Surprising Self Confidence

Self Confidence is defined as a feeling of trust in one's abilities, qualities, and judgment. Each of us have a measure of self confidence, and I would argue that it is designed by God to be good. But it is not always good. Sometimes it is driven by pride and built upon the wrong idea, high self estimation. This does all kinds of damage. But when self confidence is built on something else, something amazing from God, then everything about it is wonderful. And you can have more of it, in the name of Jesus, than ever before. 

- What is "self confidence"?

- Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

- What happens when my confidence is based upon pride?

- Is it possible to have high self confidence and be a humble person?

- What role does God's Grace have in your self estimation and confidence?

Transcript

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Welcome to the Excel Still More Podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in. Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial decisions and future planning. He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you. You can reach him at 205-913-1720. I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started. Each and every week I try to share with you things that I am either working on or things that have worked in my life with this sincere conviction that if it can change me, it can change you. It is for that reason that I am more emotionally connected to today's topic than I have been in quite a while. The title today is Surprising Self-Confidence, which is pretty much what it sounds like. I want to talk to you about how I have grown in self-confidence, but how the journey that brought it about was completely unexpected. I would have never guessed that getting where I needed to be would have required that road, and yet it did. And wherever you are on your personal confidence level today, and maybe more importantly, whatever is driving that, there is something about God that I guarantee can renovate everything about that in your life if needed. And for me, it was. I feel like today could be a challenge because our topic is so internal, it's private, it's fundamental, and you don't just change it through a series of practical steps. So let me say up front, thank you for your patience on this, and I am prayerful that it will be uplifting to you. Alright, so let's start with the term itself. When you hear the words self-confidence, is that something you would consider to be positive or negative? Do you associate confidence within oneself as pride or courage? So initially, I don't want you to think of it as good or bad. Self-confidence is like money. It is generally a good thing, but it's also amoral. It's a thing that is good if accompanied by the right heart, and it can be terribly dangerous if accompanied by the wrong one. Your belief in yourself, your assessment of your value is a lot like that. But before we get into what's behind it, let me just define the term for you. And as I do so, maybe you can determine if you have a lot of it or not. Maybe even grade yourself one to ten. How self-confident are you? The term means this a feeling of trust in one's abilities, qualities, and judgment. So look, I don't want to fly past that. We need to know what we are talking about today. Firstly, it is a feeling. We are talking about your emotions, how you feel about yourself. Feelings are very hard to control, but they're also extremely potent. So, how do you feel about yourself? How much do you trust yourself? Like your abilities, your ability to do things and to do them well. How do you feel about yourself with regard to your qualities? The things that are just innately true about you. Are they good? Are they not good? Are they good enough? How do you see yourself? How do you feel about your own judgment, your own decisions, the choices that you're making in your life? So whether you think the term is a good thing or not, I think by definition, we all would like to have more of it. Wouldn't you like to feel good about the decisions that you make? Wouldn't you like to be in a position where you feel like you can trust yourself, you can trust your emotions, you can trust that your abilities matter, that your qualities are valuable, that you are important self confidence. Let me tell you about myself leading up to maybe four months ago. I've always had a fair amount of confidence. I had to stop and determine what was behind it or what was fueling it, more on that in just a moment. But for the most part, I would say it was a good thing. I feel like I can trust myself in what I am doing, what I'm capable of doing, and the decisions that I make. But for someone who would rate his self-confidence quite high, I've always had incredibly thin skin. Do you know what that means, thin skin? Preachers, by the way, are notorious for it. And it means that when someone questions my abilities, or they question my qualities, or they question my judgment, it hurts. I would let it get me down, I would let it ruin my day. And I don't mean that I would go away somewhere and sit down and think, you know, they might be right. What does that mean for my life? That would be a pretty good thing. No, it was more about being defensive and