Words To Live By "Believe In Yourself" | October 26 2025 (Part 1)

Alright, well, when you crack open your Bibles, turn them open

to 2nd Corinthians chapter 10. OK, Second Corinthians chapter

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

10. If you're not sure where that is

in the Bible is a table of contents up in the screen.

You can make your way there. We're starting a new series

today. We're just going to scratch the

surface on it, but the series is words to live by.

Sanes that we hear that we may actually pattern a life by, I

don't know. I'll give you I'll give you a

few scenes. Just tell me what you think

about these words to live by. If at first you don't succeed,

try, try again. Then quit.

There's no point in being a fool about it.

All right? Never follow anyone.

Never follow anyone else's path. Unless you're in the woods and

you're lost and you see a path, then by all means follow that

path. Work hard, Sorry, work hard.

Work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?

Never put off tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow

just as well. Yeah, The secret of staying

young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age.

Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a

computer with slow Internet to see who they really are.

That's a good one. Last one.

This one I'm actually going on. Memory says never go to bed

angry, stay up and fight. Good.

Good advice. Hey, Yeah.

Words to live by. We're gonna.

I mean, we're starting off the Series A little light, of

course, but we're going to be looking at some pithy sayings,

Concise, very brief, very punchy and actually emotionally

motivating sayings that have gained traction in our culture,

have become popular and have even sort of seeped into the

church and in the vocabulary of Christians.

But the scenes that we haven't necessarily stopped to look at

like to think about you think about our thinking and, and to

discern is this actually helpful or maybe this maybe doing some

more damage, damage than good. We're gonna look at 4 scenes

over the next 4 weeks. The first one, actually, it's

over the five, five weeks, but I'll explain that later for four

scenes. First one, believe in yourself.

Second love is love. 3rd manifest your destiny for be

true to yourself. I bet you each one of you have

heard those sayings at some point.

We're going to take a look at them over the next over the next

month. Each one we can look at and say,

hey, you know what? Often these scenes that become

popular and that actually brings some encouragement to us are are

are produced out of good intentions and they there is

truth involved in each one of them, but there is a deceptive

element as well and that's why it's so important for us to

think about our thinking and this is what really the ministry

that possible Pauls who we've got to two Corinthians chapter

10 open. He sees Christian ministry that

is our greatest service to people as being primarily 1 of

correcting, thinking, correcting that the way that we think.

Because for Paul, he's assuming that bad living is actually

based on bad thinking where where things breakdown in our

lives, it's usually based on the things that we actually believe

about ourselves, about God, about the world.

And so he is committed to correcting the way that we

think. And when we get to this place in

chapter 10 and 2 Two Corinthians, he's actually

responding to some pushback that he had received from people in

the church because he was pointing out some problems in

some people's lives and, and, and they were kind of being

critical of him. And now he is speaking about the

nature of the ministry as one in which our mindsets are so

absolutely critical. So just as we get into these

verses, let's let's just whisper a prayer to the Lord.

Father, thank you. Thank you that You are present

here by Your Holy Spirit, and we pray that You would open our

eyes to see wonderful things from Your law through Jesus

Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Two Corinthians chapter 10 and

just starting to we're going to pick it up at verse 3.

It says this for though we live in the world, we do not wage war

as the world does. Pause there.

He's describing the nature of ministry as like a war waging

war. Verse four, he says the weapons

that we fight with are not the weapons of the world.

On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish

strongholds. We demolish arguments in every

pretension, that is, every claim that sets itself up against the

knowledge of God. Interesting how he's describing

this. He's describing the the nature

of ministry as like a war, but it's not the kind of war that we

think about where there's, you know, physical contact and

killing. He's talking about demolishing

arguments, beliefs that we have that have been set in place, and

he refers to them here as strongholds, like fortresses

that need to be brought down in order for us to be truly

liberated. These arguments are what

actually hold us back from living the kind of life that

we're meant to live. They actually oppress us.

And so Paul is in the freedom making business here.

So he says just continuing on in verse in verse 5, he says we

demolish arguments and every pretension that sets us up up

against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to

make it obedient to Christ. Every thought.

It's pretty thorough. We need to be capturing every

thought that may be strained from our understanding of who

God is really a strained from the truth and bring it back into

obedience to what truth really is, obedience to the lordship of

Jesus Christ. This is his description.

Now notice that all of this is military terminology and he's

actually explaining the whole process that would happen.

And when we wage war, waging war, he's got weapons.

And then we're, we're demolishing the strongholds of

the fortresses and then we're taking captives.

And, and then even in verse 6, it goes all the way with this

imagery, you know, and we will be ready to punish every act of

disobedience once your obedience is complete.

