Confidence Because Of Love

Confidence is something we all want, but not all of us have it. What brings confidence? Where does it come from? Why is it easy to be confidence in some areas and hard in other areas?

The importance of developing a good self-esteem is both a popular view and generally accepted view. Unfortunately, most of the views that attempt to develop good self-esteem stem from within the person, i.e. “look within yourself.” The source they start with is you, and they build out from there.

Evaluate yourself, focus on your talents and abilities, look at what you have, etc. The problem is, we all let ourselves down and the object of our confidence is too small to handle this life.

Yet in God’s Word, we see another source of confidence that moves us beyond our own selves and calls us into something greater and more fulfilling. I’m not saying that all the teachings on developing a strong self-esteem are bad, though some are, but I am saying they won’t fulfill the deepest longings of our soul.

Over the past few weeks we have been looking at 1 John, which I’ve entitled “That You May Know.” The whole point of 1 John is to bring assurance to the believers that God is who He says He is, He has done what He said He would do, and He will do what He promises to do. We can know that we have life in His Son, Jesus Christ.

As we close out our study in 1 John 5, John tells us that we can be confident in this life and the next. Not from how we feel about ourselves, but from what God says about us.

We’ve already seen that we can love God because God first loved us. It’s in loving God that we will become confident people, have confidence in our faith, and be confident in our eternity.

Confident People: A People of Faith

Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as God had been born of God (1 John 5:1-3). This is a powerful statement. It takes us beyond who we are, beyond the families we were born into, beyond our DNA, genes and abilities. It is a promise that we are part of God’s forever family, forgiven and adopted sons and daughters of the Most High God.

When we have this confidence, that God loves us and adopted us, our only response is to believe and to love our Heavenly Father. Not just in word, but we learn to express our love to God by doing what He says and loving His children.

Our love for God is not a general or distant love, but a very personal and intimate love for we know Jesus Christ. He gives us understanding to know who He is and that He is true (1 John 5:20-21). Knowing Him is eternal life.

Confidence in our Faith: A People who Grow

We haven’t arrived, and all of us are prone to doubt. But the Bible calls us to remove our eyes from ourselves and our circumstances and to fix our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:1-2). When we consider the life of Christ and how far He was willing to go to demonstrate His love for us, we see His amazing loving for us and His example to us.

Overcomers

We can be confident in our faith because God calls us overcomers and has given us the victory (1 John 5:4-5). We do not need to be afraid in this life, we do not be afraid to share our faith, we believe in the One who has overcome!

Internal Witness

We can be confident in our faith because God has given all those who believe in Jesus Christ the gift of the Holy Spirit and He assures us that we are in the faith (1 John 5:10). We live in a world of opposition and false teaching. We also live in a world where we have a very real demonic enemy who wants us to believe lies about ourselves, but the Holy Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God (Romans 8:16). It is important that we learn to silence the lies, trust the Scriptures and listen to the Holy Spirit.

Desire for Others to Walk with Jesus

We can be confident in our faith because God brings us a desire for others to know Jesus and to walk with Him. We develop a longing to be more like Christ and we believe that His way is the only way for true fulfillment in this life (John 10:10). So when we see other Christians sinning, we have a desire to encourage them to walk in obedience (1 John 5:16-18). We also know that the world is lost apart from Jesus (1 John 5:19) and so we should seek to share Him.

Answered Prayer

We can be confident in our faith because God answers our prayers! When we walk with Christ and live in obedience to Him (1 John 5:3) we have the assurance that God hears our prayers and will answer our prayers (1 John 5:14-15).  It’s important to remember that this isn’t a “genie in the bottle” type of prayer. The Bible is clear that when we ask according to God’s will He will answer our prayers (John 15:7-8,16).  When we love Jesus, and learn to desire the things of Jesus, our desires align with God’s will and He hears us and gives us those things.

Confident in our Eternity: A People headed to Heaven

There is one certain thing in this life and that is we will all die. It’s an irrefutable fact. After spending some time at a few funerals in the past weeks I am reminded how quickly this life passes. Jesus came to bring us confidence in this life and in the next. In youth group, we like to say that Eternal life is true life that starts now and last forever. Eternal life isn’t something that just happens when we die, but it beings in this life.

Begins Now

Eternal life is about knowing Jesus Christ (1 John 5:11-12). It’s about developing a relationship with Jesus, knowing who He is, what He is like, what He loves, what He hates, what He desires, what He has done and what He promises to do. Knowing Jesus is the most exciting relationship you can have and He will never leave you or fail you (Hebrews 13:5). One of the promises God gives us is that if we desire to know Him more, He will give more of Himself.

Knowing Jesus changes everything about this life. Knowing Him pushes us from simply a self-esteem to a Christ-esteem kind of life. This is the confidence that we can have because of our love for Jesus.

Last Forever

Eternal life will be forever in Heaven with Jesus (1 John 5:13; John 14:1-6). There is a promised place that brings hope to the believer’s soul in the face of death. It is a place that we ought to long to be. It is beyond anything we could imagine or experience in this life. Bigger, better and more brilliant than our imagination. We will one day be reunited with Jesus Christ, face to face, and with all the believers in Christ. I’d love to tell you more about it, but for now I will quote a song from VBS that I attended years ago: “Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace, I’m going to see my Savior’s face, because Heaven is a wonderful place.”

