You always look your best when you’re wearing God-confidence. Hang onto his promises and push yourself into the arms of Jesus today.
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a word about self-confidence.
Welcome to Sharing Hope. Thanks for spending these couple of minutes with me, I so appreciate the time we’ve got together. Because sitting in this wheelchair for as many years as I have, and spending most of those years digging deep into the Bible, I’ve got some things I’d like to pass on to you. Thoughts, insights little lessons that, well, I believe, can be so encouraging to you.
Like the lesson I learned most recently about being confident. I was speaking at a conference in the Midwest, and someone came up to me afterward and commended me for being such a self-confident woman. This guy said, “Joni, it’s not many people with disabilities who can handle a wheelchair as well as you do, and I commend you for that. I love your self-confidence,” he said.
Now, I know what he meant; I completely understood his gracious intentions, but something in his encouraging statement just did not sit well with me. I mean, okay, I realize that, yes, I handle my wheelchair well [I didn’t use to, but I’ve learned over the years to live with it well] but does that come from confidence in myself? Confidence in my skills and abilities? No I don’t think so. I have learned over the years that I am not so much self-confident, as I am God-confident. If I’m skilled at doing anything, it’s knowing that I do not, I cannot live in this wheelchair well apart from God's help. As the psalmist says, “God is my ever-present help in time of trouble,” and believe me, this wheelchair is a lot of trouble.
I want to be God-confident in everything I do. I was reminded of this when I read these words from Jon Bloom. Jon is the president of Desiring God Ministries, and he was writing about David and Goliath. And he said, “So what made David different? It was not because he had the self-generated, raw, cool courage of the American action-movie hero. No, what fueled David’s courage was his confidence in God’s promises and God’s power to fulfill them. He was not self-confident; he was God-confident. David believed that God would never break his promise, and if Goliath made himself an obstacle to God’s promise, God would flick him out of the way with a pebble.”
I love those words, because God did, indeed, right, flick Goliath out of the way with a pebble from a sling. And I need to look at the obstacles in my life that way. So, I hang onto God's promises – I believe him when he says that his grace is sufficient; I trust him when he says that without him I can do nothing; I hang onto him when he tells me to persevere; and I love him when he says, “Joni, I will never leave you or forsake you.” If I’m confident in anything, I am confident in my wonderful Savior. I have to be. My wheelchair requires it every day. Does that make this wheelchair a psychological crutch? Well, maybe so, but who cares? The only thing that matters is that it is pushing me into the arms of Jesus every day. And I have such great confidence in him!
Friend, I want you to experience this same God-confidence. Not so much self-assurance, but divine assurance. And I’ve written a special booklet called “God's Hand in Our Hardship” and I want to send it to you as a gift. So, today just go to my radio page today at joniradio.org and ask for your copy, it’s yours. And so is assurance in your Savior. Hold onto his promises today because God-confidence oh my goodness, it would look so good, so very good on you. Again, that’s joniradio.org.
God’s Hand in Our Hardship | Joni and Friends
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