Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.

— Psalm 20:7

Self-confidence is not the virtue that modern man has made it into. In fact, there have been no doubt hundreds, if not thousands, of books written on self-confidence and how to obtain it. Do you have self-confidence? The Bible has little to say about it other than the fact that it is a curse, not a virtue.

The word “confidence” is a combination of two Latin words: con (with), and fides (faith), so “Self-confidence” means “with faith in yourself,” and that is misplaced faith. Our faith should be in Christ. What we need is not self-confidence, but Christ-confidence. If you have self-confidence, you are always going to run into somebody bigger than you are, stronger than you are. You are going to run into a problem that is bigger than you can handle; your self is going to give way and the result of that is often despair and despondency.

But if you succeed, that’s even worse. What do you get then? You get pride. The Bible tells us “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). It can be deadly for the spiritual life. Sadly, in America today, we have hundreds of books teaching people how to have self-confidence, and thousands of parents are teaching their children to “Be proud.”

Question to ponder:
Which comes easier to you—self-confidence or Christ-confidence?

And He died for all, that those who live should not from now on live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

— 2 Corinthians 5:15

General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, wrote a telegram when he was on his death bed and had it sent worldwide to every officer in the Salvation Army. It consisted of just one word: “Others.”

After I mentioned the telegram in a sermon, a young lady came up to me several weeks later and said, “You know, when you preached about Booth’s telegram, I decided right then and there that I was going to make that day “Others’ Day.”

“Good idea,” I thought. She said, “And so I tried to focus throughout all of that day on the needs and wants of other people.  “I was so blessed by the end of the day that I decided to make it ‘Others’ Week.'” Then she said, “By the end of the week, I was so filled with joy that I couldn’t believe it. It was the happiest week of my life.”

I am convinced that one reason so many people are lonely is because they are so self-centered. If they would only turn their eyes outward and consider that the world desperately needs comfort, they would find that they wouldn’t be lonely at all. They wouldn’t be rejected at all if they really showed the love of Christ to others. The key to Christian service is being focused on “Others.”

Question to ponder:
What could you do today to make it “Others’ Day”?

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, that those who do not see may see …”

— John 9:39

There is an old mariners’ chart drawn in 1525 by an unknown cartographer that now resides in the British museum. It depicts the coast of some forbidding and unknown continent. The cartographer wrote in various places on the chart, “Here be giants” and again, “Here be fiery scorpions,” and, “Here be dragons.” Somehow, during his lifetime, it fell into the hands of the then-renowned scientist, Sir John Franklin, a Christian, who put a line through each of those fearsome statements and wrote across it all: “Here is God.” What fearsome, unknown continent was depicted on the chart? It was the east coast of the United States. When God is near, dragons, scorpions, and giants flee.

The world says, “Seeing is believing.” But the Bible teaches believing is seeing, and when God enables us to trust in Jesus Christ, we begin to see things we have never seen before. The fear of the unknown gives way to a trust in Him who is there.

The spiritual world with dangers and foes we cannot even imagine are all overcome by Christ when He made a spectacle of them on the Cross. So put on the full armor of God, and thus we can stand.

Question to ponder:
What are the “dragons” and “giants” you may fear?

Every one of them has turned aside; they are altogether corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.

— Psalm 53:3

God is the source of knowledge and wisdom. But we seem to be in a major hurry to forget that these days. Since the early 1960s, America has been plunging headlong away from God, religion, and the Bible—at least, officially—into materialism, atheism, evolutionism, and a godless secular philosophy of life. We are reaping the terrible consequences of that philosophy.

My friends, the seeds of secularism, grounded in evolution, have been and are producing a most pernicious and deadly harvest in America today. Years ago I read an interesting illustration by Dr. Ernest Gordon, dean emeritus of the Princeton University Chapel. He said that in the late 1950s, he spoke at a public school:

Twenty years later, I was invited to the same school for the same purpose. I again presented myself to the same office, but it was no longer the habitat of an educator [the assistant headmaster]. It was the command post of a police inspector. Corridors and classrooms were monitored by police officers who reported regularly to the inspector. The reasons for the change were obvious: violence, assault, rape, drug-induced madness . . . The demoralized school is the tragic consequence of a society’s rejection of the biblical worldview that provided the intellectual dynamic of Western education.

The Word of God is the source of true wisdom and even knowledge. David said, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation” (Psalm 119:99).

Question to ponder:
If there is no belief in God, how will humanity be held accountable to be good?

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

— 1 John 4:16

Truly, the most profound words ever spoken are—not with complex syntax or intricate convoluted grammar—but a simple sentence: “God is love.” Only three words: “God is love.” And those words, like a magician’s wand, forever changed the way the world thought. But they were backed up by deeds; the love of God was manifested in the life and love of Jesus Christ

We are so used to hearing about God’s love for us that we view it as our right and privilege to be loved by God. But the world into which Christ came was not at all familiar with that concept. The pagan gods were temperamental, capricious, and unpredictable. They were to be appeased, not loved. The idea of a God that loved was strange.

