God-Confidence

As I was preparing to teach my Friends class this morning I thought the lesson was definitely worth sharing with all of you. We are learning about self-esteem, and it is not the same as self-confidence. Self-confidence is faith in one's self and in one's powers and abilities. The Bible tells us that:

"A wise man fears and departs from evil, but a fool rages and is self-confident." Proverbs 14:16 NKJV

At first, self confidence didn't sound so bad to me. But the lesson was teaching that self -confidence without self-esteem can lead to disappointment, especially when the person fails at something. Do you see the difference? We can't have faith in our own abilities alone. We need faith in the One who gave us those abilities. Self-esteem means you realize your worth and abilities come from God. When we realize this and trust God to help us in all we do, then we will not get down on ourselves or allow others to do so. Our worth is in God alone, not in what we can do or what others think of us. We need God-confidence!

Ephesians 2:10

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

1 Corinthians 15:9-10

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them–yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

Psalms 16:2

I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”