fighting back. Like my confidence in who I am was only as strong as how vehemently I could defend it, which really just meant that there was something wrong, something behind it that wasn't what it needed to be. So let me talk to you about that. Like I said, it's a lot like money. Its value is determined by the heart that accompanies it. And very usually people's self-confidence is founded upon pride. I don't like to single out males or females in episodes because I'm sure there is something to learn for all of us from general principles, but it feels like I might be talking more to gentlemen at the moment. It is very easy for our confidence in oneself to be based upon all kinds of terrible reasons. Maybe I am confident in my abilities because I compare it to someone else who doesn't have those abilities. I feel like I can trust myself because I'm better than this other guy who probably shouldn't be trusting himself. I'm using pride to fuel my self-worth. If pride is making me the confident person that I am, it will show up in very real ways. You might be listening right now thinking, no, I'm pretty confident in myself, and it is not about pride or comparison. Well, if you're right about that, and I hope you are, then note these next two things, because unrighteous pride fueling my self-worth will, number one, not be interested in getting better. My qualities and abilities and judgments don't need to get better. They're really good. I've built them and I can tell you stories about how the decisions I have made have been awesome. I begin to see myself as wise. Wise enough that I don't need a lot of new information. Now, truth be told, I've been past that problem for a few years now. That's what this entire ESM series is about. Episode one, just get better. My confidence should grow through my progress, not through some position that I have attained of brilliance. Furthermore, if my confidence in myself is based on pride, it will clearly become evident when challenged by others. And that's kind of where I was. When someone would question me, I would get all upset about it. I wouldn't come out and say, you have no right to question me, but there was something weird in me that almost wanted to argue that. My feelings would get hurt. Why is this person challenging me? Why are they suggesting things about me? Why do they think I'm wrong about this? That hurts my feelings because they should know that I'm not wrong about this, and I've thought this through, and then I would begin defending myself. To me, at least, a sign that my confidence is not well founded when I instinctively begin defending who I am instead of considering who I can become. I hope I'm conveying this message well. Feel free to correct me, if not. But it was these realizations that started a new road for me. And I want to take some time to tell you what changed. And really quickly let me say that even if your self-confidence is very low, I believe this will help you. Several months ago we started a Bible class at the Lindell Church. The material is called Grace, God's Power to Overcome Sin, and it was written by Dave Roberts and Edwin Crozier. You can find it at the truthbookstore.com website, and I highly recommend it. Certainly we've all studied grace before, and the basic ideas of our own unworthiness have been in plenty of sermons, but so many of us came out feeling like we weren't raised with this kind of teaching. It's important to emphasize fixing things and doing better, but what about our inherent inadequacy and how honest can we be about that? We will never be good. Not good enough. I will never have the abilities that God deserves for me to have. I will never possess consistently nor at its highest level the qualities that Jesus displayed that he has set before me and that I am pursuing, and my judgments will never be his judgments. We are broken by our own mistakes, and even on our best day, we are just a fraction of what God deserves for us to be, having sent His Son to shed his innocent blood for us. It was such a great class. Each week started with a case study about someone who wasn't able to get to where they wanted to be or didn't have the kind of abilities that they thought they would have by now. And systematically across the auditorium in the early weeks, everyone would raise their hand and say, Well, here's what they need to do, and this is how you fix it. And if they just try harder, they can get there. Because we're kind of conditioned to think that way, that our confidence in who we are is the result of our achievements, our pursuit of and nearness to perfection. However, the studies were written in such a way to demonstrate that these believers were trying very, very hard. They were trying to earn self-worth. Talk about pride, earn self-worth through the measuring of their own accomplishments and coming up empty. I know what that feels like. The impetus of the grace study was that the grace of God is available now, that God knows that you are a cracked vessel, that there are little chips and missing pieces, and that you are made out of a clay that looks like it has no value. And yet God says, I want to use you just like you are. Your judgments will not always be the best, your qualities, your abilities not always used in the proper way. God