And so the idea is that we are, we're, we're bringing, helping

the people to come into line with the truth of who God is and

what he says life is all about. Now, before we, you know, get

lost in the military imagery, we need to realize that Paul's main

goal is to bring the captives, so to speak, to Jesus so that he

can truly set us free. Jesus is the way, the truth, and

the life, and he's the one that sets us free.

So Paul is all about winning people to Jesus.

That's what this imagery is all about, and it begins with a

battle of the mind. It's a battle of mind.

It's a battle for in our own mind and our in our assistance

in helping others in the battle of their mind, demolishing

strongholds, demolishing arguments that set themselves up

in opposition to what the truth is, what's the lordship of Jesus

Christ. Now how do we do that?

It's interesting in verse verse 1 of chapter 10, Paul says by

the humility and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you.

This is Paul, this is Paul, such a just a man who is on fire for

Christ and yet so gentle in his manner with people.

And that is exactly how we need to be as followers of Jesus.

So we're going to take a look today and over the next next few

weeks at a sane, a particular sane or a word, a word to live

by and we're going to use it use a basic outline.

First outline is we're going to look at the good intention

behind it. We're going to look at the grand

deception within it and then the God of grace over it.

All right, Good intention, grand deception.

The God of grace, same number one.

You ready? Believe in yourself.

Believe in yourself. Believe in yourself.

Believe in yourself. Has anyone other than me just

now told you to believe in yourself?

Maybe you've heard a motivational speaker speak that

that way. Maybe you've heard others use

that kind of language. Believe in yourself.

A lot of athletes use this kind of language.

If you've been following the Jays, you'll hear it pretty much

after every game. You know, we just stepped up to

the plate. I believed in myself and, you

know, hit the Homer, whatever. Actually, not last night, but,

but, and it's, and it's not just, you know, it's, it's, it's

everybody's using this. So this is, this is the kind of

language too, that Christians are freely using of themselves.

So it's good. Hey, let's just pause and take a

look at this. The good intention.

There's good intention behind it.

Yes, yes, we should have. And I think that this is really

the, the sentiment behind it. We should have confidence in our

own abilities. We should have confidence in our

own abilities. None of us want the spinal

surgeon that Wilma's spinal surgeon to be working operate on

her in that 4 hour, you know, not confident in his own

abilities. It's like, I don't know if I'm

going to be able to do that. You don't want that, right?

You need to have confidence. Does God want you to have

confidence in your abilities? For sure He does.

And I think this is really the heart behind this particular

word to live by. Don't fear failure, and it's OK

if you fail, but go for it. That's kind of the idea and I

love it. That's awesome.

If we were to look back, you know, in antiquity, like where

does this concept of believing in yourself come from?

There's probably a number of different sources. 1 Marcus

Aurelius, Roman emperor and in the 2nd century Stoic

philosopher. His saying was stand up

straight, not straightened. Stand up straight, not straight.

In other words, stand up straight, stand strong yourself

and and don't don't actually look to other people to prop you

up, but stand firm. Take responsibility for your

life, be self-sufficient, live by personal conviction, and

don't be swayed by public opinion.

There's some, there's some good stuff there.

We need to do that. But there is a line that we

cross, and this is so true in so many things where confidence

becomes overconfidence. At what point would you say that

confidence? What?

Where's that line Where confidence becomes

overconfidence, Where the confidence that we have in our

self actually is not very well founded?

That's what we call being puffed up.

That's what we call a thinking more of ourselves than we ought.

And that line is not always easy to discern, but it's important

for us to know that there is a line.

There's a grain of truth in this saying believing yourself.

But there's also something that we need to point out is that

that sane in and of itself is incomplete, right?

It needs to be qualified. It needs to be qualified.

How far can I go when I say that I'm going to believe in myself?

How far do my own abilities take me?

It can be very misleading, very misleading that in fact

dangerous. In fact, if it stands alone, we

could probably even say that it's a bald faced lie.

It's problematic. It's part of a grand deception.

Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist here, but there is a

grand deception behind it all. And this is, it's kind of

indicated by the fact that if we look through the Scriptures, we

don't see this ever being said to believe in yourself.

In fact, there's nothing remotely like believe in

yourself. In fact, what we see in

Scripture is the exact opposite of believing in yourself.

So Proverbs 28, Proverbs 28, verse 26 says those who trust

Proverbs 28:26

and that word that the Hebrew word same word for believe,

those who believe in themselves are fools, but those who walk in

wisdom are kept safe. There's an assumption there that

believing in herself actually is not a wise way to go, at least

according to what Scripture says.

Now, Scripture, as we look at the Scriptures, is far more

nuanced than this as we look into it.

For example, Jeremiah 17. This is what the Lord says.

Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from

mere flesh, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

That person will be like a Bush in the wasteland.

It's just, it's an interesting, the specification that's being

made here is that when we're drawing on mere flesh for our

strength, we're missing something.

