Christians live with a unique kind of confidence.

No matter the global event, the economic condition, the personal struggle, there is yet confidence because faith is not about what you can see; it’s about what you believe despite what you can see. Faith is about choosing to take God at His Word even when every circumstance around you seems to contradict that Word. That’s true from top to bottom, from worldwide events right down to your next meal:

“You are going to hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, because these things must take place, but the end is not yet” (Matt. 24:6).

That’s the worldwide dynamic. But this same Jesus advised a similar attitude when it comes to our personal well-being:

“Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing?” (Matt. 6:25).

And that’s the personal level. From the threat of war to the threat of not having a coat in the winter, Christians are to live with confidence in the God who is in control. Always.

But there are ways in which that confidence can go off the rails, and go off those rails quickly. That confidence in God can drift into confidence in ourselves and our ability to provide for what we need. Similarly, that confidence can drift into presumption and we stop recognizing the great need we are in every single moment.

And here’s one other way that confidence can go wrong: Confidence in God’s control of the future can move into apathy. Our faith can become fatalism. When that happens, we simply shrug our shoulders at the pain, injustice, sin, and lostness around us. We chalk it all up to some spiritualized version of “what will be, will be” and call it faith. But faith is not fatalism. God’s intent is for us to be fully confident in Him, and yet at the same time recognize that we still have a part to play in His ongoing mission in the world.

There is a particular passage in the book of 1 Peter that seems to not only recognize this potential misunderstanding of faith, but also gives us the safeguard against it:

Who then will harm you if you are devoted to what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear them or be intimidated, but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:13-15).

Peter was writing to a church of new Christians, people who had come from a Gentile background into faith in Jesus Christ. But having believed, they were met with something they might not have expected – a localized persecution. They were beginning to suffer for their faith, and so 1 Peter is filled with all kinds of instruction about continuing to do goo in a society that would increasingly reject them. This is where we get Peter’s argument in this passage, that most of the time, no one is going to do you harm if you are committed to doing good to others and society in general. But in the instance in which someone is harmed, in spite of the good they are doing and specifically because of his or her righteousness, Peter says that we should still live in confidence.

Specifically, he says that we should not be afraid or intimidated, but instead, that we should regard Christ the Lord as holy. This is a call to remember the source of our confidence; we should remind ourselves who is really the Lord, and who is really in control. It is Jesus, the holy one of God – He is the true Lord. Not the governors; not the other ruling authorities; it’s Jesus. He is in control.

But then it’s as if Peter knows, again, that our faith can move to fatalism. So while we are reminding ourselves of the holiness and lordship of Jesus, Peter says we should do something else:

That we should be ready at a moment’s notice to give a defense to anyone who is asking about the hope we have.

This is far from fatalism; this is a posture of expectation and readiness. It is recognizing that in as much as Jesus is Lord over the circumstances He is facing, He is also Lord over our response to those circumstances. And as Lord, He has chosen to use us as His ambassadors to communicate His message.

This is how you keep faith from drifting into fatalism – it’s by waking up every day in a posture of readiness. Ready to share. Ready to work. Ready to be a witness of God’s grace. This is the active posture of faith God desires from us, that because we believe He is Lord we will in no way be ashamed to call Him such.