Where-s-Your-Confidence?

Usually, I think in our culture we're approaching confidence at

a surface love. When it's a Bible word. I'll read

you a few verses that say the word confidence. It's

also mentioned in a positive context, even write in Philippians,

the same book of the Bible, Chapter one, verse six,

Paul says, being confident of this that he who began

a good work in you will carry it on to

completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Or in Second

Corinthians three four and five, Paul is clarifying such confidence

we have through.

Christ before God.

In Hebrews ten nineteen, he says, therefore, brothers and sisters,

since we have confidence to enter the.

Most holy place by the blood of Jesus.

It's interesting because I just read three scriptures with confidence

in the verse, but none of them had the word

self in them.

You hear me.

And one real tendency I see today in my preaching

is to import a concept from culture and to try

to bring it over into Christianity. And a lot of

times when we do that, we don't take time to

extract the cultural dynamics. Like confidence, what it means today

would have been totally foreign to someone like Paul, because

although he used the same word confidence, he didn't necessarily

mean the same thing. In the first verse I read you,

he said, I'm confident of this that he who began

a good work in you. In Tewod Corinthians three four,

he said, such confidence we have through Christ before God

Hebrews ten nineteen, he said, we have confidence to enter

the most holy place by the blood of Jesus. This

is not a confidence that is the result of my accomplishments.

And now, sadly, culturally, it seems that we have put

confidence in our confidence. It's become more of something that

we project than something that we actually possess.

And so we are learning to.

Speak confidently, walk confidently, post confidently. We're learning sometimes to

perform with confidence. But any performance that is not based

on true possession is short lived. Furthermore, it can be

just as dangerous to have too much confidence as it

is to have not enough confidence.

But it's a question for me how much confidence?

And yet when I was studying the passage this week,

God said, it's the wrong question. The question is not

how much confidence, but what are you putting your confidence in.

It's not about the amount of confidence.

So we don't need to teach our children necessarily to.

Be more confident.

I know that sounds cultural and counterintuitive, and I know

that you want your children. I want my children to

be social, and I want my children to stand up

for themselves and all of that. But what good is

full confidence if it's misplaced. Some of the most confident

people I've ever met were simultaneously the most ignorant. In fact,

the times in my life that I was the most

confident were the times in my life that I was

the most ignorant. One of my friends was asking me,

why don't you put all your sermons online from when

you started the church twelve years ago. I said, there's

a statute of limitations. That stuff I said when I

was in my twenties.

I don't know if I believe that anymore.

I don't know if I'll still believe what I say

today in twenty minutes.

I'm a work in progress. I'm not God.

Oh. I used to preach with confidence before my dad

died of als. When I would talk to somebody and

they were sick in their body, it was simple to me.

God is a healer. But when I prayed every prayer

about healing, and he still took his last breath, I

lost my confidence, not in God.

I didn't stop the thin and he was a healer.

I just realized that.

Sometimes healing looks different from his perspective, and it looks

from my perspective. When we're so quick to categorize, false

confidence will cause you to categorize who's going to heaven

and who's going to hell, who's living for God and

who's not living for God, who's successful who's not successful,

Or what you would do if you were raising their kids.

Can I be honest with you, if you're raising their kids, you.

Might you might have a prison ministry from inside the prison.

Paul says, watch out for the dogs. It's a safeguard

for your faith. But you've got to watch out for

the dogs. And he's not talking about drug dealers or liberals,

he said, he said, watch out for the dogs, the evildoers,

the mutilators of the flesh, those judaizers who are trying

to tell you that you need to be circumcised as

a sign of.

Your relationship with God, because they are.

Importing the custom of the Old Covenant and trying to

take the way that God used to identify his people

and trying to bring it over into your relationship with Christ.

And what was happening at the time is that a

group of Jews who had converted to Christianity wanted to

force the Gentiles to prove that they were sincerely a

part of the people of God, to be circumcised physically

to indicate their spiritual change and their relationship with Christ.

And Paul called them dogs. He called them the same

thing that the Jews would call the Gentiles. He called

these Jewish believers who are trying to make the Gentiles

more like Jews. He said, You've got to watch out

for any temptation to try to prove outwardly what can

only be accomplished inwardly. You've got to watch out for

any temptation. You got it one, lady clap, she's dee.

You've got to.

Watch out for any temptation to appear to be something

that shortcuts the process of actually becoming that because it's

much easier to cut away the flesh than it is

for you to allow God to cut away those things

in your heart. It's much easier to modify certain parts

of your behavior.

And then you develop a confidence.

In the flesh, and you start thinking that because you

don't smoke, you're not going to hell. You start thinking that, yeah,

you start thinking that because you don't struggle with what

they struggle with, that it somehow elevates you to a

level of spiritual status that is better than someone else.

But if you live a little while, I said, if

you live a little while, all of your categories will

get confused, and you will live to see some people

who seem so holy and all hell will break loose

and you'll find out that their house was pretty, but

it was built on sand. I'm telling you, you live

long enough, and you'll find out that some of the

people that impressed you so much with their language and

their lifestyle, deeper down, there were some things going on.

Some of the people you're trying to imitate right now

are miserable. You keep trying to be like them. You

keep judging yourself against the standard of their accomplishment. And

Paul says, I don't put any confidence in that, not anymore.

I used to.

I used to have a lot of confidence that was

based on my performance and my circumstances and my connections,

and my competency and my character.

He says, if you want to play the game of

whose flesh is better?

Let's play, so, Paul says, if you really want to

play this game and start comparing of who kept the

Sabbath better, you want to really play this game of

who's a better Jewish person?

