Brenda’s Blog – October 8, 2024
Jeb Stuart, officer in the Confederate Army, signed his correspondence to General Robert E. Lee “Yours To Count On.” During one of my Dad’s serious hospitalizations my niece Catherine came to visit and taped a sign to the wall with these four letters: YTCO. Dad understood immediately what she was saying: “We are with you Grandfather; we are standing by and praying; we love you.”
The comfort, confidence, and faithfulness of another is a rare privilege. “I’ve got your back” is an idiomatic way of rephrasing Stuart’s heartfelt sentiment. But so often the things in which we put our trust prove themselves to be lacking. We trust jobs, people, ban accounts and even our own abilities. So often they falter and we fall.
Perhaps we have placed our ladder against the wrong wall, as the old adage goes. Perhaps our faith is in a rock that crumbles instead of the Rock that conquers. In what are you placing your faith today? In what are you depending? As Dr. Phil says, “How’s it working for you?”
In my book Divine Confinement I wrote that the foundation of any faith walk is dependence on God. I believe that, but I struggle daily to work it out in my life. Depending on false gods squeezes down the space in my heart for the one true God. But I dearly want to depend on Him. Where is your struggle? What is forcing Him out of total and true reign?
Steadfastness is a biblical virtue but unswerving allegiance to anything other than the Son of God is idolatry. Jeb Stuart’s oath of fealty is the best that one human can offer another, but it falls far short of truly counting on Jesus. When we depend on the world to steady our boat we will be disappointed. When we attach our lifeline to Jesus we have the life He promised.