Confidence is one of the greatest keys to success in life. A top goal scorer in football will be confident that they should take the penalties because for sure they will beat the goalkeeper. A business person must be confident that they will make money no matter what the state of the economy. An architect must be confident that they can build the best buildings. At any level of life, confidence is something that inspires and encourages people. We all need confidence.
In our world today where we have so many challenges, we should know that we can live confident lives as a Christian. John, the last surviving disciple of Jesus who had lived through persecutions and problems, gives some very important keys to being confident. And this applies to everyone at every stage. We see from the word of God that it is God’s plan and purpose for each one of us to live confidently and overcome challenges through Him (1 John 2:13-14). So, what has John got to teach us about confidence?
1. A real Christian has confidence from knowing God’s love (1 John 3:1; 1 John 4:16-18; Romans 5:8; Acts 4:13; Daniel 11:32; John 10:14)
2. A real Christian has confidence from knowing God’s word (Hebrews 4:12; Romans 10:17; Romans 12:2; Matthew 4:4; Ephesians 6:17; Psalm 23:4; John 15:7)
3. A real Christian has confidence by living free of condemnation (1 John 3:19-22)
4. A real Christian has confidence to overcome the world (1 John 4:4; 1 John 4:17-18; Matthew 16:25; 1 John 4:4; 1 John 5:4-5)
5. A real Christian has confidence that their prayers will be answered (1 John 5:14-15; Romans 12:1-2)
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1. A real Christian has confidence from knowing God’s love. To know God is to know His love. His love is unconditional, overwhelming and overflowing (1 John 3:1; 1 John 4:16-18). God is your friend, there is no fear in love. There’s confidence when we are not hiding anything from God, when we are forgiven, and He has taken away our shame. You can know you are in a safe place with people who love the Lord and are not out to make judgements about you. Where love is unconditional. It gives you confidence to speak openly without fear. That is how it is when we come into a relationship with God, but immeasurably more so than any human ever could give. God hasn’t called us just to know about Him, to become outwardly religious, to just have good morals in life (which we must have), but to know Him up close and personally. He wants us to know we can be open and honest with Him about everything - the good, the bad and the ugly. He sees it all and still He loves us (Romans 5:8). The apostle John knew Jesus as His friend - he is called ‘the disciple Jesus loved’. Of all the apostles, John is considered the closest in relationship to Jesus. John was one of the first 2 disciples to follow Jesus of the 12. He was the only one at the foot of the cross when Jesus said His last words as He was being crucified. Knowing the love of Jesus changed the apostles dramatically, especially after His resurrection from the dead (Acts 4:13). It’s been said that ‘it’s not WHAT you know, but WHO you know that matters’. A real Christian has direct access to God who controls everything, but not all Christians realise this (Daniel 11:32). The more we know Jesus, the greater our confidence will be. You can come to know Jesus better by keeping lines of communication open all through your daily life, and by quickly obeying His commands. Invite God the Holy Spirit into every part of your life 24/7. You’ll become the best employee, parent, leader, and the best version of you (John 10:14).
2. A real Christian has confidence from knowing God’s word. John says ‘I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.’ This means you have taken God’s word to your heart and not just to your head (Hebrews 4:12). It gives you faith for miracles in your life (Romans 10:17). It is transformative for your thinking (Romans 12:2). It enables you to do life (Matthew 4:4). It makes you strong to overcome evil (Ephesians 6:17). It comforts you when you are in danger or loss (Psalm 23:4). Jesus gave us a promise that John wrote down wrote down and from His confident writing He clearly believed and practiced (John 15:7). Confidence from the word of God changes how we speak. To be confident, we must leave the language of failure behind us completely. There is no place for it in God’s Kingdom. Declare to God ‘I am who You say I am’, ‘I will do what You say I can do’, ‘I will be what You say I can be’. Knowing the truth about who God says you really are and what it means to have Christ living in you makes you confident. Christians must speak up with confidence about the God they know personally and through the word of God, and call people everywhere into a relationship with Him through Jesus.
3. A real Christian has confidence by living free of condemnation. As Christians we are far from perfect, but God is changing us. We are not to judge ourselves harshly as we can do at times as that can lead to loss of confidence (1 John 3:19-22). This tells us that we are not the final judge of our own hearts, it says ‘God is greater than our hearts’. He convicts us of sin and leads sinners to repentance. When we have fully repented of sin, turned our back on it and left that lifestyle behind by the strength of God, we must not allow our hearts to condemn us. He is greater than our hearts. We are not to struggle and strive to prove anything about ourselves: He has paid the price for us to make us His own.
4. A real Christian has confidence to overcome the world (1 John 4:4; 1 John 4:17-18). Part of our growing up in Jesus is the realisation that ‘the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world’. When you embrace this truth, you will begin to face and overcome challenges with God’s strength, not your own. Jesus living in us is greater than any weakness we have. He is greater than any fear because He overcame fear at the cross. He did all that as a man, without sinning. Jesus wants us to go further than just giving our lives to Him and then trying to work the rest out ourselves by being religious and failing. He wants to transform us from the inside out into overcomers like Jesus. By letting God love us we will live the way Jesus did in the world, and because of that, have confidence on the day of final judgement. But before we can overcome the world, we must first overcome ourselves! We must stop trusting in ourselves and start trusting God in everything. We cannot be like Jesus in this world and like our old self at the same time. We must repent of our own willfulness to go our own way, surrender our pride, our ego. This is not reformation, it is transformation. Jesus taught that the way to find your real life begins with surrendering the one you have right now (Matthew 16:25). A real Christian had their old life buried with Christ at His death. The new life God wants you to live every day looks nothing like the old, it looks like Jesus. Water baptism is just the start of your transformation journey. God wants to show you that your new self that is capable of thinking and acting like Jesus. He wants to grow Jesus in you from the inside out of your life. Let him do it! He doesn’t need your help, He needs your cooperation. You will have confidence in this life and on the day of judgement when you acknowledge that ‘...the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world’ (1 John 4:4). Then let God love you and love through you. It is Christ in us, not our willpower, that overcomes the world. It is our faith in Him. He is the overcomer. He is the one who fights our battles. Some of us have been to the bottom in life. Through sadness, through the loss of someone close to you, or disappointment, or betrayal by close friends. When you can ignore what your flesh wants to do and believe that Christ in you is stronger, and trust Him to strengthen you, you will find Jesus in your lowest valley and be strengthened by Him (1 John 5:4-5)
5. A real Christian has confidence that their prayers will be answered (1 John 5:14-15). God wants us to be confident that we can know His will; we can know that He hears us; and we can know we have what we asked for. A true Christian knows that following Jesus is a 2-way relationship: us to God and God to us, as well as horizontally to others. God wants us to know His will so that we can be confident in prayer. But doing so means change so we know what His will is and then pray that will (Romans 12:1-2). He will answer every prayer if we will live in union with Him. When we know Him, we will know His will for us because He’ll make it known. When we are seeking Him for who He really is, we will find ourselves praying ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ all the time. That is a prayer God will answer.
