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.