Confidence (Bot9 #262)

I had an epiphany about confidence this weekend. This may be something that has occurred to many of you previously, but this idea became much more clear to me while coaching girls softball this past Saturday.

I’m coaching hitters on a high school softball team this fall. Coaching girls is awesome. They’re kind. They’re respectful. They listen. They also internalize their performance very differently than most boys. When they come up short on the field, they really FEEL it and show the emotion of those feelings. Boys seem to have it trained into them to bury the negative and forget it quicker. Girls seem to open up those emotions, whether they’re in the middle of a competition or not. As a coach it makes it so much easier to know what mountains you’re trying to move in that moment. It’s very cool.

Now here’s the epiphany - confidence and faith are connected. Deeply. They might be so similar that they’re close to the same thing. What I’m finding is that girls (and maybe people, in general, growing up in this generation where media is so readily available) connect their results to their confidence. If they don’t see it happen, it’s not real. It’s not possible.

Here’s the thing - that’s not faith. It’s not confidence either. Your results are not a firm foundation for confidence. They’re important building blocks towards confidence, but they’re not the foundation. Jesus says this in Matthew 7:24-27:

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

This parable connects the dots. Our foundation must be built on that which is constant, never changing. Our performance is always changing. Jesus and His teachings are never changing. They are eternal. How you play that day is like a storm. It’s calm, it rains and storms, and then it’s calm again. We must build our house of confidence and faith on a firm foundation.

We must continue to encourage people in this regard. I love verses like 2 Corinthians 5:7 (“For we live by faith, not by sight.”) and Hebrews 11:1 (“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”) because they also speak to this idea. Faith means we don’t see it, but confidence means we have belief in what we do not see. Listen to the voices in your life that raise your faith and confidence, and be one of those voices for others!