Daily Manna · Day 222 · August 10
Strong Confidence
“In the fear of the LORD is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge.”
Proverbs 14 describes two men who look the same from the outside. Both are in verse sixteen, ten verses before today's verse: "A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident."
Start with the fool. The word "confident" there comes from the same Hebrew root as "strong confidence" in today's verse. He has nerve. He is afraid of nothing, and Proverbs treats that as a warning sign. He is like the simple man a verse earlier, who "believeth every word," and like the man in verse twelve, walking "a way which seemeth right unto a man." He is steady the way someone is steady when he has not yet noticed the cliff edge in front of him.
The wise man in the same verse "feareth, and departeth from evil." He is afraid of the right thing, and that is what makes him unafraid of most other things. That is exactly the logic of today's verse: "In the fear of the LORD is strong confidence." Reverence for God grows real courage in a person, the kind of reverence that takes God seriously enough to obey Him when obeying costs something. And the shelter reaches further than the man himself: "his children shall have a place of refuge." What holds him up also holds up the people who belong to him.
Here is the warning. In a good year the two men look exactly alike, and both of them feel steady. Money in the bank, a five-year plan, or a skill nobody can take from you can give the same feeling as the fear of the LORD, right up to the moment the ground moves. Only then does anyone find out which one he had. So the test is what you do this week in the place where obeying God would cost you something you would rather keep. How confident you feel this morning does not settle it.
The good news is in the very next verse: "The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life." That refuge is real, it is open to anyone who will fear Him, and it is wide enough for your children too.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 222 is Stirreth Up Her Nest (Deuteronomy 32:11).