And in order to draw from mere flesh, what we're doing is we're

forgetting God. We're actually turning away from

the living God, that all of those things are happening all

in one motion. But then in Jeremiah 17 it

continues on and says, But blessed is the one who trusts in

the Lord, whose confidence is in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water.

It never fails to bear fruit. Kind of summarizing all of the

benefits of that. So let's take a look at one more

passage probably very, very familiar to you, Proverbs

Proverbs 3:5–6

chapter 3, verse 5 to 6. It says this trust in the Lord

with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths

straight. So trust that is same word for

believe. Believe in the Lord with all

your heart, not leaning on your own self, on your own

understanding, on your own capacities doesn't mean that we

don't use our own capacities in our own understanding, but don't

lean on them so heavily, but in all your ways.

And here's the keyword, acknowledge Him and He will make

your path straight. That word, the Hebrew word means

to be aware of, to recognise, to acknowledge God in everything

that we do. And if you think about that it,

it's good to ponder that from time to time because we it's so

easy for us to forget God. I mean, God is at the centre of

everything. He created all of us.

We are in his world. And if we forget that even for a

moment, our thinking can go off kilter so easily.

You cannot get up from your chair this morning without the

help of God, he said. Well, you know, that's not true.

My muscles, my synapses are all kind of firing, you know?

Yeah, nothing can happen. George Springer cannot hit a

home run on in the 7th game without the help of God.

And I think he would recognize that, right?

God gave him the abilities, gave him the experiences and set the

whole moment up. What a glorious moment that was.

Hopefully that will happen again.

But to, to, to recognize, you know what all of that happened

because I just believed in myself.

It's, it's a pretty limited view.

In fact, it's, it's, you know, it's lacking in so many ways.

God said it's set it all up and that brings a humbleness to us

in our culture. We're so filled with ourselves.

Everything is about me. And there's a humility that

comes when we acknowledge in all of our ways, God in the middle

of everything, in the middle of our lives.

And so there is this grand deception going on.

This is why I'm saying this is because the problems with the

word to live by, like believe in yourself, takes us all the way

back to the beginning, opening chapters of Genesis where the

devil, the serpent is speaking to the first man and woman and

convincing them to not to basically to forget God.

God commanded you to do this. Well, did he really say that?

And God said that this is going to happen.

That's not going to happen. He, he, he's, he's putting

doubts in their mind. He is eroding their confidence

in God's Word, in God himself. And at that moment the decision

was made. I'm going to put more confidence

in what I think than what God would think, and that's where

the whole downward slide took place.

And this is at the heart of all the deceptions where we lose

confidence. What overconfidence is all about

is a loss of our confidence in God Himself.

There are limits to our abilities and it's good to

recognize that. I say, hey, go for it to the

full extent that you are able. But we need to recognize there

are limits to our abilities. And I love Guerrero junior

talking. He says if you've heard some of

the interviews that he does it. I believe in myself, I believe

in my team. I believe in God.

You know, he's kind of got the whole the whole thing going.

Love, love his attitude. He's great, but the point is, is

that there's a better source of confidence than ourselves.

That's really the point. The Scripture is trying to

communicate there's a better we have something better than

ourselves to put our confidence in and that has got himself I

There's so many incredible examples in this scripture.

I'm just gonna talk about 1 and that is David who became king

his his slaughtering of Goliath, facing Goliath.

Now, what kind of confidence do you need in order to stand as a

young boy before like a nine foot giant?

You need an incredible amount of confidence.

In fact, his brothers called him if he read in first Samuel

1 Samuel 17 · chapter mention

chapter 17, his brothers are saying, you're so conceited,

David, you know, why are you even here?

You know, go tend the sheep. Why are you even at the battle

line when Goliath was shouting out his defiance toward the

people of Israel, but David's what seemed on the outside is

being conceited was actually a deep confidence not in himself,

but in God. And just just listen to some of

the words that he uses here in in for Samuel 17.

He said here he is. He's he's convincing Saul, hey,

I'll be the one to go and face him because all the rest of the

Israelites were were petrified. And he says this, The Lord who

rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear

will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.

It it totally recognized like even though it was David who was

protecting his sheep from the bears and the lines with his

bare hands, obviously a very capable guy, He recognized

actually as the Lord who rescued me.

From the part of the line, the part of the bear.

And then he says, and this is when he's approaching the

Philistine, who is, you know, basically swearing at David

saying like, how can you guys send a kid out against me?

This is David, ready to go in Soon as you can run toward him,

he says. You come against me with a sword

and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of

the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you

have defied. This day the Lord will deliver

you into my hands, and I'll strike you down and cut off your

head. This very day I will give the

carcasses of the Philistines army, Philistine army, to the

birds and the wild animals. Talk about confidence, but

listen to this and the whole world will know that there is a

God in Israel. Where is David's confidence?

