HEBREWS 10:35

Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.

Many of God’s children have cast away their boldness. Perhaps you are one of them?

You have only some fond memories of the days when holy boldness made your soul strong, enabling you to bear the burdens of life, the great as well as the small, not only calmly and with self-control, but with serenity of soul.

How did you lose your boldness?

It is written of Jehoshaphat: “His heart was lifted up in the ways of Jehovah.” In truth, only in the ways of the Lord can we keep our boldness.

But we stray from the ways of the Lord every day, more or less. How then can any of us keep our boldness?

Well, it is not sin that causes us to lose our boldness, but what we do after we have sinned. If we condone and cover up our sins, we lose our boldness. For then we have slipped into a secret covenant with sin. And dare not look God in the face.

There are many believers today whose eyes are cast down because they have compromised with their carnal desires and no longer oppose them in earnest. Others have yielded to vanity, comfort, or fear of others, or have begun to fashion themselves according to the world. Others have lost their boldness through love of mammon.

And when boldness goes out, worry and anxiety enter in.

You dare not look to the cross, because there your eye meets the Savior’s sad and searching glance. Then you try to console yourself and hope for the best. Especially do you hope that things will become better later.

You know, do you not, that it is only by a complete reconciliation that you can be saved?

O. Hallesby, God’s Word for Today: A Daily Devotional for the Whole Year, translator Clarence J. Carlsen (Augsburg, 1994)
Scripture for opening text taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.