw it away.  If they do, there is a recompense of reward. Recompense is remuneration.  It is payment in kind.  If we hold fast to our confidence, the payment is a reward and not a loss.

In Boy Scouts, we were taught several survival skills.  One of them was how to start a fire when the wood was wet.  There are several ways this can be done.  Dry kindling is the most important of all needs.  We always brought with us a fire starter.  It could be a cube of fuel or something as simple as drier lint.  That is the easiest part.  The hardest part was finding wood that could be used as main firewood on a small fire.  We were taught to find pine wood that had high sap content.  Then we would cut notches in the wood sore of like a pine cone.  These were deep notches and you would leave a part of the notch on.  Into those notches, you would stuff your fuel.  Lint or fuel was stuffed in and lit.  The idea was to burn it slowly and hot so the sap would start on fire.  The thing is, we knew in theory this should work.  Keeping at it until it did was another matter.  Knowing if we could start a small ember in the pine wood, we could coax it into a bonfire before too long.  Confidence in what we knew to be true is what brought the fire to life.

We give up on God way too early.  We often do not see something all the way through.  Our confidence is challenged because things do not come easy.  We suffer failure or a loss and we think nothing will ever work out.  We refuse to meditate on that which did work out.  We see the falls more than we do the steps of victory.  Our confidence is lost because of our perspective.  But we are not talking about the loss of confidence.  We are talking about the deliberate choice to cast it off.  We are challenged not to do so.  Regardless of the circumstances or outcome, neither should determine our confidence.  If God said it, then it is true no matter the circumstances.  If God called us to it, it doesn't matter what our success rather is.  It is still our calling.  If the promise was made, God has not taken it back.  If we lose confidence, it is our own doing.