Where's your confidence?

Every Christmas we enjoy the week visiting family in Las Vegas. All the females head out to the mall the day after the Big Day to look for clearance items.

This year our granddaughters enjoyed playing on the playground in the mall. In the center there was a big ball that the local kids used as the focal point for games of King of the Mountain. As our 10-year-old proudly sat enthroned on high, a boy came running across the playground, got right in her face and screamed.

Pondering the situation, she calmly looked him in the eye and said, "I can take you!" Silently he disappeared. What confidence!

Daily the screams of life demand our attention: Trials, wars, hardships, illness, the economy, temptations. It's enough to drive us crazy. Where is our spiritual confidence?

The apostle Peter describes the devil as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He then advises, "resist him, firm in your faith." (I Peter 5:8-9)

James writes in James 4:7, "submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

As terrible things continue to run toward us, we can look them in the eye and in faith confidently affirm, "god and I can take you!"

• Bruce Henderson is pastor of the Airport Church of Christ in Carson City and is a member of the Carson City Ministerial Fellowship.