Confidence in God analogy

Confidence is imperative for success in any area of life.  The less confidence you have, likely the poorer you will do on a particular task, and vice-versa.

As Christians we need to be confident.  God is glorified in our confidence, as long as it is rooted in humility.  This can be a fine line, for confidence left unchecked can easy become cockiness and pride, and the Lord is very clear that He "opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble".

This needs to be taken very seriously.  God will oppose your efforts if you are prideful.  On the other hand, He will bless you with His grace if you are humble.  Now, I am not saying that this is a recipe for certain success in our athletic, or other, pursuits; but it certainly is a recipe necessary to follow if we want God's favour in the things we work toward.

I believe, as Christians, that our success depends upon his God chooses to bless our efforts.  For this reason, I want His grace, not His opposition.  I therefore want to be humble, not prideful.

I do not believe that God wants us to rely solely on Him for our confidence.  I realize how anti-Christian this may sound, but let me explain with an analogy.

If I were to walk into a job interview at a Fortune 500 company, and I had no knowledge on the company, their product, or business in general, I would be nervous.  At least I should be, and for good reason.  I am ill-equipped and completely unprepared.  Now, if I walk into that interview and I am the CEO's son, I automatically will have much more confidence, and once again, for good reason.  Now, if I go into that interview, as the CEO's son, but I also have spent numerous hours preparing for the interview, and know everything there is tonknow about the product, the company, and have a ton of general business knowledge that I can use in meaningful ways in the interview, and letter in the job I am applying for, well now my confidence is soaring, and once again for good reason.

You probably have figured out who the CEO represents.  He does represent your Father - your Heavenly Father.  The minute we have the Holy Spirit living within us and guiding our lives, it should automatically give us confidence.  If it doesn't, it means we don't adequately comprehend what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

At the same time, notice in the above analogy how increased knowledge and experience also breeds confidence.  Having the Holy Spirit does not automatically make you good at everything.  He still requires you to do your part to develop skills and talents that you can use to worship Him and to further His Kingdom.  For in the process of developing those skills and gaining those experiences, you can worship Him, but again, those skills and experiences are necessary to further develop confidence.  And the more confidence you have, the better you will perform.

I would also like to draw attention to the way this analogy demonstrates how easy it can be to cross the line from confidence to cockiness.  The more confidence you have, the more justified you feel in being cocky.  One reason for this is that increased confidence should lead to a consistent increase in performance, which in turn leads to expectations of successful performance.

As Christians, we seek to honour  and worship the Lord in everything that we do.  A major aspect of this worship is relentless effort to do our part to improve our skills and abilities so we can go out with confidence and perform, surrendering final results and outcomes to the Lord.  We trust that God has a plan for the world around us, and for our individual lives, so we work hard to be the best we can be, and then we hand out effort over to God and trust Him to accomplish what He sees fit with our effort.

While it may seem like I have begun to go off on a tangent, let me know tie this all together.  If we are trusting God to use our efforts to further His purposes, it is crucial to maintain a humble attitude so that He can look upon our efforts with His grace and favour.  If we are cocky, them we are proud, and God opposes us.  If we are confident, but humble, then we have His grace.

A terrific example of this is the account of David and Goliath.   David's victory displays the importance of preparation, experience, and using both to develop supreme confidence that you take with you into your competitive performance.

David had fought lions and bears.  He bad experience defeating foes in life-threatening situations.  And his skill with a sling was not the result of immediate divine intervention.  He bad practiced, and those hours of repetition had developed confidence that He could take with Him into this particular battle.  He went in confident with a game plan, executed that plan confidently, defeated Goliath, and then surrendered the results of that victory to the Lord.  God used that victory in many ways, both to further His Kingdom on Israel, but also in David's life.

As Christians, we can, and must, be confident, but never cocky.  We must develop that confidence through working to develop our  skills, relying on the Lord throughout the process.  We must surrender all results to Him, allowing Him to create something beautiful, which align with His plans for our lives, His Kingdom and the world around us.

God opposes the proud - He won't bless pride

God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.  If we look throughout scripture we see this theme over and over again.  Those who are proud, who think highly of themselves, they are humbled and often destroyed.  On the other hand, the humble are blessed and given grace.

I MUST make sure that I am constantly humbling myself.  I must recognize that I am nothing and that I can do nothing without the Lord.  I also must make sure that I am following the example of Jesus, making myself nothing and being a servant.  "Or those who are first will be last, and those who are last will be first." Jesus washed His disciples feet.  He was God but came down in human form.  That is ultimate humility.  I could never even come close to being this humble because I will never be even close to making myself this great, to then make myself so low and small.  What I can, and must, do however is to make myself the lowest servant I can, so that I can be as much like Jesus as possible.

