Where’s Your Confidence

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

a surface level.

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 right in Philippians,

the same book of the Bible. Chapter 1, verse 6,

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 2

Corinthians 3, 4, and 5, Paul is clarifying such confidence

we have through Christ before God. In Hebrews 10, 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, 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 and 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 2 Corinthians 3, 4, he said,

such confidence we have through Christ before God. In Hebrews 10, 19,

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 and 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 counter 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

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 12 years ago? I said, there's a statute of limitations.

That's stuff I said when I was in my 20s.

I don't know if I believe that anymore. I don't

know if I'll still believe what I say today in

20 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 thinking he was a healer.

I just realized that sometimes healing looks different from his

perspective than it looks from my perspective. And 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 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,

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 were

trying to make the Gentiles more like Jews. And he said,

you 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 clapped. She's deep.

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 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.

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, uh, 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 or who

can look more holy, Paul says, let's 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, verse six,

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 I 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 everything. 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

inferior 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 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.

It's 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 it anymore. And life unfolds.

And just about the time, now I feel like preaching,

just about the time, I was just going to teach 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

learned 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 17 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 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. But 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. It'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 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 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 and assurance of what

we do not see.

So we've been trying to hold on.

To our confidence, and we keep chest 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 the crucifixion and three

days after crucifixion comes resurrection so when you lose your

confidence you are a candidate for grace.

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