Yes, yes, I know. I did a whole blog post about the difference between confidence and courage, and hopefully, you were able to pick up on the fact that I’m none too fond of confidence. It’s usually a superficial, fake mask, if you will, that can very easily be broken and cracked by the ugly voices of others, or even your own voice.
But, that’s confidence in yourself. Confidence in who you are as. . . you. Confidence in your skills, your accomplishments, your looks, and your choices. The kind of confidence that is pitiful and weak because it’s grounded in a sinful human being—you.
Today, I’m not talking about that kind of you-confidence. I’m talking about God-confidence.
Confidence in, not yourself, but in God. Confidence in who you are as God’s child. Confidence in God’s power, God’s works, God’s glory, and God’s plan.
The kind of confidence that is grounded in a holy, blameless, perfect, powerful God, who never makes mistakes, never commits an error, and never says “oops—didn’t mean to make you look like that! Oh well, on to the next test subject.” No! Like I said in my blog post about Wasps, God never has, and never will make a mistake so you are not a mistake!
Just read Psalm 139 and you will be reminded of just how perfectly and wonderfully God has created you, and, how perfectly and wonderfully He loves you.
He gave up everything, and became nothing for us—why would He do that if He didn’t love you? Why would He create you if it wasn’t with a purpose, for His ultimate glory? And, how could someone, especially Someone with such a perfect love, not care about His creations?
Next time you’re tempted by Satan—and yes, it is Satan who is constantly whispering those lies into your ears—to think for even the smallest of seconds that God doesn’t care about you anymore, or He’s forgotten about you, or He’s just done loving you, or maybe even that He never even cared, remember this: all the DNA in your body put together would be approximately twice the diameter of the Solar System. Or, in other words, your DNA could stretch to the sun and back about sixty-one times!
If that’s not mind-blowingly insane, I don’t know what is!
God created all of that DNA, and made you. The incredibly epic amount of nucleotides and proteins and combinations—that our scientists don’t even have figured out—is inside of you, and God created it. There’s no mistake in that. There’s no “whoops!” or “uh oh! I created another human!”
No, each and every one of us is in God’s plan. Each and every one of us has a purpose—we’re alive, aren’t we? And each and every one of us is so desperately loved by God that He would send His one and only Son, to die for us.
Why would you have confidence in yourself when you can have confidence in that?!
Iron
My point in all of that is to show you that you have a whole lot to be confident in—it’s just not you. Because when you place confidence in yourself, it is going to fall flat every. Single. Time. And you’re going to end up picking yourself up off the floor, wondering why you all of a sudden can’t seem to find anything or anyone to put your trust in.
When you have confidence in yourself only—when you are your own solid rock, and your own firm foundation—you’re going to find out real quick that you don’t have a solid rock or a firm foundation.
You can not be your own Savior, because you’re going to fail yourself every single time.
That is why we put our confidence not in ourselves, but in God our Father and Jesus. They will never fail us. They will be a firm foundation and a solid rock through every storm.
And when we realize this, even the most shy, most quiet, most awkward person can have confidence in their identity in Christ. Then, and only then, can we go and show others how to be confident like this.
A book that I dearly love and treasure, All That Really Matters by Nicole Deese, puts it this way: “‘when you feel good in your own skin, it’s easy to help someone else feel good in theirs.’”
And while our feelings aren’t exactly the point here, the idea is the same. When you have confidence in who you are in Christ, it’s to help someone else have confidence in who they are in Christ.
It’s like iron. Iron is one of the better conductors of heat, along with copper and aluminum. When you touch the iron handle of a hot iron pan, you get burned. When you get silverware out of the dishwasher, they’re hotter than the ceramic plates.
All that to say, iron conducts heat well—but, it first has to hot itself. Silverware isn’t hot just because it’s iron, but because it’s just come out of the hot dishwasher.
We are like iron.
We have the power to make other people hot—confident in who they are in Christ—but we first have to have our own confidence in Christ. Once we do, we are able to transfer that into other people.
Opinionated
One of the key ways we can grow in our confidence in Christ and our identity in Him is realizing that there is only one opinion that can rule out lives, and it’s God’s.
This world is full of opinions—we’re being hit by them from every angle and every opportunity. You’re told one thing, and then another, and then to disregard both those and listen to someone else, and then not to listen to them, until you’re lost and confused and totally blind to what really matters.
And it’s not even the spoken thoughts or judgments that really get to you. It’s the supposed, the feared—the thoughts you think they’re thinking—that really control you. You dress a certain way, post certain pictures on Instagram, and say specific things, all because you’re afraid of what they’re thinking, and all you want is to please them.
But here’s the thing: you can never please everyone. Ever. People are too fickle and unconfident themselves. So please, stop caring about all of everyone else’s opinions. They really don’t matter.
“Mermaids don’t lose sleep over the opinions of shrimp.”
Another quote really hit home for me. “Isn’t it ironic? We ignore the ones who adore us. Adore the ones who ignore us. Love the ones who hate us, and hate the ones who love us.”
Let’s not let that be true in our own lives—and if we go about our days, constantly reminding ourselves who we are in Christ, it won’t be true. We will become more in tune with God’s opinions, and God’s wants, and God’s desires, rather than the world’s.
If you want to have the kind of confidence that Jesus had when He toppled the expectations and “rules” of an entire culture, stop caring about the opinions of mere people. Why would you listen to lies from a mortal human being, over truth from the King of the entire universe?
Who HE Says We Are
The more you fill your head with what is true, the more confident you will be, without even trying.
You are loved. You are forgiven. You are not alone. You are chosen. You are called. You are not alone. You are wanted. You are special.
There is hope.
Jesus loves you.
All very simple phrases that a toddler could parrot back to you, and yet, we are all guilty of choosing not to believe them. And that’s the key: this is a choice. Confidence is a choice. You can choose to believe that God loves you and cares for you and is with you, or you can choose not to believe that. It’s up to you.
And I’m not saying that once you believe that God loves you, you’ll automatically be so confident and so sure of yourself and so strong and everything will be wonderful and perfect for you. No—God has promised that “in this world you will have trouble.”
But, that’s not where He ends it. He says “but take heart. I have overcome the world.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the God we serve has overcome the world—how could we not have confidence in Him? I mean, who else has overcome the world? And created said world? And sent His Son to die for us and then rose from the dead?!
No one.
So why would we put our identity in anyone else but Him?
A book I’ve been reading, Radiant by Priscilla Shirer, says this so eloquently, “No matter how you hear them of why you may have chosen to believe them, none of these lies is your true name or identity. Why? Because that is not what your Father calls you. And you are who He says you are.”
Let me say that one more time—you are who HE says you are. No one else gets to say who you are, so don’t let them.
And as you grow in this knowledge and are filled with His confidence, share it with others. It takes confidence to make others confident, so once you’re confident in who you are in Him, let’s go out and make others confident too.
We have not been called to be normal—no, we have been called to live outside the lines, and never let anyone other than the God of the Universe tell us who we are.