Being Persuaded

For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

2 Timothy 1:12

The confidence we have in God is not based in ourselves, rather we are persuaded by His Word, by the life and sacrifice of Christ, and by His Spirit that He is reliable, dependable, and will fulfill His promises to us.

The Apostle Paul used this little word peitho several times in his writings. It can be translated “being confident,” but the root meaning is “to persuade.” Even when it is properly translated “being confident” or being “sure” the idea behind it is confidence based on persuasion, such as in Philippians 1:6: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ”. Our confidence in God is not our invention rather it is His, achieved in our hearts by His constant witness.

This truth makes a great difference, for true love always seeks to build up the trust and confidence of the one it loves. For example, after thirty-eight years of marriage, I am convinced that my wife loves me. When we were young and just starting out, it could be said that my confidence in her was in part my own hopes and dreams, my own heart’s desires. On our wedding day, for example, she had not yet done very much to convince me of it, and we were in that state of mind we call “being in love” which creates a blindness of sorts. Young love is special, unique, and emotionally thrilling, but it is also notoriously untrustworthy. We have all seen, and many of us have personally experienced, something we thought was “love” being revealed to be nothing more than mere infatuation and selfish emotions.

But the confidence I have in my wife is not based on my own feelings toward her, or my own hopes of true love, rather it is based today on thirty-eight years of marriage (actually, almost thirty nine). I can say that I have been persuaded that she loves me. Her love is not a flippant thing, neither does she threaten me to remove it, rather she works to build up confidence in me that she truly does love me, so that my heart may rest and trust in her.

It is this type of confidence in God that the Apostle Paul wrote of, that we have learned by experience with Him, by heart, that He is reliable. In fact, that God undertakes this task to convince us of this truth. The Word says, “Love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1), and this is the result of His love — hearts that are confident and built up in Christ.

There must come a point in a believer’s life where he is able to rest in this fact, that like Paul he says that God Himself has persuaded him that He is reliable, that He is “able to keep that which [we] have committed unto Him against that day.” This is when our hearts find the peace spoken of in the Word, when we realize that God has been seeking all along to convince us of His love. John also used this same word when he wrote, “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him” (1 John 3:19).

Be assured, persuaded, convinced, and confident that God loves you and has begun a work in you that He keeps secure and that He will complete.