“So we are always confident… Yes, we are fully confident…” (2 Corinthians 5:6, 8 – NLT)
Confidence has always been a struggle for me. Sometimes, I lack it. I simply feel inadequate and incapable. Focusing on my failures exacerbates my lack of confidence as does lack of response and/or confirmation from others. Other times, I’m falsely confident, and my pride and self-focus cause me to not see myself with humility.
Verses that tell me I can “always” or “fully” be confident, and the passages surrounding them, excite me because they speak deeply to what I desire. They also lead me to humility because I realize that true confidence – that which doesn’t deceive me – has nothing to do with me.
Why can I be always and fully confident? Because God gave me the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of what is to come (2 Corinthians 5:5). Namely, my mortality will be swallowed up by immortality. In either state, then, I live for his pleasure, not my own, and my confidence comes from him.
This guaranteed confidence enables me to “never give up” (2 Corinthians 4:1, 16 – NLT) because of what Christ has done and promises yet to do for me. Confident in God, not in myself. Confident I’ll stand firm in a world that wants me to rely on myself for confidence, thus ensuring I’ll fall flat on my face. Confident that immortality and complete loss of trouble and burden are my future reality, something no worldly confidence can give.
