Choosing Confidence

I used to think confidence was just something you were born with. I never felt like a very confident person. I second-guessed myself a lot – always worried I’d make the wrong decision. I used to think that was just the way I was. Which was fine – I had other gifts and talents.

I think most people learn that they can choose confidence when they graduate from school and have to enter the workforce. I’d guess the number one piece of advice most graduates are given is, “fake it till you make it”. And it actually works. You can choose confidence until eventually you actually do feel confident.

I think this is also true of our faith, with some caveats, which I’ll get to. Jesus saw faith as at least partially a matter of choice.

In Matthew 8:25 the disciples find themselves in a storm at sea and say to Jesus, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!”

Then Jesus rebukes them, “He said to them ‘Why are fearful, O you of little faith?’ Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.”

There are a few things of note here. My trusty e-sword app tells me the Greek word for faith here is a bit different from other uses of faith in the New Testament that have more explicitly religious overtones. This word translated “little faith” literally means “lacking confidence”. Jesus is saying, “I got you. Why can’t you have some confidence in that, bros?” (Don’t ask me the Greek word for “bros”).

This also tells us something about how faith/confidence works. If it was just something you have or don’t have, it would be an exceedingly jerk-move for Jesus to rebuke them. Clearly, Jesus thinks they can choose to have more confidence in Him.

Then, I love how Jesus gets up from his nap and says “chill” to the winds and the sea and stops the storm immediately. I imagine Jesus gets up from napping below deck on some straw, shakes His head, yells something, the disciples nervously look at each other, the sun comes up, and Jesus goes back to bed muttering (safe-for-work) obscenities at the disciples. 

As I wrote here, I don’t think Jesus is angry that the disciples question what’s happening. Jesus himself questioned God on the cross. I think he’s angry that they are convinced that they’re “perishing”. They think they know what’s happening, which is that Jesus won’t intervene and they’ll die.

Julia wrote about Confidence right after we got the news that her cancer had returned. Looking back on it, I can’t believe Julia wrote this at that time. She had just been through about a year of intense treatment that had ravaged her body, took her hair away, gave her a permanent ostomy bag, made it impossible for her to digest many foods, temporarily removed the use of her leg and voice, made her lose over 30 pounds, destroyed her immune system, and sapped most of her energy. The upside of all of this downside was supposed to be that it would give her at least an extra year or so of life. But now, the cancer was back and the treatment options were not promising.

And she decided to write about how she had confidence that God was working. 

This definitely didn’t come naturally, because we were both devastated by the news and were constantly crying to God, “why?” Julia was angry, sad, heartbroken.

But she made a choice to choose confidence in God.

In these moments of pain, it’s easy to choose to distance yourself from God. It’s easy to choose skepticism. It’s easy to say, “God, I can’t feel you coming close to me, so I’m not going to make the effort to come close to You.” It’s easy to say, “God might have a plan but it’s all a big mystery so what’s the point of a relationship with Him?” That’s how I did respond at the time.

And I think it’s understandable to do those things. I don’t feel guilty about responding that way. Sometimes the pain is just so overwhelming that you can’t choose confidence for a time. I am not rebuking anyone who is in this phase.

But you can’t live without confidence forever. At a certain point, one has to stop de-constructing and start re-constructing. Everyone has to have confidence in something “ultimate” to make their way through this thing called life.

And when the overwhelming nature of the pain passed I realized God was the only “ultimate” worth having ultimate confidence in. The story of Jesus relating to and redeeming humanity by enduring the incredible pain of the cross is the only story that helps me make sense of my suffering. 

This is why Julia had such confidence after hearing the horrible news of her cancer returning. She got there much faster than I did, but that was always par for the course.

Let Julia’s words be an encouragement to you in the storms of life:

So in the face of uncertainty, we can hold on to an unshakable confidence in God. He has and will continue to be the anchor of our souls in this storm called cancer. And it is only by His power that we are able to be filled with joy, peace and hope. Praise God!

Confidence – April 6, 2016

Get more content to your inbox. Subscribe!

Email Address*

First Name

Last Name

Your e-mail address is only used to send you our newsletter and information about the activities of The Anchor Blog. You can always use the unsubscribe link included in the newsletter.