Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

– Hebrews 3:12-19

The words “original confidence” above bring back so many memories.

. . . if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

I remember my original confidence, when I first knew the Lord. I hope that I have held on to it and built on it over the years, but I also find myself wanting to reach back to those days sometimes. My original confidence sparkled with a childlike (and clumsy) faith that I have, in many ways, “grown out of”, to my detriment.

And I know many – too many – people who had what appeared to be an original confidence in the Lord which now appears to be missing. Or at least it’s not visible anymore. By appearances they have fallen into the trap the writer warns us about in Hebrews 2; that of neglecting so great a salvation.

For salvation is often neglected. We have so many other things to attend to, or so we think. I’ve learned that it doesn’t take long for the crust to begin building up around our hearts. It can come in those difficult years when, weaned from the student ministry we grew up in, we find that this faith we call our own is suddenly a strange thing, and a thing that needs tending and diligence that we are no longer willing to give. Tending our faith is often something we never learned to do.

For others of us, other things have shoved their way in; jealous gods of this world who stand against the one true God. Almost without knowing it, we find ourselves once again at the pagan altar, offering strange fire to the gods of our own imagining.

. . . if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

The writer points us to the Israelites of the Exodus. The horror of their fate is a punch to the heart when you think of it. They all died, save for Joshua and Celeb, in the wilderness, never having gone to the promised land. And all because of one day, when they heard the call of God to take the land, but because of unbelief and fear they decided they weren’t able.

They lost their original confidence in God on the day of decision. And the result was tragedy. If only they had kept their hearts soft, their eyes clear, and their confidence grounded in the Lord who had brought them through so much!

Today has an urgency to it. This may be the day of our calling, when our faith ceases to be something we keep in our back pockets for difficult situations, and itself becomes the driving force that hurls us, joyfully and with full confidence, into difficult situations that will unleash the terrifying, wonderful, joyous will of God upon us and those around us.

Sometimes every day for the rest of our lives depends on what we do, and Who we believe, today.