And remember, I must humble myself in order to combat any and all pride, for God opposes the proud.  If there are any areas of life where I am being prideful, I believe that means God cannot bless it because He opposes pride.  So be a bumble servant, imitating Jesus in all things.

Fight nerves with Joy

It is often said that you can fight against the fear of public speaking, or other fears, by simply being joyful - by finding joy in the process of what you are doing.

It is the same with golf.  If you step into a tournament or pressure situation, and simply focus on joyfully doing your best, it should take away all the nerves.  Joyfully do your best for the Lord.  Thoroughly enjoy the process for the process itself....the process of worshiping God.

I beat my body and make it my slave

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 compares the race of life to the race that athletes run.  It says in verse 27 that we are to "beat our bodies and make it our slave".  It is referring to the idea of working hard to make ourselves obedient to Christ.  This shows that while yes, we need to rely on God's strength, we do need to ourselves beat our bodies.  We need to work hard to change ourselves into what God wants us to become.  We can't just sit back and expect Him to change us.  We must do our part.

This applies to sports as well.  If we have to beat our bodies and do our part to change to become more like Christ, then we definitely have to do the same to improve athletically.  If God expects us to work hard ourselves to become more like Him in areas of morality, then we definitely need to work hard to become better athletically.  We can't just sit back and expect that He will change us withoutnus putting forth extreme effort.  We must do our part.

Being confident means being okay with mistakes.

God wants us to be confident in all things.  If he calls us to something, He wants us to give our all.  This means we must not be double minded and we must not be afraid to act.  Sometimes we get afraid of doing things that God has called us to in the wrong way.  We fear not knowing exactly how He wants us to do something and so we get paralyzed by this fear and don't act.  The result is that we look weak, we act weak, and we don't accomplish what God wants us to.  The cure is to work hard and whole heartedly at whatever God calls us to, and to do so courageously.  Don't be afraid of making mistakes, just seek Him and focus on actively pursuing what He has called you to and know that He is not limited by your mistakes.

Amazing privilege to love Brie

I just watched a video of a man singing to his dying 93 year old wife beside her bedside.  I look at that and realizethst much more how thankful I am firnmy beautiful Bryane.  I realize that much more how I am excited to get old and wrinkled with her.  With every wrinkle, age spot and sag, I want to look at them with love because they are symbols of our live for each other....ournlifelong love.  So while others look at their aging in negative ways, I pray that Brie and I will look at them with love and excitement for what God has blessed us with with each other.

Anxiety is not conducive with worship

Go out and do my best, having fun and delighting in worshiping the Lord through my efforts.  If i get nervous itnis a sign that I am focused on results that inam making about me.  God just wants me to focus on delighting in worshiping Him.

I need to worship the Lord with whatever "stage" He has given me.  I'd I'm playing a practice round, worship Him in that stage.  If I am playing a tournament, then worship Him in that stage.  If I am playing in the US Am or ., then worship Him in that stage.  Do not be about glorifying myself, but solely about glorifying Him.

 There are no need for nerves regardless of the circumstances or stage.  This is because God calls me to do my best in a way that worships Him.  I believe that is all He expects.  If I get nervous about results then inam making it about me and I am not able to worship God to the greatest extent possible if I make it about me.

I can enjoy trying to win, but then point is that I should not be stressed.  Stress and anxiety cannot be involved in worship because God says that we must never be worried or anxious.  He says I must "be worried or anxious about nothing".  The type of stress that comes from golf is often worry about results.  Therefore focus on having fun trying to win and doing all of it in a way that honours and worships God.

YOU CANNOT WORSHIP GOD WHILE ANXIOUS, SO HAVE FUN GOING OUT AND HAVING FUN WORSHIPING HIM!

ENJOY THE PROCESS OF WORSHIPPING GOD, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T WORSHIP GOD WHEN YOU'RE STRESSED.

Don't seek praise for myself...live for Him who is so much greater

When I am tempted to look at myself or think about my accomplishments (which are actually direct blessings from God and are His accomplishments) I need to stop and think about how I can give God glory in that situation and make it about Him and not myself.  This will help me develop a focused attitude about glorifying God and not myself.  It will help me to stay humble and give Him all glory.  When I want recognition ornwant tonfocus on myself, it means that inam living for myself rather than for God.  I am way too small to live for.  Make everything indo about Him and it will ensure that I am living for something so much greater than myself.

