I envy confident people. I see them everywhere—at work, at church, at family gatherings. Their lives seem so much easier than mine. They breeze through life, never paralyzed with doubt or second guessing. They never seem to wonder if they are “good enough.”
I want to be them.
I know that my viewpoint is a huge generalization and is mistaken in many ways. The mistake I am wrestling with right now is that I have an inaccurate definition of confidence.
Dictionary.com defines confidence as “belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance.” The dominant word here is SELF. And isn’t this just what our society demands, a devotion to our talents, appearances, careers, and material possessions?
Even the lack of self-confidence is a type of devotion to self. The focus is on one’s own deficiencies and the wish to be a “better” self. Why else would self-improvement books, videos, and television shows be such a prominent part of American culture? Having low self-confidence is just as self-absorbed as having high levels of self-assurance.
Placing confidence in anyone outside oneself is such a radical approach to living that I can’t grasp it. The Book of Philippians presents a view of the possibilities of life that flips all conventional cultural wisdom on its head. The verses on confidence are no exception.
We are to have no SELF-confidence? That’s what Paul calls for.
Since Pastor Nate’s sermon last Sunday on confidence, I’ve been trying to imagine a life rooted COMPLETELY in Christ, not my performance. Not basing my value on my job performance? Worrying about how effective a teacher I am is such a huge part of my life, my brain space, that I can’t imagine life without that stressor. A life lived doing my job to the best of my ability but not worrying about it all the time? Wow. That seems so far out of reach!
Imagining this life is revealing how amazingly self-focused I am and how few of my thoughts center on Christ’s view of me as a child of His. I really struggle with the concept that none of life-NONE OF IT!-is about me. It would be such freedom to live without the struggles of performance based values, but do I really want to let my selfishness go? I’ve lived with it for forty years…it is just a part of who I am.
The human mind and heart are tricky. We want to have confidence, but we shy away from the only One who can give us true assurance of our worth. We still tend to put faith in the temporal things of our own weak and inadequate brains because we want it to be all about us, all the time.
As I sit here wondering with my low self-confidence if my clinical strength deodorant and anti-humidity hairspray are still working in this unbearably hot room, I realize once again how sanctification is an ongoing process. Someday I will be confident in Christ and stop worrying about all this other “stuff.” Starting with one step at a time, right here, right now.
