A God-given Confidence (:

Perhaps one of the hardest concepts to understand, today I am going to talk about confidence because it is so important.
 
      Confidence:  full trust;belief in the powers , trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing.

In order to be confident, or have confidence, you must be able to rely on God and on people around you. You must not only trust the people around you but most importantly trust God. You have to trust that sometimes when your feeling lonely and down, that the people around you that love you will come and comfort you. You also need to trust God by knowing that although things don’t seem to be going the greatest at the moment, that he has an awesome plan for you.

I have to be honest with you, Confidence is not an easy thing to accomplish. With a generation today that is so concerned about how they look, or what people think about them, we meet very few people who can honestly say that they have confidence.  Self Confidence is “the acceptance of oneself”. Once again we see that in order to be self confident you have to work at accepting yourself and not worrying 

about what other people say.

In reality it is a lot easier to hear about cofidence and self confidence and think oh ya, I’m confident in who I am ,then actually living with no regrets and walking in a confidence that people can see. Confidence isn’t the ability to feel better then everybody else, it isn’t a free card to feel higher or more important then your friends, self confidence is simply knowing that you are secure in who you are and believe that God made you for a reason.

I just recently started High School, and I can’t help but notice a lot of over-confident people. They are the ones that feel like all the attention in the world belongs to them and that they have a right to have an opinion on everything. They walk the halls thinking they are the hottest, best, thing that has every walked the face of the earth. We may look at these people and think I want to be like them, but over-confidence is always a result of a root or a seed planted in ones life. Maybe those girls are so over-confident because they have never been loved and want to feel important, maybe they try to be over-confident to try to hide their insecurities. We never know the problem, and we never may know but that is not important. The important thing is that we continually ask God to give us a confidence that will allow us to stand out in a crowd, a confidence that will allow us to talk to people and not shrivel up in embarassment, and most importantly, a confidence that allows us to look in the mirror EVERY morning with thankfulness and say, “God I am so thankful for the way you made me.”

Once you achieve confidence, people will notice it. They will see that you are a happier, more caring person who can talk to people and not feel embarrassed, they will want to be like you, and self confidence draws people to you because they want to be able to feel a God-given-confidence.

One thing that my youth leader said that really stuck to me was that, you are the only Jesus that some people may ever see in their life. I took that to heart because many people are never given the opportunity to come to church or read the bible, and many can’t even talk to their parents so I decided that I would be different because I wanted people to see in me something that they wanted, a God, a love stronger then all love, and a confidence that no one can break…

Proverbs 3:26 “For the Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being caught.” <3

The heart, One touchy subject...

"Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life." -Proverbs 4:23

 

This is my favorite verse of all time and it is SO important. It may seem straight forward and in many aspects it is, but behind it is so much more then we can ever imagine.

I was reading a book once and it was referring to a girl who was in a relationship at a young age. She told her boyfriend everything, her hopes, her dreams, her secrets, her deepest feelings, and she said something that really impacted me. She said that when her and her boyfriend broke up she lost a part of her that she felt she could never get back. This impacted me because so many girls today are in this situation.

She told him everything and because of this, there was now a young man running around who knew everything about her! Things that now even her PARENTS knew. To be honest we need to protect ourselves from this temptation, we need to guard our hearts. This is such a dangerous trap because when you can so easily give into that temptation then you will most definitely have more serious troubles in the future.

I must admit, it is so easy to fall into the temptation of spilling secrets to the seemly cute guy who you are 100% sure is checking you out, but as it says in Proverbs 4:23, we MUST guard our hearts!

I can assure you, if you fall into that trap and just give in as though you have no care in the world about yourself then you will regret the decision you made to give in, it is not worth it. One day when you meet the one you are going to be with then how would you tell him that you have already opened yourself up to so many other young men that you used to know.

Your heart truly decides the course of your life and who you let in and who you keep out are all like pieces of the puzzle that will be very important in your life.

Anyways, my youth leader told us girls that guys like a mystery...you must allow them to chase you. Don't just give in at the first glance, you must protect your heart and guard it. If a guy really wants to pursue you then you will know, and that doesn't mean that as soon as you feel like he is the one that you can just give him your everything, you must let him know that he can't simply "have" you, he has to work for you BECAUSE YOU ARE SO WORTH IT. Don't get me wrong, don't torture the guy! but don't slowly let him become an idol in your life who knows more about you then you yourself do.

God should always be your main focus, through every aspect of life. You must trust him and not give in when life throws temptation. Ask for wisdom and he will give it to you.

"Tune your ears to wisdom and concentrate on understanding" -Proverbs 2:2