He would have built an incredible amount of confidence

in his own capacities, but he recognized God, he acknowledged

God, and everything was for God. And the confidence that he knew

that he was going to take that Philistine down is because what

that Philistine was doing was completely against what God was

about. And so I'm going in there and

I'm going to take him down because I believe in the name of

the board. This is the right thing to do,

and the whole world is going to know the glory of God.

So David was not conceded in the sense that he's seeking his own

glory. He's seeking the glory of God.

And when you and I step into any situation knowing, being aware

of God, acknowledging God and looking to glorify God, we can

have an incredible amount of confidence, incredible amount of

confidence. You know, people argue, you

know, a belief in a higher power that weakens the human spirit.

I take God out of the equation. Tell that to an A recovering

alcoholic where you know Alcoholics Anonymous and CR.

The first principle is acknowledging my life is

unmanageable for me and I need to put my trust in a higher

power. We need that.

We need that to be able to get through the biggest challenges

that we have in our lives. It's the best that we can do.

This is kind of the bottom line. The best that we can do is

confidence in ourselves. We're limiting ourselves so

much. There's we can do so much better

than that. You want strength?

Put your confidence in God. Knowing that God is on your side

will give you far more confidence you will ever have in

yourself. That kind of confidence is what

brings us beyond what we can do in the flesh and enables.

It brings us into that supernatural realm.

We were called to do miracles in Jesus name.

We're called to do stuff that that typically would not happen

because we put our trust in a God who does things that

typically do not happen. Nothing's impossible for him.

The whole reason why we're told believe in yourself is to gain

some form of a salvation that if I believe in myself, then I'll

be able to push through. If I believe in myself, then

maybe I can actually get good enough in order to do that.

And that's great for baseball and sports and maybe even

acquiring a few skills and not, but when it comes to the real

things that we need to deal with in life, it does not help us an

awful lot. For example, it's not gonna help

you in your character, with your character flaws like pride with

arrogance doesn't help. It's actually working against

you in your relationships where we need to work humbly with

other people. Believing in yourself doesn't

help us in your anxiety, in your stress.

In fact, what we're doing when we believe in ourselves, we're

actually putting more pressure on ourselves because it's all up

to us in order to do whatever we're looking to do.

Dealing with bitterness or capacity to let go of control

and actually forgive another person?

Not helpful. Talked about addiction district,

capacity to love, to lay down our life, to sacrifice for

someone, to sacrifice our our, our for the benefit of another

person. That totally flies in the face

of believing yourself. We need something much better

and God is giving us something much better than the saying

believing yourself. It's the reason why the

scripture doesn't say believe in yourself and you will be saved.

You know, X16 it says believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you

will be saved. He's the one, He's the one

that's rescuing us, saving us. We need help from the outside.

That's really the bottom line. We need that help from the

outsider. So Jesus speaks to each one of

us and he says in, in in John chapter 16, there's John chapter

John 16 · chapter mention John 14 · chapter mention

14. He says do not let your hearts

be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in

me. Why?

Because He created us, He is sustaining us.

He is moving us through this life, and He's actually

redeeming us. He is taking care of all of that

through His life. Perfect life, His sin bearing

death and is the resurrection that sets us free.

All of that stuff has been accomplished by him, and that's

why we can have incredible confidence.

When you Apostle Paul says I can do all things through him who

gives me strength. In other words, the confidence

that we have comes from our confidence in God.

We can have great confidence in our abilities.

You know God has given you gifts.

God is giving you at least a gift.

He's giving you capacities and you and I need to have great

confidence in using those gifts for His glory is given that

there are things that you can do personally, talking to each one

of you personally that no one else can do.

Like you are a unique individual.

You have a capacity that no one else has in a particular area.

Have great confidence in yourself because that is a

God-given gift. Use it for His glory, but don't

stop at I believe in myself. You're shortchanging everything

about what you're about. Don't believe in yourself or I

would say this. Don't stop it believing

yourself. Put your faith in God, put all

of your confidence in God and use the abilities that God has

given to you for His glory. That's really it.

That's really it. Let's pray.

Father in Heaven, you're gracious and kind.

You are thoughtful and merciful and you are the bearer that

actually the Creator and the bearer of truth.

And we thank you for that truth you've given to us in your word.

Lord, we pray that you would continue to help us to win the

battle in the mind, Lord, to tear down the strong

strongholds. Those arguments that actually

keep us bound that that limit us that we would experience the

freedom that we have in Jesus Christ, putting our full

confidence in you and therefore, Lord, honoring you with a life

well lived. Grant to us that grace in these

coming days as we look at these scenes.

For the glory of your name, we pray all God's people say Amen.