My Confidence

Confidence.  I'm not sure I have ever met someone who has truly mastered this concept.  Being a twenty-something year old, and I'm sure this is true in any life stage, there seems to be so many things that try to shatter the confidence we have built up in ourselves.

Here are some things for me personally that can threaten to take away my self-confidence: Starting a new job/moving somewhere totally new and battling loneliness.  Realizing feelings about a boy or relationship may be unreciprocated.  Having friends decide you are no longer worth their time.  Social media and the comparison game.  SO many things we go through every day that attempt to weigh on how we see ourselves/where we find our self-worth.

So two of the key words I have used above are SELF-worth and SELF-confidence.  Here may be part of our problem!

The sermon this past Sunday as well as the worship seemed to focus on confidence, but not just in ourselves.  Lyrics in "Do It Again" by Elevation Worship really stuck out to me:

"Your promise still stands, great is Your faithfulness.  I'm still in Your hands. This is my confidence-that You've never failed me yet".

How true is this?  If I look back on every deliverance God has provided so far, why do I become so hesitant that the rest of His plans won't be just as good?

My prayer for many areas of my life lately is for God to help me decipher the line between being bold and being patient.  Knowing when to step out of my comfort zone, and when to rest knowing that He will provide.  I'm going to attempt to break down what I am slowly learning through this prayer.

BOLDNESS.

Let's go back to the lyrics in the song again.  "This is my confidence-that You've never failed me yet".  As I mentioned above, maybe we are looking for our confidence and worth in the wrong place.  If we are truly looking to ourselves for our confidence, how in the world are we expected to be a confident person?  I fail daily, and if I was the only one making plans for my life, it would not be going well.  But what can we be confident in?  How about all of the times God comes through again and again even with our doubt.

Let's take Moses for example: In Exodus 4, he had witnessed God use him to turn a stick into a snake and back-I would say that is pretty evident of God's power- yet as soon as there was mention of public speaking, Moses looked at his own abilities and called out "Please send someone else!".  He was attempting to find strength in himself instead of remembering what God can do.

Jonah is another good example of looking towards himself for his confidence.  He ran so far away from where God was leading him that he got swallowed by a fish, spit out again, then redirected to the same plan God was attempting to show him all along.  If he would have just found his confidence in Christ at the beginning, he would have avoided a very unideal situation.

Jeremiah 29:11 "'For I know the plans I have for you', declares the Lord.  'Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future.'" This verse is used so often that we sometimes quit seeing the significance of it.  God is straight up telling us to stop worrying because His plan is GOOD!  Even if it is scary or different than what we thought.  So let's be bold!  But remember who we should be bold for.

If we truly believe that His power, grace, love, and mercy have saved us for eternity, shouldn't we be confident every day because He is living inside of us?  While we are broken on our own, the one who created the world is living for us and in us!  That is where we should draw our confidence and worth from.

PATIENCE.

I will be honest- I feel like God has been helping me with the boldness part of my prayer, so I think I wanted to skip past the patience part, even though I had been praying for it daily...

Right now I am learning patience.  I am learning to wait and be content in the waiting.  But it can be hard!  Learning to wait may be hard because our priorities are not focused on the right things: we spend so much time and energy hoping and praying for things of this world that we forget to look at what He can be using us for during the wait.

"And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again". (2 Corinthians 5:15)

Jesus didn't become our sin and DIE on the cross so that we could find a spouse or get a job promotion, He died for our eternal joy.  While marriage, relationships, dream jobs, and all other earthly things are truly wonderful blessings that He many times delivers, it's not why we are here.  If he makes us wait on a relationship, so be it.  He gave us an even greater gift of getting to spend forever with Him.

I'm talking to myself as much as anyone here: instead of becoming antsy in our waiting for earthly desires, let's look around and see what He is calling us to in the current moment-everything else will fall into place.  Are we serving? Are we being used as witnesses?  Are we loving with pure hearts?  Let's DO more instead of wait on more.

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

I don't think there is anything wrong in asking God for the things our hearts desire.  In fact, I think He wants us to pour out to Him fully and turn to Him for everything.  However, let's just make sure that He is the true desire of our hearts.  Let's be bold for Him, and thank Him for the ability to be patient.  Let's truly let Him be our confidence!