I was pursuing golf when I should have been allowing God to determine what happened with golf

God has been teaching me a lot lately about how wrong I was in pursuing golf.  Having children has helped put things in greater perspective for me and has allowed me to have a better attitude about the game.  I was selfish when pursuing the game.  I hate the fact that I dragged Brie through all of my silliness.  She's an amazing woman, for she never complained and was so incredibly patient and supportive.  God has been teaching me the following regarding these errors in my life....

1.  If God had told me that He wanted me to be a professional golfer, then I would have had a much more relaxed attitude than I did when I pursued golf.  I would have had an attitude of surrender, knowing that God would bring about what He wanted in His perfect timing.  I would have worked hard, but I would not have tried to force anything in fear of stepping outside of His perfect guidance and direction.  This is the attitude I need to have in all areas of my life - work hard, but surrender and allow God to bring about the results that He wants in His timing.  What I actually did was try and force things.  I tried to make it happen myself.  I believed the lie of, "What if I miss out on the opportunity to do something in golf because I didn't work hard?"  This was incredibly foolish, because God is not limited by my mistakes.  He would guide me and direct me and lead me to what He wanted as long as I was obedient.  I also believed the lie that I was "working hard as if it depended on me, but then living realizing it all depended on God".  The reality was that I was working hard as if it depended on me, but not truly surrendering to God.  I know this because I was consumed with my desire to be a pro golfer.  This is not of God.  If I had been truly surrendered, I would have joyfully worked hard with a peaceful surrender, allowing God to do whatever He wanted.  I would not have been concerned about what would happen.  I was working hard, I didn't have to be concerned about the idea of "What if I missed out on what God has for me/what if I miss out on doing something big in golf".

2.  God is helping me develop a better attitude.  I'm not quite there yet, but I think I'm getting closer.  I'm learning to view golf and any other pursuits I have as the following......

-Is God truly leading me to pursue this?

-The purpose of me doing it is to glorify the Lord.  If my attitude is one of joyfully glorifying Him, then I have been successful no matter what the results.  (This has been very "freeing" to develop this attitude.  I was for so long so focused on the end results of my efforts that I would stress out before and during rounds about what I would shoot.  It brings so much joy to head to a round of golf knowing that the result is not what matters, it's my attitude, which I can in fact control, that is the main goal.  If I shoot 100, but have truly worked hard and had a joyful attitude of worship toward the Lord, then I have had a very successful round.  I need to focus on my attitude, God will deal with the results).

-My purpose is to have a good attitude and worship the Lord and allow Him to take care of the results.  I used to be concerned about the idea that I could mess up and sabotage positive results because of my mistakes.  It is true that I can make mistakes which cost me "worldly successes" such as wins, personal best rounds, etc., but that is not something I should worry about like I did in the past.  Part of working hard to glorify the Lord with a positive attitude is working hard to perform your best and try hard not to make big mistakes.  However, these mistakes are not to be feared.  Mistakes will be made, and when they are made we can glorify God by having an attitude about them that glorifies Him, and then seek to learn from them.  To summarize...

a) Your main goal is to glorify the Lord by playing with a positive attitude.  This brings such freedom to your game and will enable you to become better in the long run because it removes stress and keeps the game enjoyable because you are glorifying the Lord with a joyful attitude.

b) Work hard to perform your best for this glorifies God

c) Don't fear mistakes for doing so does not glorify the Lord

d) When you make a mistake learn from it.

e) Enjoy the process, if you are stressed this is a sign that you are not surrendered to the Lord.  Find where you are going wrong and fix it quickly before it becomes a poison in your pursuit and walk with Christ. 

f)  When you focus on glorifying the Lord and keeping your priorities straight, it promotes surrender to the Lord.  It allows you to work hard, without trying to force things.  It allows God to bring about His perfect results, which is always the goal.  

3.  All these things that I've learned through golf can be applied to anything God leads you to work at/purse.

God doesn't call us to be the best, just to be the best we can be for His glory

The Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight is tomorrow night.  I think about how badly I want Manny to win because he loves Christ and he is facing an opponent who seems to live in a way that contradicts so many Biblical principles.  I want so badly for Manny to beat this guy.  I feel like a win for Mayweather is a win for evil.  Through prayer and reflection I now have a greater peace if Manny was to lose.  This is for the following reasons....

God does not call is to be the best, He calls us to be the best we can be.  If we do this for His glory, then we can sit back and allow Him to use it as He sees fit.  He will use all things for His glory (Romans 8:28).  There will be people in this world who are better at certain things than us.  That's okay.  I can't think of anywhere in the Bible where God calls us to be the best there is at something.  He does however call us to work to develop our abilities to become the very best we can be.  This brings tremendous peace, for it takes the pressure off of having to win.  We can enjoy battling to prepare to be our best and then working to perform our best in the moment.  What incredible peace there is in knowing that your purpose is never winning.  Your purpose is to glorify God by doing your best, doing so with an attitude that represents Him well, and knowing that we can surrender the results to Him.

