Jer 17:7 …Blessed are those who TRUST in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and CONFIDENCE.
Confidence is an essential ingredient and fuel in our life. We need it to believe we can succeed. It helps us make the right decisions, choose the right marriage partner, confront a problem, parent our kids when we have no clue what we are really doing. It enables us to step out into the unknown. We even need it to be able to communicate how we really feel.
The question is…where are the roots of our confidence growing? In merely ourselves, the people around us, or in God Himself? Confidence springs from the ability to trust something. The greater the trust in something….the higher the level of confidence.
It is all about:
1. Knowing that in EVERY given area of your life God is intrinsically involved. In the ups and downs. When you cannot see ahead clearly. When you afraid. When you struggle to conceive a child. When you’ve lost your job or your relationships are in crisis. When the doctor gives you news that rocks your world. God is there. Ever present. Paving the way ahead for you.
2. True confidence must REST on something solid. Our confidence must be ANCHORED to something that will not move or change. It therefore cannot reside only in others or in ourselves because both will at some point let you down! Confidence has to be in rooted in something you can NEVER EVER lose. You cannot lose God. I have tried. He just sticks in there every time.
3. Confidence is faith, not fear. It is hope, not despair. It is bold, not arrogant. It’s trust not suspicion. It’s powerful and not timid. It is substance and not wishful thinking.
4. True confidence is both believing and trusting in what God says He can do through you. It rests on who God is, who I am created to be and what He has given me.
Self doubt is the enemy of confidence. Because it steals from the truth of who you and I really are. It creates instability and double mindedness within us and in James it reveals that God cannot respond to such a person. He responds to FAITH.
I have found my self doubt silenced and my confidence grown primarily by doing one thing. Habitually. Reading, meditating and crying out for truth from God’s Word. It sinks into my spirit and changes me from the inside out. Nothing beats it!!
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