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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Humble
Confidence 2 Corinthians 3:4 and 5
read: "Such is the
confidence we have through Christ before God. It
is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from
ourselves, but our adequacy is from God." As Paul stated, there is
a confidence in all aspects of our lives as Christians that we should
possess. This would include
such confidence in things like our relationship with Jesus, the ministry
to which He has called each and every one of us, and knowledge of Biblical
truth. To be clear, this is a
godly confidence, not a humanistic confidence.
Our problem in this
respect is that many of us have a lack of any kind of godly confidence.
Others have lots of confidence but it is humanistic confidence
which borders on arrogance. Arrogance
among Christians is becoming a sad trend these days.
Such arrogance has escalated in recent years as many of us have
allowed our arrogant non-Christian culture to influence us, as seen on our
social media sites. Godly confidence is a
humble, quiet, gentle confidence that requires no need to aggressively
promote our cause. I like how
2 Timothy 2:24 and 25 in the Christian Standard Bible puts it. "The Lord’s
servant must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach,
and patient, instructing his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God will
grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth." As Christians we must,
with all humble confidence, stand out in stark contrast to the humanistic
arrogant culture in which we live. If
we succeed at this, God just might grant our opponents repentance that
leads to their salvation. Note
that it is God that gives repentance.
It's not our forcefully aggressive preaching of the truth that
enables repentance. We have
our part to play and God has His part in the proclamation of the gospel.
Aggressively arguing hinders God from effectively doing His part.
A quiet, humble and
gentle confidence is basic to good communication skills that will, with
the Lord's assistance, produce its predetermined goal. You might say that you
are just naturally aggressive, and so being aggressive is just me.
Well, others might say that they are naturally reserved and lack of
confidence might just be them. The
Biblical fact, that I see it is that no matter our inherent personal
character traits, the Holy Spirit wants to modify them so He can work in
and through us.
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