Confide...

In recent days, I have been reading from Psalm 25 and the word confides jumps off the page when I read verse 14:  'The Lord confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them'. I couldn't remember ever having seen that word in the bible before. I have always related this word to such things as confidentiality, trustworthiness, and being a person of integrity. Verse 14 in The Message Bible translation reads: 'God-friendship is for God-worshipers; They are the ones he confides in.' I interpret this as 'God as a friend will confide in me and share His ways with me and others, who love Him and are obedient to His leading'.  As I think about it, I realize confide is something others do as an act of trust toward me and confidential is how I treat the shared confidence.


While searching the bible for occurrences of 'confide', only 2 hits resulted, first in Judges 16:15, where Delilah is trying to get Samson to confide the secret of his great strength to her and later in Psalm 25:14 as above. In The Message Bible, the word trust is substituted for confide. Delilah says 'how can you say "I love you", when you won't confide in me?' In a way, I am sort of amazed that something so important as confidential relationships isn't stressed more. Maybe I'm just getting hung up on words since other subjects such as integrity, honesty, love, etc. are dealt with abundantly. Quoting my pastor, 'It's all about relationship'. Jesus set the example for each of us as we interact with each other. He showed us  how to live lives of integrity, trust, love, self-sacrifice, and confiding.

All that to say, I have always considered being confidential as an extremely important part of who I am as a person. The only time when maintaining a confidence is inappropriate, would be if a person planned to take a life of another, or some other extreme behavior, which would be harmful to that person, or someone else. As a Christian, I would have to trust that God would guide my response in these situations.

LORD, HELP US TO ALWAYS BE PEOPLE OF INTEGRITY, PEOPLE WHO CAN BE TRUSTED, PEOPLE WHO CAN BE CONFIDANTS, PEOPLE WHO CAN LOVE AND BE LOVED...