Confident in Christ

Many years ago, when I played high school baseball, I had a walk-up song. If you’re not familiar with a walk-up song, it is a song that is played as a batter walks from the on deck circle to home plate. My walk-up song was by a new rock n roll band, Guns N Roses, and the song was Welcome to the Jungle. I probably even strutted a little when I walked up.

            Now, let me explain something. I didn’t have this loud and in your face rock song playing because I knew that I was that good, I played it because I feared I wasn’t.

            I was about a .200 hitter in a good year. If you don’t follow baseball that means that I got a hit about once every 5 times up to bat, or so. And that’s not very good. So to try to get in the pitchers head I had a song played that I hoped made me look more confident than I was. But in reality I probably just looked cocky.

            Cocky is when you act like something you’re not. Confident is when you believe something to be true or have faith that something will or will not happen. I wasn’t confident in my batting, so I tried to fake it.

            What I did as a teenager on the baseball field, many people do in other areas of their lives. And it’s because they are not confident in who they are. The Bible has a lot to say about who we are and the confidence that we can have because of this.

            In 1 John, the writer says this:

“And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know that he hears us when we pray, we also can be confident that he will give us what we ask for” (1 John 5:14-15)

            I know too many people that aren’t confident. They aren’t confident in their abilities, their looks, their relationships, their faith. And then because of this they try to do things or act in ways so that other people will think differently of them. But the truth is that’s just fake.

            We can be confident that God hears us when we pray.

            While I wasn’t confident as a batter in baseball, I was confident when I played defense. I was a catcher. So at any moment that I was on the field behind the plate I was thinking about the pitcher, how he felt and what he was thinking, how his mechanics looked. I thought about the batter, my other teammates on the field and where they were positioned, and even the umpire with his hand on my back. I thought about all these other people.

            Maybe that is a truth in confidence. When we focus on others we can be confident in what we do, but when we focus on ourselves we just get cocky.

            Hebrews 4:12 says that we can come with confidence before the throne of God. This is because of what Jesus has done for us. The source of our confidence isn’t really within us, it’s within God in us. We find our confidence not in ourselves, but in Him. That’s why Philippians 4:13 says that “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength”.

            You can be confident that when you pray the God of the universe hears you! Let that sink in for just a minute, please!

            You have been given confidence through Jesus. Live in this, believe in this, have faith in this, and be confident in this.