Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness, or the realization of our duty and privilege as God’s children.
It is natural…for us to trust in ourselves. It is so natural, and so confirmed by the habits of a lifetime, that no ordinary difficulties or perplexities avail to break us of it. It takes all God can do to root up our self-confidence. He must reduce us to despair; He must bring us to such an extremity that the one voice we have in our hearts, the one voice that cries to us wherever we look round for help, is death, death, death. It is out of this despair that the superhuman hope is born. It is out of this abject helplessness that the soul learns to look up with new trust to God… How do most of us attain to any faith in Providence? Is it not by proving, through numberless experiments, that it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps? Is it not by coming, again and again, to the limit of our resources, and being compelled to feel that unless there is a wisdom and a love at work on our behalf, immeasurably wiser and more benign than our own, life is a moral chaos?… Only desperation opens our eyes to God’s love.
Physical illness, whatever it is, emotional distress, financial disaster, death, being forsaken and left alone, whatever shatters your confidence in your own abilities, your own strength becomes your extremity and that is God’s opportunity. A progressive weakening of your instinctive self-confidence that leads you all the way to self-despair is exactly where God wants you because at that point the only thing that’s going to hold you together is a radical confidence in God.
Comfort in Trouble. The article originally appeared (http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/47-4/comfort-in-trouble) at www.gty.org. © 1969-2008. Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
Prayer is the antidote for the disease of self-confidence that opposes God’s goal of getting glory by working for those who wait for Him.
Desiring God, 1996, p. 146, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org. Get this book!