Or you want to.

Play this game of who's more religious, or who has

a louder Hallelujah, or who knows more hymns, or who

can quote more scriptures or who can look more holy?

Paul says, less play.

I was at the top of the top of the

top of the top. I was a pharisee of the

tribe of Benjamin, of the people of Israel, as for

zeal versix, persecuting the church, and as for righteousness based

on the law faultless. So I had connections. I had

the right people in my life. I was competent. I

was a teacher of the law. I was so good

at what I did that they sent me to Damascus

to get more Christians who were preaching about Jesus and

to bring them back and put them on trial. But

on my way to Damascus, something happened that I wasn't

expected because I was comparing myself to people. But on

the way to Damascus, I was riding on my horse,

and I was blinded by a light and it knocked

me down off my horse, and all of a sudden,

I found myself on the ground, and I was no

longer comparing myself with people.

But I saw the radiance of.

Jesus Christ, and in comparison to him, I realized how nothing.

I really was, and I lost my confidence. I lost my.

Confidence because I got a glimpse of true greatness. And

a lot of times we are told that we should

not compare ourselves because it will cause us to lose

our confidence. A few weeks ago, Holly stood on this

very stage and delivered a fantastic message to the ladies

of our church.

About support systems.

She said that we shouldn't compare ourselves, and I disagree.

I think that we should.

Compare ourselves as long as we keep it in context,

because sometimes God will use comparison in your life to

help you want to get better.

Yeah.

The problem is when you start comparing one area of

your life to one area of somebody else's life and

don't take the other areas into context, you either begin

to feel superior to them or you begin to feel

in to them, and the bigger issue is, in contrast

to Jesus Christ, none of us really have any righteousness

to stand on or reason to feel superior. I think

you should compare yourself to others from time to time.

Compare yourself to other moms. Compare yourself to how they're

raising their kids. And sometimes it'll make you feel like

you're such a better.

Mom than they are, and then other times.

It'll make you feel like.

The worst mom in the world.

And then compare yourself if you're married to somebody who's single.

And then if you're single, compare yourself to somebody who's married.

And then, if you're really successful in your career but

you're not spending a lot of time with your family,

compare yourself to somebody who's killing it in the family category.

But then, if you're really killing it in the family category,

compare yourself to somebody who just received another promotion, but

it only means they have to travel more, and so

their marriage is barely hanging on, but they don't tell

you that, and so all you see.

Is their new car. I mean, I would suggest that.

And I kind of believe what she said, but I

think I think you actually have to compare yourself until

you get to the point where you are so exhausted

and nauseated of looking to others for your standard that

you realize that everybody is faking it.

Can I just say that?

Can I just put this out here for your consideration.

Everybody's faking it. Everybody's hiding something, everybody is smiling about something.

But y'all fake it till you make it. Is not

in the Bible.

It's not a proverb, it's not.

A psalm, it's not in Galatians, it's not a red

letter verse.

And I'll tell you what's happening.

We're faking it, but we're never making it, because as

soon as we.

Make it, it's not in anymore. And life unfolds, and.

Just about the time, and now I feel I preach them

just about the time I was just gonna teaches today,

But just about the time that you master one set

of skills in one stage of life.

The rules change, just about the time that you learn

to shush your baby.

They're teenagers, and now you're not trying to get them

to shush, You're trying.

To get them to talk to you. Now they won't

say anything. Isn't it true? You don't know yet I'm

telling you. I'm telling you this is the truth.

But when I was seventeen years old, oh man, I

was confident. When I did my ordination council and they

were ordaining me for the ministry, I actually was so confident,

if you want to use that word, I.

Changed.

I actually changed the question that they asked me, who

does this. I'm so embarrassed telling you this. I was

so certain. I was so confident. Christians can be so

confident in what we think we know and what we

think others should do. And I'm afraid that one of

the reasons we are losing the battle to influence culture

is because we are so confidently wrong about things that

we haven't even really looked into.

Well, we have cliches.

Oh, We've got cliches, and we're confident in those cliches.

You know, the Bible says, and.

Then you ask that person where is that in the Bible,

and you know what comes next.

He's in there somewhere confident too.

I mean, we'll write off a whole group of people

based on a scripture you never even read but you

just heard about one time, and Paul said, I was

like that, I was confident. I was confidently executing on

what I thought God wanted me to do, and then

came the crisis. I was so confident, and then God

allowed a crisis for Paul. It was a crisis of faith,

and it may come in many forms.

For some of us.

It will be something that happens to our bodies, or

it will be a condition we will struggle with in

our minds, or it will be a relationship that we

no longer are able to control. It could take any form,

But the point is for God to bring you to

the end of your confidence so that you can find faith.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for, an assurance

of what we do not see. So we've been trying

to hold on to our confidence, and we keep just

bumping ourselves in the mirror, and we keep trying to

give ourselves speeches so that we can convince ourselves that

we can do it, when all the time God has

been trying to use the circumstances of our lives to

nail our confidence to the cross. Because only after your

confidence dies can real faith come alive. Paul says, I

was confident in who I was. I was confident in

what I knew. I was confident in what I thought.

But something happened to me. I was blinded in my eyes.

And when I lost my vision, and when I could

no longer make sense out of it with my mind, who.

Am I preaching to?

Some things have been happening in your life that have

confused your view of how the world is. And it

no longer works like it used to work, and it's

not doing what it used to do. And you thought

God left you, You thought your faith was disappearing. Now, baby,

this is just a crucifixion, and three days after crucifixion.

Comes rest round. So when you lose.

Your confidence, you are a candidate for grace.

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