Articles by Kevin Baird

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

John 3:8 NKJV

There should always be a few head-scratching verses in the Bible which make you stop and ponder. This passage stuck in one of the most familiar chapters in all the Scripture has been one of those verses for me. I mean, who doesn’t know John 3:16? For many of us we memorized that verse in a Sunday School class too many years ago to remember. However, long before you get to that sixteenth verse, you must pass through verse eight.

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“For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.”

Job 3:25 NKJV

The story of Job has some complexities associated with it. A righteous person is enduring much suffering and pain. It opens the can of why bad things befall the believer. It is obvious in the book that God is pleased with Job as the conversation is recorded between the Lord and Satan. Yet, Job faces unparalleled adversity and suffering.

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“Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

James 2:17

I have recently read two great books from the same author (Matthew Bates) entitled, “Salvation by Allegiance Alone”, and “Gospel Allegiance”. Both books are definite recommendations, especially if we find ourselves in an extended lock-down period and looking for some spiritual download. This pandemic post will not be able to do a review of the books, but they are the springboard to some of the thoughts that are running around my brain today.

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“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. He was the founder of what has become known as logotherapy and is most notable for his best-selling book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. In the early years of ministry, I actually read or reviewed that book on a nearly annual basis for his observations were both fascinating and compelling. In the book he writes of his experiences in a Nazi Concentration Camp. Through that experience he comes to the conclusion that there was one defining difference between those who survived and those who succumbed to that horrific evil and injustice. Those who survived had a deep sense of purpose, meaning, and a future. Those who did not survive had lost hope, a sense of meaning, and had become cynical. Frankl suggested that the primary motivational force of an individual, especially in a crisis, is the search for meaning. He concluded that life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.

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“Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:”

Hebrews 10:35-36 (NKJV)

“I have confidence in your strength; you are my refuge, O God.”

Psalm 59:9 (GNT)

I may have an established doctrine and even believe all the right stuff, but if I lack confidence in what (and WHO) I believe, then I cannot receive what God has promised. Crisis reveals many things of which I am evaluating in my own life. Surprisingly, the foundation of confidence is being tested through this pandemic as well. Confidence is basically understood as the state of certainty. Perhaps it is better understood colloquially as “being sure of something”. All of us have a confidence that is exercised in our life. The question is never, “Do I have confidence in anything?”, but rather, “What is it that I have confidence in?”

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