Then Jesus came, and now we know: God is love.

Question to ponder:
How do you experience God’s love in your life?

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with gratitude, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will protect your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

— Philippians 4:6-7

Are you a worrier? Perhaps you are beginning to realize that you have been victimized. Our enemy wants us to give in to fear and to let go of our trust in God. We must cling to Him.

Who was this that made such a statement? He did not know about the kind of problems that I face in my life. Well, maybe and maybe not. His name was Paul. He wrote these words from a dungeon in a Roman prison where he was incarcerated for Christ. Ahead of him he had a trial to look forward to—a trial before that most excellent and fair-minded judge, Nero—that lover of truth and light. Indeed Nero must have been a lover of light because he enjoyed covering Christians with tar, tying them to poles, and lighting his garden with them.

This “humanitarian” Nero was the one that Paul was preparing to stand before. He knew that the outlook was certainly very dim; ahead of him was absolute calamity and disaster. And yet, from that dungeon he cried out, “Be anxious for nothing, and “Rejoice in the Lord evermore.”

Question to ponder:
What are you worried about right now? How can you place these worries into the Lord’s care?

Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling …

— Psalm 91:9

God invites us to know His protection, as seen in Psalm 91. I would want you to understand that this psalm is not saying that everybody has the protection of the Almighty. It is not even saying that all Christians have this protection, since apparently only a few, relatively speaking, really enjoy it.

As Spurgeon said, “Here are the elect of the elect.” Here are the three of the twelve. Here are those special ones who enjoy this protection from God and are delivered from the snare of the fowler and the noisome pestilence.

Who are these who dwell in the secret place of the Almighty? It doesn’t say those who visit it occasionally, but rather the promise is given to those who dwell there. His promise of protection is very similar to the promise of peace found in Isaiah 26:3, where we read: “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”

He doesn’t say He will keep everybody in perfect peace. Rather, He will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are stayed on Him—those who are leaning heavily on Him. The Hebrew word for “stayed” means those who cling to Him, those who rest upon Him.

Question to ponder:
How do we dwell with God? How do we live in His presence?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His anointed…

— Psalm 2:2

Did you realize that teachers in the public schools were being encouraged to become proselytizers for a new religion? Do you realize that secular humanism has been virtually established as the state national religion of America? In a classic statement in The Humanist Magazine, a humanist educator said this:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizer of a new faith; a religion of humanity … for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool, day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.

I am afraid many parents don’t know what is happening. The secular humanists continually say that there is no such thing as humanism. Adolf Hitler said, “Let me control the textbooks and I will control Germany.”

Since secular humanism has had virtually full reign in our public schools, true learning has plunged. But that makes sense, since the Scriptures declare that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Question to ponder:
Why have so many of our schools become God-free zones?

For the LORD is the God of knowledge …

— 1 Samuel 2:3

If we are to secure the well-being of our children and the generation to come, we must teach them the Scriptures. The very reason education for the masses was created in the first place was so that people could read the Bible for themselves.

I think we need to take more seriously what the Bible says when it tells us that we, as parents, are to train up a child in the way he should go. We need to consider Christian education, beginning in the home, as we train our children in the Word of God, as we train them to pray, as we train them to walk the Christian life. Besides the home, we need to teach them in Sunday school and church and in Christian school, if possible.

We are told that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and from that simple statement there has come a desire to teach children. Education was taken away from the few and given to the many. And it wasn’t the slave who was to teach but it was given over to mothers. And children grew in the knowledge of God and in the knowledge of the things of this world. There is no doubt that wherever the Bible has gone, education has gone with it. And wherever the Bible has not gone education has lagged behind.

Question to ponder:
How has the Bible made you wise?

The words of the wise are like goads, and the collected sayings are like firmly embedded nails, given by one shepherd.

— Ecclesiastes 12:11

One scholar pointed out that in our public school system in America, we have been dropping one month per year academically ever since around the time they threw prayer out of the schools. It is interesting to look at tests that were given to students fifty or eighty years ago and see that many of today’s college graduates couldn’t pass a high school entrance examination given in 1900. Many college graduates today could not read McGuffey’s Reader [6^th grade level], because they wouldn’t understand many of the words.

For example, when John Adams entered Kings College one of the entrance requirements was to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into Latin.

We live in a time when there are powerful forces engaged in an effort to see that that Christian education is nullified and, instead, children receive a godless education. This has, of course, been a cause of great concern to many. We might ask ourselves, “How did it come about that so many of our children today are brainwashed in godless secularism in so-called ‘Christian America’?”

Question to ponder:
How can we impart wisdom to the next generation?