Recently I wrote out some thoughts on confidence on my personal Facebook wall. Here is what I have been pondering: Confidence is found when you take action. It is ok if you stumble or even fall. It is how you get up and keep moving forward that breeds confidence. Stopping/inaction (fear of failure)….chokes confidence; if you are looking to build confidence…..you don’t sit and wait on confidence to come to you. It can’t be given to you; you have to build it with action. God gave us minds and bodies with an expectation that we would use them. Much satisfaction can be gained from taking personal initiative which in turn creates fertile ground for confidence to thrive and grow. Realizing sometimes you win and sometimes you learn….but in either case it is a win because you have grown as a person. More times than not, I have gained confidence in life by at least trying…..”Going to the dance and dancing” is a whole lot better than “going to the dance and sitting.”
In Proverbs 3:26 it states, “For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared”…Let’s look at confidence a little more closely. Confidence is a word that has been talked about in our home for years. I often hear it in conversations with other moms…..kids needing confidence to….do well on a test, perform well in their sport, ask a girl to prom, or give a presentation for the first time in their new job. Most of the time as mature adults we don’t hear many conversations about us personally needing confidence to perform…whatever. It is an unspoken expectation that by now we should have confidence. After all, “Aren’t we mature adults who should have much confidence because of our age and experience?” The verse quoted above comes after almost 80 verses in the book of Proverbs that teach about the benefits of seeking wisdom and the downfall of not seeking it. Another 36 verses on wisdom follow this one found in chapter 3.
Key action words can be found in those preceding 80 verses. Calls to action such as….listen, rebuke, heed, complacency, understanding, turning, guards, victory, delight, attain, prolong, win, trust, finds, preserve, fear, overtakes, despise, yields, gains and embrace….all pertaining to wisdom….It is not very beneficial for me to rewrite all 80 verses here, nor the 36 that come after, but it is extremely beneficial for me to encourage anyone who wants “true confidence” for life to go get their Bible and turn to the book of Proverbs, found in the middle of the Bible, and read…no, meditate on the first 4 chapters.
You see Godly confidence, the very best kind, does come from taking action…like I stated on my personal Facebook post….but the very first action to gain true confidence involves correctly applying all those action VERBS listed above to help us seek after Godly wisdom…..and run from the things that rob us of wisdom. Drinking from a stale pond is the assumption that I/you/we have “Got this!” For as long as we live God is teaching and maturing us so that we will not be lacking in anything (James 1:4). Also in James chapter 1, verse 5 states, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fought, and it will be given to him.” The kicker for me/you, and what I find for most people, is living out loud the verse that follows verse 5, “But when he asks, he must not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double minded man, unstable in all he does.”
Many times WE ask but we do not realize God has given confidence to us, in His written Word…It is so rich…full of instruction for life….when God created us and put us on this earth…He knew we would need His Word to live an abundant life…with confidence…..most often our trouble is that we do not read the map He has given us…the Bible…..or we read it and we do not follow it….we doubt…..
True Confidence…for living an abundant life….comes with the action of reading God’s Word…a perfect place to start is found in the first 4 chapters of Proverbs…It is there you will find the GPS that leads you to CONFIDENCE.