Psalm 118:8, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put your confidence in man”
Life is a long and bumpy road. We each carry our troubles, like heavy load. There are many hard turns and some dead ends. However whenever we are stuck, we must know whom look to. Think of the elections, majority put their confidence in the next president hoping he will turn things around.
The scripture verse above is right in the middle of the bible. I would call it the heartbeat of every man who understands what life is. When I look at a scripture, I tend to pick out a word or two to understand why the author chose to use those particular words. In this case, the author used the word “Confidence” instead of “Faith” and my first reaction was, is there any difference? Let’s start with “faith”, faith is trust, belief and confidence. Can we say then that both faith and confidence are the same? The answer is yes but their use has different WEIGHTS. Confidence is derived from the word confide which is to tell confidential matters or imparting secrets. Confidence is also faith that one will act in a right proper and effective way. My favorite definition, confidence stresses faith in one’s self and one’s power without any suggestion of conceit or arrogance. God is confident in Himself, His ability can no one match. This is my personal conviction, I can have faith in man but I CANNOT have confidence in man.
Why is this so important to us then? Confidence in man is a shaky confidence as man is weak in the flesh and can stumble over what they have committed themselves to. Putting unrealistic expectations on people is not wise, be it in a ministry, workforce, relationships. If they don’t come through, views of them may change. I have seen people attach themselves to relationships for ages because at the beginning, they gave out everything about themselves and put their total confidence in that person. When things did not work out, they were left hurt, confused, raged and some went into depression.
It’s been proven that man finds it hard to maintain what he is committed to. When you and I understand people’s weakness, how we handle and how we are handled becomes different. Man is weak without God and we know that in every believer, there is nothing good in a person except the Lord. When the bible says man has fallen short of the glory of God, it’s an indication that however hard man tries, there will always be an area of deficiency in his life.
Let’s look at it from relationships point view. A man and a woman meet, they get attracted to each other, they begin to date, they fall in love, everything appear to be going well. The man can’t stop talking about this woman he has met who has all the qualities he ever desired, perfect mate for him with no flaws. He can’t wait to see her, does everything for her, she is the first thing in his mind and the last thing and the same goes for the woman. Secrets have been shared, some confidential matters because of the bond. Not long after, little irritating, annoying things begins to pop up; certain behaviors that you never imagined are revealed. Now they don’t look as wonderful as they looked before, the thoughts, things they used to do diminish. This is life, things happen and yet we still tend to put our confidence in man in a way hoping that they will not fail us or we fail them. If they survive knowing how to work it out, great. But how about those who did not work it out and ended up breaking up? as said before, they will be left hurt, confused, pushed a side, feeling used and misused. Now no one wants to be even friends and if there are other friends, they will try to talk them out of their developed friendships. This is what amazes me right after, everyone believes they were wronged and would want an apology without them giving it. I have heard stories of break ups and each side had a different story blaming the other one but not hearing anyone say, “I messed up here and I messed up there I need to be forgiven. I should have handled this more maturely. Yes, I might have been wronged but the way I handled it was not good at all”
Psalm 118:8, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put your confidence in man“. People can fail you and so will you fail them, the heartbeat of the scripture teaches us that it’s okay to trust man and have confidence in him but it is better to have both trust and confidence in God. I would say the reason is simple, if you can learn to confide in God, if you are failed, you will have learnt to handle people. Distancing yourself from them wouldn’t be right, but you will learn to forgive and move on. You will have someone to completely trust in who will teach you how to handle a person who either has failed you or can fail you. God never fails and shouldn’t be looked at the way the other person who failed you. He holds the secrets without blowing your cover, knows your weakness yet still accepts you. He wasn’t attracted to you based on what you presented to Him. If man failed you, know that God has not therefore let this scripture strengthen you, Psalm 118:17, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord“. Let nothing make you faint. If a relationship did not work, it might have left you wounded but it did not kill you. Ask the Lord to give you strength and grace to speak Psalm 118:17 and move on, God whom you have confidence in has a way of blessing you again. Blessing Evans
He Has Magnified His Word 