Christ-Esteem

God desires so much more for you than simple self-esteem. Instead of believing in yourself and your capabilities, believe that He created you, loves you and has a purpose for you. Instead of trying to create an optimism and certainty about your own abilities, trust in Christ’s demonstrated love for you and be certain that He is with you. Instead of acting courageously based on your perception of yourself, live freely believing that in Jesus Christ you have already overcome and He has won the victory for you.

It’s not about your DNA, genes or what you were born with, it’s about being born into the family of God through Jesus Christ. How you are treated by others in society impacts us, but doesn’t have to affect your confidence because God loves you and will help you overcome. The choices we make will lead to consequences in this life, but knowing Christ ensures that Jesus paid our debts and His grace will cover all of our sins, failures and mistakes.

Jesus loves you and if you love Him you can be confident because of love.

Truth In Love

Have you ever experienced someone try to leverage love or friendship to manipulate you? From something small like an old friend trying to use your friendship to get you to buy something, to something much riskier and bolder like a trusted friend trying to get you to compromise your beliefs.

On some level, we have all experienced this. How do I know? Well, we are all humans after all. It’s pretty common for us to try and manipulate others. The more we seek control, the more we are willing to utilize the various tactics to get people to do what we want. From the time we were little kids trying to get our siblings to give us the toy they are playing with, we learn how to leverage our relationships with others.

Though effective at times, they are not true expressions of love. The hope is that we begin to learn what is healthy and what is not healthy ways to demonstrate friendship and love.

There is nothing worse than realizing that someone is trying to control you and manipulate you. It’s in that moment that you begin to question their friendship or love for you. Was the whole conversation really about getting me to buy something, or is there truth to wanting to reconnect? Does he really love me or did he just want to use my body? Do they truly want to hang out with me or just want to play xbox on my parent’s 80’ TV?

I once received a phone call from a person who used to attend my church years ago and whose son was in youth group. I missed the call but there was a wonderful message left on my voicemail. Something like, “Hi pastor Brad! This is….and I just wanted you to know that God placed you on my heart recently and I wanted to pray for you and just let you know that I miss you. I was hoping we could reconnect soon. Have a wonderful day.”

I honestly was so excited to receive the call and called this person back as soon as I could. Only to find out that they had a business venture they wanted me to sign up for. Not saying this person doesn’t really love me, but I felt the message was deceitful. I would have preferred a message like this: “Hi Brad, I have a business proposition for you with this company…Call me back if you are interested.” I may not have called back, but at least it was a trustworthy statement.

At the core of who we are, we want to know if someone is being truthful in our relationships with us. And when they are not, we either enter denial and try to preserve the relationship, or we become cynical and skeptical about others.

The apostle John, out of deep love for the believers, wrote to them warning them that there are “truth claims” out there that are seeking to manipulate and pull them away from the truth. Deceptive lines that sound good, but are misleading them.

Just like it is important in our human relationships for truth in love, it is of utmost importance that we know that God’s love is always true, but there is an enemy who wants to convince people that they are “good with God” but in reality, are believing lies.

1 John 4 tells us that God has given the Holy Spirit to those who believe in Jesus Christ, and He (the Holy Spirit) will guide them into all truth. John warns that there are false prophets and teachers saying things that sound good but are not biblical. Therefore, we need to test the things that we hear against the Word of God and allow the Spirit of God to bring discernment.

Here is a simple test. Which of these phrases are consistent with the Word of God?

1.     We are all God’s children.

2.     God just wants us to be happy.

3.     Christians should judge others.

4.     God helps those who help themselves.

5.     God will never give you more than you can handle.

6.     When you die, God gains another angel.

That’s enough for now. Circle the ones you think are biblical. At the bottom of the blog will be the answer key.

How did you do?

Some of those are widely held to and yet have some major consequences. The ultimate danger is one of these teachings leads us away from Jesus Christ and our need for Him. The first and most important evidence that something is truthful is an acknowledgement that Jesus Christ is who He says He is and has done what He said He would do.

God wants us to be investigators of the truth. To weigh everything according to His Word. God is a God who delights in showing His children the truth, so seek it out. The more you are in the Word of God and abide with God the more you will be led by the Holy Spirit.

It is in cultivating this love for God that you will sincerely know you are loved in truth. God loves you and has demonstrated His love for you in the person of Jesus Christ. He has given you the Holy Spirit so that you are not on your own to test the spirits.

The Holy Spirit will lead you into discerning the truth and will give you other faithful believers who will seek the truth with you. Let us continually look to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.

Be watchful, for there are even some who claim to be pastors and Christians who are teaching lies. Be like the Berean Christians who searched the Scriptures daily to see if what is said is consistent with the Truth.

Answer Key: Consistent with God’s Word – 3. Inconsistent with God’s Word – 1, 2, 4, 5, 6.