Confidence

I often find myself responding to situations in other peoples’ lives with the phrase, “Just have confidence in yourself.”  Whether it is taking a stand against bullies, looking for a job, reinforcing dating boundaries, or just communicating with peers and parents, I regularly see a need for us as human beings to “just have confidence in ourselves.”  But recently I have found that “solution” to not be enough.

First of all, what is confidence?  We use the same word to describe ways we share information with others (“I told her about the issue in strict confidence”), how we view our own abilities (“He lacks the self-confidence he needs to lead”), and how certain we are of different events (“I am confident that our football team will not win a game this season”).  Generally, confidence is about trust.  The word shortens to confide, a verb that means to place something important into another’s care.  And to transform the word even more, we find the word fidelity, which comes from the Latin (fidē) for “faith.”  The prefix con generally means “with.”  So a history-of-the-word lesson aside, confidence is the state of having faith in something.

Well, I don’t know about you, but when I examine my life, the worst times have been when I act on just the faith I have in myself.  I can recall times when I thought I had good ideas that I ended up going with only to be disappointed, like the time when I was about five and I thought it would be a good idea to wave a dead bird in my sister’s face.  We still joke about it sometimes, but at that time it gave her nightmares and still kind of messes her up whenever a dead bird is involved.

I have a lot of other stories in my life that involve “dead birds,” or those things that were the result of us acting on just the faith in ourselves, and so do you.  In the book of Proverbs, we are instructed to “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” (3:5).  I think this is where the real solution is.  Confidence in ourselves will always lead to disappointment, but when we find our confidence in God, all things are possible (check out Luke 1:37).  When we trust in the Lord and pursue Him with the way we live our lives, He makes all things work in our favor.  We need to just have confidence in Him in all things, especially in those situations where our efforts are exhausted and the outcome is out of our control. 

When we are confident in Him and let Him have control is when we are most powerful. 

So, go ahead. 

Put your best foot forward in all that you do. 

But know that it is God carrying us through everything in our lives that really gives us something to be confident about.

Confidence

I often find myself responding to situations in other peoples’ lives with the phrase, “Just have confidence in yourself.”  Whether it is taking a stand against bullies, looking for a job, reinforcing dating boundaries, or just communicating with peers and parents, I regularly see a need for us as human beings to “just have confidence in ourselves.”  But recently I have found that “solution” to not be enough.

First of all, what is confidence?  We use the same word to describe ways we share information with others (“I told her about the issue in strict confidence”), how we view our own abilities (“He lacks the self-confidence he needs to lead”), and how certain we are of different events (“I am confident that our football team will not win a game this season”).  Generally, confidence is about trust.  The word shortens to confide, a verb that means to place something important into another’s care.  And to transform the word even more, we find the word fidelity, which comes from the Latin (fidē) for “faith.”  The prefix con generally means “with.”  So a history-of-the-word lesson aside, confidence is the state of having faith in something.

Well, I don’t know about you, but when I examine my life, the worst times have been when I act on just the faith I have in myself.  I can recall times when I thought I had good ideas that I ended up going with only to be disappointed, like the time when I was about five and I thought it would be a good idea to wave a dead bird in my sister’s face.  We still joke about it sometimes, but at that time it gave her nightmares and still kind of messes her up whenever a dead bird is involved.

I have a lot of other stories in my life that involve “dead birds,” or those things that were the result of us acting on just the faith in ourselves, and so do you.  In the book of Proverbs, we are instructed to “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” (3:5).  I think this is where the real solution is.  Confidence in ourselves will always lead to disappointment, but when we find our confidence in God, all things are possible (check out Luke 1:37).  When we trust in the Lord and pursue Him with the way we live our lives, He makes all things work in our favor.  We need to just have confidence in Him in all things, especially in those situations where our efforts are exhausted and the outcome is out of our control. 

When we are confident in Him and let Him have control is when we are most powerful. 

So, go ahead. 

Put your best foot forward in all that you do. 

But know that it is God carrying us through everything in our lives that really gives us something to be confident about.