My last article, The Secret Formula, garnered more complaints than anything I've written so far. "What? That's a horrible ending. It's so depressing," was the gist of what I heard. So, here's part 2. Yes, there's hope. Yes, there's a better way. Yes, I'll get right to the point.
The good news is there's a better way, and you don't have to consistently raise your performance in order to raise your confidence. Because if that were the case, life would be a long, hard journey, a road of always trying to get better at everything. This is why self-confidence is a trap. In order to grow in self-confidence, you need to continually improve at whatever you’re concerned about. So, I need to get better at communicating with my wife, better at motivating my employees, better at pleasing my boss, better at taking tests and writing papers, better at understanding the opposite sex (good luck with that one!), better at … just about everything. Now that’s a lot of pressure!
Self-confidence says, “I can do it” and relies on my abilities and performance. However, Scripture never says to have more self-confidence. There's no verse that says, “have more self-confidence and be more confident in yourself. Buck up, Buckaroo! You can do it.” That's not the message of the Bible. Rather than exhorting us to have more confidence in ourselves, Scripture encourages us to have confidence in God. Instead of saying, “I can do it,” God-confidence says, “Whether or not I can do it, God will be with me.”
This article is an excerpt from the forthcoming book God Confidence: Cultivating Courageous Faith in Jesus Christ.
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