Confidence

What does your confidence lie in today? There is something that you are depending on, relying on, to feel confident and good. What is that? Is it your job? Your friends? Your family? Other people's opinions of you? The money you are making? The giving of a gift to someone? We all believe in something. We all look outside of ourselves to find confidence and strength. However, where do we really find this kind of confidence and strength? I think that it really comes from within and remembering that God's spirit resides in us and that spirit is not one that wants us to define our confidence by what is outside us.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.
So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. And don’t be ashamed of me, either, even though I’m in prison for him. With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer with me for the sake of the Good News. For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus. And now he has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ Jesus, our Savior. He broke the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the Good News. And God chose me to be a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of this Good News.
That is why I am suffering here in prison. But I am not ashamed of it, for I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return.
Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me—a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you.

2 Timothy 1:7-14

Jesus came into this world so that we no longer had to find confidence outside of ourselves. God has given us a spirit of power, love and self discipline. Are we connecting to that or are we living with a spirit of fear, anger, and confusion because each day we are relying on the stuff outside ourselves to feel good? You see, when we begin to understand that before the beginning of time God planned for us to be connected to spirit, to show us grace, we did nothing to make God love us, and that it is up to the Creator of the universe to guard our lives, we begin to have confidence in who we are! We are God's children, protected by this all powerful spirit. How could anything else make us confident? God will care for us now and for all eternity! We must realize that we are spiritual beings and this life is but a brief appearance for us that is guarded by a loving, caring God (spirit), who came in human form to show us how to live our lives in confidence. We love. We forgive. We trust. We become patiently relentless. We know that when we live our lives in complete abandon to God we can be confident because it is not our life to guard - it is God's.

Let God guard your life today. Let your confidence be found in living each moment knowing that you are connect to God through spirit. Notice when you become disconnected and begin to experience anger, fear, or frustration. Where did you put your trust in those moments? What were you confident in, hoping in? Notice that your ego probably took over and tried to tell you that what others said was more important, or if something did not happen the way you thought it should "everything" was bad. Reconnect then. Remember who you are and who is really responsible for you. Feel the real power and freedom of love and self discipline rather than being a prisoner to your ego and the world.

Namaste'