This doesn't mean that you don't try to win.  Part of doing your best is trying to bring about thenvest possible results, but again,  there is peace knowing that you don't have to win in order to accomplish your purpose.  Your purpose is to glorify the Lord.

Steve Nash article

Set goals. Worked. Dreamed. Schemed. Pushed myself beyond what was normal or expected. I looked at my hero, Isiah Thomas, and thought to myself, “OK, I’m nowhere near the player he is but if I get better every day for 5 or 10 years, why can’t I be as good as him?”

I just need to remember that success depends on how God chooses to bless my efforts 

Wait patiently on God's timing to be used

These ideas are from chapter 5 of Charles Swindoll's biography on Paul (2002).

It us important to wait patiently on the Lord and His timing to be used.  Look at Joseph, Paul and David.  All had periods of waiting.  It is during these times that God molds us, shapes us and prepares us so that we will be prepared to be used to the fullest extent that He wants us to be.  Sometimes we may feel like it is a waste of time that we are not being used as greatly sooner in life, but it is important to remember that God has a plan.  He has a plan and purposes for our life.  He is sovereign.   He will use us when He decides we are ready so that our effectiveness is as potent as it can be, rather than watered down like it would be if we were not provided time to be prepared by the Lord.

Be confident

If we as Christians are not confident, then we are weak.  If we do not display confidence, then we are displaying weakness.  When I see a Christian who is afraid to fail, or is fearful of anything for that matter, I do not see that as a positive witness for Christ.  It is the exact opposite.

With this said, we are to be humble.  There is a difference however between confidence and cockiness.  Our confidence must always honour the Lord and represent Him well.  Therefore, we should be confident, but not cocky.

There are a few reasons for this.

1.  When we are confident we are acting as Jesus did.  He was always supremely confident, but never cocky.  He is the model we should follow.  He is the image we should follow in everything, including confidence.  When you are not confident, you are weak and representing weakness.  God is not weak and we are His representatives.  Be confident, because Jesus is confident, and we are called to be His representatives in everything we do (Colossians 3:17)

2.  God says, "I have given you a Spirit of courage, not fear" (2 Timothy 1:7)...(paraphrased).

3.  God calls us to do our best in everything (Colossians 3:23).  In order to do your best, you need to be confident.  If you are not confident, you can't perform your best.

4.  "Every good and perfect gift comes from above....".  The talents and abilities you have come from God.  Whether they are natural abilities, or those you have worked to develop, it is important to always recognise that God has given you those abilities.  Even those you have worked to develop are from Him.  When we work at developing talents and abilities, the see degree to which those talents are recognized directly relate to the degree to which God chooses to bless your efforts.

It is important to be confident, but it is also imperative to ensure that being confident never leads to an attitude of thinking my success depends on me.  Any success I ever have accomplished, or ever will accomplish, is directly related to how God chooses to bless my efforts.

In so many ways there is incredible freedom in Christ.  One of those ways is with confidence.  We can be confident and strive to do our best and know that if what we are trying to accomplish doesn't happen that it wasn't God's will.  It would be foolish to sit back and not try your Brest though. The freedom is in knowing that you can be confident and do your best and know that God eil no allow anything to happen that He doesn't want to.  So go out and be confident and try to win or accomplish whatever task it is knowing that God is honoured through the act of worship and that He will make sure to use your effort to accomplish His will.  Don't not try in fear of going out of His will for that is actually going out of His will because you are not doing your best and are not trusting that He is faithful and sovereign to accomplish His will.  To stay in His will you need to try your best in every circumstance God brings you to and trust Him to use the effort to accomplish what He wants.  Remember, He calls us to confident dobour best.  He has "given us a Spirit of courage, not of fear".

Don't pursue what God does not present

I have often struggled with the idea of going after your dreams.  I feel what God has taught me is to seek Him for the things that I pursue.  At the same time, allow Him to bring my way anything that He wants for me.  Once He presents to me the opportunities, that is when in start to pursue excellence in them.  If I go and try and pursue excellence in something that is outside of God's purposes for my life, then I am foolish to pursue them.  Allow God to bring the things He wants for me to me.  At that point, then go and set goals and pursue excellence knowing that I am doing so within His will.  This brings tremendous freedom to still be goal oriented, but at the same time know that I am in the Lord's will.  What great peace and excitement this brings.

