Too Much Confidence?

The exciting show American Idol is on and running with its 9th season, keeping people up a little later and getting people to use their phones to vote for their favorite in the middle of the night. Some people really enjoy the criticism from the judges:

"It was way too pitchy."

"You need to work on your stage presence."

"That was not the right song for you, dawg."

(or, as Simon simply states,)

"That was horrendous."

A lot of times, especially at this stage of the competition, you hear this phrase: "I don't see any confidence in you; you need to be confident when you get up on that stage."

Looking at my life, I can see where I can place a lot of my confidence in the wrong things-- sometimes, even with the right motives. Sometimes, I feel like my relationship with God couldn't get any better, and I start thinking how great it'll be when I've gone through life with this amazing relationship with God. I've been reading my Bible and praying a lot, and I just always feel God's presence. But, interestingly, after these little bouts, I make some sort of mistake-- I do something that makes me feel bad and I know that I have definitely fallen short. I always make mistakes, even when I am really close to God, but these particular falls always are harder from which to get back up. Then, I wallow for a while in that sin and sometime in the next couple of weeks, get back up and start back at the beginning.

God has been really working in my heart over the past couple of days on this subject. When I heard that phrase, "You need to be confident," I started to think about my confidence. Where was it? How did I handle it? And how much of it do I have?

I thought about how I usually feel right before I fall. I feel really zealous about the gospel, and sharing everything I've learned with everyone else. I feel like I know God really well. Then I started to get a queue. Every one of those sentences had "I" in it. It was all about me. I recognized this as self-confidence. I was excited for what I was doing, how I was thinking, praying, reading. I realized that I really needed to get rid of this self-confidence.

Ephesians 4:20-24 says, "But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." So, I've put off the old self. What's the new self?

God has convicted me to never be satisfied with my relationship with Him. I need to want more and more of His Word and time with Him in prayer. My confidence, pride, and trust need to be in Christ and His salvation. It needs to be all in Him, and not in me. While some people struggle with too much self-confidence, there is no such thing as too much confidence in Christ.

"Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?" ~Job 4:6

"For the LORD will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught." ~Proverbs 3:26

"This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him." ~Ephesians 3:11-12
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