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.