How I believe God has created us to be confident.

I have often struggled with the idea of being confident.  I believe that this has stemmed from the fact that I have never been sure if exactly how God calls me to be so.  I have been concerned that if I am confident in ways which are not in line with God's ways that I may fall into a trap of trying to do things my way, pursuing only the things that to want to pursue, and dishonoring Him in the process.  I am very thankful because I feel like tonight God used Tony Dungy's book "Uncommon" (chapter 12 - Powerful Thoughts) to gain a clearer picture of how and why God calls me to be confident.  

To start, the self-fulfilling prophecy does seem to have merit.  When you look at how humans usually achieve success, it does seem that it usually occurs when we do our part through believing that we can accomplish the task at hand.  And the opposite also holds true in that it seems that humans who doubt their ability to achieve the task at hand get in their own way and struggle to accomplish it.  If you examine human studies, and human history in general, these facts consistently hold true.  When examining these facts, it appears very evident that this is how God created us.  His Word is clear that He calls us to always do our best in everything for His glory (Colossians 3:23), and human research shows that it appears that the way He created us to do this is to truly believe that we can/will accomplish the task at hand.  This involves confidence through belief and visualization.  The people who are successful at sport and other endeavors are the ones who do these things, therefore I believe that it is wise to conclude that this is how God created us to be in order to do our best in everything that we do - again, all for His glory alone, not our own.

With this said, that does not mean we are to simply pursue any and all endeavors that we want and say that it will happen if we truly believe and see ourselves accomplishing it.  Their is common sense involved too.  It is important to only pursue those things which are righteous, and hopefully one has sought God for whether or not that is something that He has called you to and/or given you His blessing to pursue.  At the same time it is also important to surrender all goals and dreams to the Lord.  It is important to believe, expect and visualize success in order to be successful, however; it is also important to surrender all results to God and surrender those results to Him for His glory.

God calls us to believe and see ourselves accomplishing the tasks we pursue, for this is how He created us to do our best in things.  It is important however to make sure that we are doing them for His glory alone, and that we are surrendering to Him the results, and accepting and thankful for these results realizing that we exist for His glory and that His ways are always best.

Don't let satan deceive you - the ways he makes you think evil thoughts are actually you.

The following are ideas from John Eldrige's "Wild at Heart" (chapter 9).  I have often felt extremely frustrated and disgusted at myself when sinful thoughts or ideas have come into my mind.  This chapter has helped me gain a new understanding of how Satan works to try and get us frustrated and down on ourselves.  He does this to try and handicap us in our attempt to live our lives for the Lord.  He wants us to get down on ourselves, think that we are not worthy and that we are worthless failures who cannot accomplish anything for the Kingdom of God.  He does this to people who have chosen to live for Jesus.  When people are not a threat to Satan, the message he sends them is, "You are doing fine in your walk".  However, for those who are doing work to further the Kingdom of God, the devil will send all kinds of messages to deceive and frustrate you into believing that you are worthless and a failure.  For this reason it is so important to be in constant communication with God, seeking Him and continually building upon your relationship with Him.  This way, it will help you stay in tune with the messages which are from Him, and those which are not from Him.

An example of how Satan works is through sinful thoughts.  He will constantly throw sinful thoughts at people striving to live for God.  He places these thoughts into your head in an attempt to make you believe that these thoughts are your own.  The truth is they are not your's.  This would be the same as if someone told you a lie about yourself.  You would be an absolute fool to believe that the lie is true simply because someone said it.  Well the same is true when Satan does this.  The truth is that the Bible teaches that when a person accepts Christ, He "puts a new heart and a new spirit in you".  Because Christ lives in you sinful thoughts and actions are not of you.  God would not allow that to be a part of the person He dwells within.  Those thoughts are from the sinful nature and most often are the result of Satan putting them in your mind.  Satan will do anything to frustrate you, your walk and the work that you are doing for God's Kingdom.

I must be aware of the fact that these attacks are always present in the life of a Christian, and I must not allow them to frustrate me.  They are not true, they are not from me, they are to be resisted and ignored.  I must rely on God's strength to ignore and resist and I must do this with the confident attitude of a warrior.
This is not to say that I don't have specific areas of weakness in my life, but even with these Satan will attack those weaknesses with sinful thoughts.  I am at war, and always will be.  But I want to relish in relying on God's strength to be a warrior for Him, and fight against the devil's schemes.

I am so thankful for the peace of knowing that these sinful thoughts are not of me and that they should therefore be dismissed and ignored.  The only attention they deserve is to remind myself how sinful they are, and of the fact that I am so thankful that they are not of me and that there is no truth to them.