says, I know that. But I sent my son to make the unrighteous righteous by his love. If you will trust in him, if you will have faith in his power to make you righteous, and yes, you will make every effort possible to grow, but always growing, because, and listen to this carefully, you will never reach a level of worthiness. You will never be so great a Christian that you are above rebuke or questioning. Now, you might be thinking, wow, this was supposed to be about self-confidence. I feel less confident than ever. You're telling me that I will never truly be great. How am I supposed to be confident? Listen to me super carefully. God loves you and God will save you by the power of Jesus in your life, not your own power. Your confidence comes in what Christ can do with you and through you and for you, not in your own achievement or level. So we can just stop comparing ourselves to others. Instead, we compare ourselves to Christ, which is crushing, and we just get up every day and say, Lord, please make me better. I know I'm not good, but just will you make me better? I know that I can't do everything you deserve, but will you show me how to do my best? Can you hear it? There's no pride in this at all. The true power behind real self-confidence is humility. There is no reason for me to compare myself to others. I am officially unworthy, but I am confident in my abilities, qualities, and judgments because I know they aren't good enough, but I am incredibly confident that God has still accepted me and is using me and will help me. Now, if someone comes up to me, especially a friend, and they challenge me or they question me or they just think that what I'm doing is wrong, instead of being like, well, I'm self-confident, so I will defend how great I am, I'm much more inclined to say, you know what, you're probably right. Let's take a look at it. You're probably right. I probably missed something because when it comes to my abilities and qualities and judgment, I miss a lot of things. But I just want to tell you as we go into this, my mistakes are sincere. I'm trying to serve God, and I'm incredibly confident that God loves me and that God is pleased with me on this journey, and I welcome, I welcome your correction. Self-confidence based upon humility, self-confidence that is grown upon and surrounded by the grace of God. It welcomes help because I know that I need it. So the surprise to me has come in two ways. First of all, I had no idea that a series on the glorious nature of God's grace in my woefully imperfect life would build more security in me, more optimism of my condition with God based on his power, not my own, than any efforts I'd ever made in my life to elevate myself above others or go into some self-speak about how great I am, or any of those foolishly hollow, pride-based pursuits of value. That was a really long sentence. I hope that made some sense. But here's the second surprise, and it's more on the practical side. I will tell you that in the last few months, really going back maybe twelve months, there have been some unkind things said about me. I don't know if you're aware of this, but people tend to talk about you long before they talk to you. But hey, I have that problem too. Maybe you've had people say things that were unfair or unkind to you. Maybe there are even consequences or fallout associated with that. Some of it you can help, you can go and talk to the people, and you can make it better in the name of peace in Jesus, but oftentimes you can't. Well, if my self-confidence, my feeling of trust in who I am is based on me and it's based on pride, then I want to go out and fight those people. I want to defend my name before them and make sure they don't spread any of that stuff. But now I'm reminded of what a gospel preacher, D. Bowman, told me once. He's recently passed from this life. He said, You know, people have said a lot of things about me and may say things about you too, but your best offense is no defense. He told me that like fifteen years ago, and I think I'm just now getting it. Self-confidence based in the wrong places is always trying to defend itself and go on the offense against the evils that stand against it. But you know what? My self-confidence is in my faith in Jesus Christ, in how He chooses to use me and what He thinks about me. Those who speak ill of me may be right. I'm open to that. I'm not a great man by almost any measure. But so long as I am confident in what God's grace does through Jesus in me, as I yearn to do better for him every day, I can live with a sense of courage and conviction, trusting in my abilities and qualities and judgment because God believes in me, and I don't deserve that. And that's what makes it so amazing. Humility before the great and mighty God as you experience his daily grace leads to surprising self-confidence. Thank you so much for joining in today. If you enjoyed this program, consider sharing it with your family and your friends. And if you're just in search of deeper Bible study or you want to share the message of Jesus with the children in your life, remember to go to creation2revelation.com. This wonderful company, run by Christians, provides beautiful illustrations of scripture from beginning to end, putting the spotlight on Jesus. Excel still more.