I’ve been thinking about confidence a lot this weekend. It started with me thinking about how much life has changed in the past 8 years or so. I had soooo much more confidence in myself, others and our society 8 years ago than I do now. My faltering confidence in myself has over the years made a number of areas of life much more difficult. I was pondering that and what it would take to get my confidence back quite a bit this weekend.
The second part of my thinking about confidence came in two parts while at Buzzy’s this morning… I picked up a copy of the Times Dispatch and was reading about President Bush’s mortgage bailout plan. After I was just thinking about confidence this quote really stood out to me: “People are beginning to doubt our system, people were losing confidence and I understand it’s important to have confidence in our financial system.” Basically, our whole financial system will collapse if people don’t have confidence in it.
And then in a later section of the RTD they profiled the new church that is starting in The Byrd. Area 10 Faith Community had their first public service this morning. If I had known about it beforehand I probably would have gone to show support. It sounds a ton like the Horizon churches in their early days and Elevation Church that Dave is planting now. Kristin Swenson, the assistant professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, was quoted as saying that “Church planters tend to be energetic, committed people, confident that they can build a community of support in what they believe to be an authentic Christian experience”. It is very true, and reminded me of the confidence that I had before when I was helping churches get started. This weekend I wished I still had that confidence.
I’m not really sure what the point of this post is other than to share some weekend thoughts. Can anyone out there relate to a loss of confidence like I’ve described?
I can only speak of my own experience, but I hit something like that 6 or 7 years ago. I doubted the direction of my life at that point, but had no idea where I wanted to be, what I wanted to be doing, or what was even so unfulfilling about what I already had.
This took a few years to sort out, but it ended up being such that now that I am actively engaged in something obviously progressive on a daily basis. I am able to give a lot every day, and I see that it helps at least a little every day.
Wow, this touched some deep thoughts from my life experiences. As you well know, I hardly ever struggled with a lack of self confidence while you were growing up. If I had such thoughts, they were generally kept to myself while I worked through them by brute force and ignorance. It was ten years ago that all that changed when we found out about Jack’s brain tumor and then I lost my corporate job. I realized that my self confidence was a deception… an illusion… misleading… My confidence is now in the grace and mercy of God. He is the one who is really in control. His ways are not our ways but He can be trusted because he is faithful, even when we struggle with the experiences of life.