Bubba Watson mentality on not having a swing instructor.

I heard these comments from a video interview at Doral Cadillac Championship on March 3, 2015.

Bubba said the following about not having a swing instructor.  I really liked his thoughts because I think it speaks well to why I should simply focus on hitting the ball at the target and not about mechanics.

-said that when his mind is in the right place there is no shot that he can't hit and no course he can't beat.  It makes sense.  If you are thinking right then you will hitnrhe shots that you are capable of and score extremely well and golf becomes easy.  You don't need mechanical thoughts and feelings to distract you from that.  Simply focus on hitting the shots.  And at the level they are at, and also the level I am at, there are no shots that can't be hit.

Focus on practising well.  Practising on hitting those shots and thinking well in the process.

Bubba said that a lot of pros go to swing coaches for tune ups and to simply be told for confidence sake that what they are doing is good.  Bubs said he doesn't need that.  He knows how to hit shots so he just focuses on improving the way he thinks and getting his mind in the right frame of mind.

Idols

-idols always disappoint and enslave.  They do not bring the satisfaction you hope fornor expect.

-an idols competes with God in our lives.

-Things like sex and money are good gifts from God, but it is important to enjoy them within God's rules.  It is the same with idols.  When I schedule my time and existence around something, in have crossed the line and made it an idol.  I have taken the gift and made it an idol - misusing that gift from God.

-when you make something an idol, God by His nature cannot bless your efforts in it.  And any success you ever have in something is directly related to how God chooses to bless it.

You have to identify the idols in your life and then replace them with something good and of God.  If you don't get down to the rroot cause of the idol then it will just manifest itself in some other way.  Therefore find the cause, replace it and speak scriptural truth into your life to help yourself change permanently by "the renewing of your mind".

The reasons for my idols is a desire for significance.  I want to be recognised and praised for my accomplishments.  I like being the centre of attention.  I am not proud of this but it is true.  I need to find my significance in surrendering to  God and glorifying Him alone for anything that He chooses to accomplish through me.  " He must become greater, I must become less."

It is embarrassing to think of how often I have tried to receive praise for things accomplished in my life.  I must give the glory to God.  He accomplished it.  I can enjoy the process of Him accomplishing things through me - after all, that is really cool.  The key however is that I must not delight in praising myself, but rather God.

If I am truly delighting in the Lord, if my greatest joy on life is Him alone and not just His blessings, than I will delight in glorifying Him and have no desire to glorify myself.  I must look at everything through the lense of what He has accomplished through me and rejoice and praise Him for it.

What we can learn about confidence from King David

When David fought Goliath he was supremely confident.  He was confident because he had God on his side.  He was confident in the abilities that God had given him and allowed him to work to develop.

It is important to realize that David did have to develop the talents.  God gave Him natural abilities as a warrior, but he had to work to develop those talents.  The extent that they were developed directly related to his hard David worked, but also the extent to which God chose to bless those efforts.  It is important to realizethis in anything we pursue as Christians.  We must seek God for what He would have us pursue, how He would have us pursue it, and then work our hardest to get the best we possibly can at it as an act of worship and obedience to the Lord.  While we work our hardest we must work as if our success depends on us, but then live realising that it completely depends on how God chooses to bless our efforts.

Going back to confidence, David was confident every time he went into battle.  It wouldn't make sense if he wasn't.  In order to do your best in anything, confidence is required.  It is a simple fact that you cannot put forth your best effort, or perform your best at something if you are not confident.

So the next question is how do we as Christians behave confidently without being prideful, cocky and/or arrogant?  I believe we prevent against these things by ensuring that our focus is on representing Him well, and glorifyihadGod rather than ourselves.  If we look at our circumstances through this lenses it prevents against our attitudes becoming sinful.

For instance, let's look at David when He fought Goliath.  He had worked hard and practiced to develop his skills with a slingshot.  He then went out there and was confident in the abilities that God had allowed him to develop through practice.  Having confidence in the skills that God had blessed his efforts in developing - this in itself was an act of worship.  It was like saying, "thank you God for allowing me to develop these skills.  I only developed them to this extent because you have allowed me to -because you blessed my efforts.  I am going to worship you now by going out and doing my best for your glory, and in doing my best being confident in the skills you have allowed me to develop".  In other words, he worked hard to develop the skills, realized any skill development was directly related to how God chose to bless his efforts, and then on order to do his best with those skills as an act of worship to God, it was necessary to be confident.  He then went out and did his best and was surrendered to allow God to orchestrate the results as He saw fit.