I Have Confidence: Confidence in God

            If we desire to change, we must acknowledge our need for redemption. And more than that, this acknowledgement will be fruitless unless we have full confidence in God. We can identify countless ways in which God wills to redeem us. It is seen through His merciful love, His invitation for us to enter into divine life, the gift of Baptism in which we become his adopted sons and daughters, and essentially the whole message of the gospel.

            God’s invitation to entrust our confidence in Him requires a response. In his work Confidence in God, von Hildebrand discusses several principles that aid us in fully entrusting ourselves to God.

We must believe God can redeem us.

 In everything, God’s omnipotence must be “so palpably present to us as to lessen the reality of all other facts” (6). In other words, we should be constantly aware that God has the power to do everything. The concept must be extended to our actions.

However, it is so easy due to the weight of our sin and lack of hope for conversion. Confidence in conversion requires our belief that “Whatsoever the Lord pleased He hath done, in Heaven and on earth.”

We must believe that God loves us.

In efforts to be free from our misery and weakness of sins, we must be able to say “Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed.” (2) This mercy, rooted in God’s deep love, aims at redeeming us. Von Hildebrand expresses that we must believe, “not only that God can save us but that…He wills to redeem us; nay, He has redeemed us in Christ” (9). He says that it is not enough to stop merely at saying “God is love.”

We must believe that God knows us.

One who fully trusts God is mindful of the truth that while He is infinitely above all things, He is ever-mindful of us and our needs. Even when we stray from Him, He is near to us. We can rest in His all-powerful love. Along with this requirement of confidence in God comes the reality that nothing can escape or flee from God. He is present everywhere though we attempt to hide from Him. It is important to remember that this inability to escape His love and holiness is a positive concept, for He is the delight of our souls.

 We must believe that God calls us.

Von Hildebrand says that being called by God “in the full sense [can] be termed confidence in God” (12).  When we consider ourselves unworthy, excluded from God’s realm of concern, or merely onlookers to His love, those are indications of lacking in faith. The call of God is evident in Christ on the cross-“I thirst” for He wills to be loved by us.

We’re all striving to confide in something. We all need to trust someone who will be a constant presence in our lives. Confidence in God demands faith, the knowledge of security in Him and placing our own goals in the context of the new life Christ infuses into us.

----------