No one is born with innate confidence. It is a quality that many of us struggle with, and must be acquired over time and developed on a solid basis of strong values, beliefs, and tenets that we know to be true. True and enduring confidence can be a very difficult thing to come by; the rough road of life, with all its embarrassing situations, rocky relationships, and sometimes tragic events, can easily shake the confidence we have gradually built over time. Whenever we are judged by others, or we feel that the rug has been pulled out from under us, we can suddenly feel insecure as our self-esteem deflates. It can take years to slowly build up confidence after a shattering event, but too easily it can disintegrate away in a matter of seconds. The world tells us to build our confidence upon earthly possessions or things the world admires. People are impressed when we achieve high-paying jobs, they applaud us when we win awards publicly, they are envious when we appear to have a perfectly happy family, we are respected when we have large homes in good neighborhoods filled with the best possessions, and people look up to us when we have natural talents, abilities, and beauty. But because these things never truly belong to us, and are highly changeable, then confidence based upon these things turns out to be flimsy and false, easily toppled at the slightest turbulent breeze. What is more, when we constantly strive for these worldly things, and are not able to achieve them all, then we are filled with a sense of never being good enough. No matter how hard we try, we can never check all the boxes of being perfect, so we wonder how we could possibly ever feel confident. When we build our confidence upon a worldly foundation, it disintegrates and washes away all too easily. Every time we are disappointed by the inconstancy of our circumstances, we can either cling to the illusion that next time, we can control our future better, or we can open our eyes and see the gift that has been sitting in our lap free for the taking all the while. If we turn to our Lord, realizing that we need to build our confidence upon a more permanent and constant foundation, we can begin to build true confidence based not on ourselves, others, or our circumstances, but instead on God’s constancy and His promise. Rather than being bogged down in our imperfections, or all the reasons we should not feel confident, we find that through our Father, we have so many good reasons, that will never fail us, to walk confidently on into the life God wants us to live and enjoy. As we embark on this 14 day study into finding confidence in the Lord, we will see just how much we have to feel confident in.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” Matthew 7:24-25