Who Needs a Motivational Speaker When You Have The Bible

Many motivational speakers and self-help books will tell you that confidence and freedom from fear begins with belief in oneself. Well, all due respect to the motivational speakers and writers of self-help books but I’ve found that true freedom and confidence comes from belief and trust in God. Philippians 4v13 is a commonly quoted verse and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve all heard it at one stage or another. It says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Let me rephrase that for you however, ‘I am confident in Christ’s confidence’. Let me explain, who played sport in school? I did, I played netball in fact, but I figured most of you didn’t play netball so I chose a more reliable sport, football. We have all, at some point been involved in or at least seen a game of football. Say you’re on this football team and you have the world’s best captain, not only are they a superstar athlete with more speed and endurance than the rest of your team combined, but they also know their stuff. They know every play, they can read every move you opponents make and they are the most field savvy person on the planet. Now with that kind of captain leading you watching your back, wouldn’t you be more confident about playing the game. Doesn’t mean you just sit back though, you still have your part to play, your role on the team but knowing that someone with kind of skill and ability has you covered gives you the confidence to be bold, make a break you didn’t think you could make. Their confidence inspires you to be better than you believed yourself to be, just as our confidence in God to be the captain of our lives gives us the ability to be bold and to step out in faith.

We need to understand that our strength comes from God because when we know that we aren’t relying on our own strength to get us through, it alleviates the stress and pressure we put on ourselves. John 5v15 says: “I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear fruit, apart from Me, you can do nothing.” Now I know that – that sounds like a whole lot of gardening talk but basically it boils down to this, I am nothing without Him. That is not as depressing as it sounds though, it simply means that when I say I have confidence, I’m not talking about confidence in myself, but confidence in the gifts, talents and even knowledge that God has placed in me and the plan that he has for my life. I put my trust in His strength and His skill, I know I can succeed because He brings out the best in me.

So we answered what confidence is, but what is a life lacking in confidence?

Confidence deficiency is a life lived in fear, it is a sickness that eats away at who we are and leaves us as nothing more than pale shadows of who we could be. An infection can start in the most harmless place, say a cut on your foot, it won’t do any major damage much less kill you. But if that cut goes unnoticed and unchecked it leaves entry for infection which, although it starts at your foot, can spread through-out your entire body. If it reaches your lungs, your heart or your brains the results can be disastrous or even fatal. Fear is like that, it starts as a simple thought, we all have them, but if left unchecked and allowed to fester, fear can affect our emotions, change our decision-making behaviors and ultimately, change our personality and the way we live our life. Like courage, confidence is not the absence of fear, it is action taken despite the presence of fear.

Fear is a world wide epidemic, in 2005 a poll was conducted to reveal the most common fears of teens in the US:

1. Terrorist attacks
2. spiders
3. death
4. failure
5. war
6. heights
7. crime/ violence
8. being alone
9. the future
10. Nuclear war

We all experience fear, in fact it is so widespread it has it’s own TV show – fear factor. People are asked to conquer their fears for the chance to win $50 000. The first thing to understand about fear is that it is not from God. 2 Timothy 1 v 7 says: for God did not give us a spirit of fear (or timidity), but a spirit of power, love and of self-discipline (or a sound mind). Fear, being neither God-given nor beneficial, is therefore something that needs to be conquered and removed so that we can be free to live our lives.

Roosevelt famously said: “the one thing we must fear is fear itself, for indeed if we allow it to, it will control us. If we confront it, we will master it. The import thing with Roosevelt’s quote is the idea that the conquer of fear is an active confrontation. Think of fear as one of those horizontal escalators in the airport, but in reverse. (Cant just ignore it and stand still, we’d still be moving back). An example of fear being the master of our lives is people who have phobias. Now there are so many different phobias out there, I looked up a couple of the more ‘interesting ones’ which included:

Porphyrophobia – fear of the colour purple

Dextrophobia – fear of objects on the right side of the body

Levophobia – fear of objects on the right side of the body

Stabisbasiphobia – fear of standing and walking

Thalassophobia – fear of being seated

And in the biggest contradiction ever, phobia-phobic – fear of being afraid.

Now you will often hear of fear holding you back and while that’s true, it’s not the only way fear can affect you. There are actually four negative ways that fear can cause us to act.

1.      Fear that causes us not to act: it holds us back, stops us from moving forward and ultimately makes us a spectator of life as it passes us by. There can be no progress when fear keeps us from growing. We are stuck and imprisoned by fear. This is more common in girls, but boys are more susceptible to the next one.

2.      Fear that causes us to ‘act’ too much: changes who we are.

3.      fear that causes us to act too late

4.      fear that causes us to act too soon

So what do we fear?

1. being unloved or unloveable.

Romans 8 v 37 – 39: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future , nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 John 3 v 1: how great is the love that the father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God.

Ephesians 3 v 17 – 19

1. fear of the past

Lion King video

1. not being enough, failing

failure always seems final, the end. We fail and that’s it, full stop, game over, it’s all lost, when in fact the only true failure is in not getting back up when things don’t go the way we’d like or had planned them to go.

We don’t think we’re enough when we compare ourselves to others. One of the ten commandments is ‘do not covet’.

1 John 4 v 16: and so we know and rely on the love God has for us.