Humility Brings Confidence
Jon: Bradon, turn around, close your eyes and fall!
Bradon: I have zero confidence in you catching me!
Jon: Coming up on the bible story podcast, we are going to talk about confidence.
Bradon: And, why can we be confident
Discussion Episode
James 4:7-10
About the Story
Jon: The book of James is found in the New Testament toward the back of the Bible.
Bradon: If you are using a real paper bible and not an app on your phone. Most bibles have a table of contents in the first few pages that will give the page number of each book of the Bible.
Jon: The large numbers are chapter numbers, and the small numbers are verses.
Bradon: We should start today’s story with a few words from the book of James. Jon is going to read James 4:7-10,
Jon: “7So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. 9Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.”
Bradon: As a follower of Christ our self-confidence comes from God.
Jon: Confidence that comes from God is fed by humility. Arrogance is what will destroy confidence and it is a complete orientation to self.
Bradon: Arrogance is self-focused, and confidence is humble. So this begs the question, what is humility? I think it is proportionally self-aware and not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought to. We know who we are, and what we’re good at, as well as knowing who we are not, and what we are not so good at.
Jon: Right; Humility is understanding the good and the bad within each of us. It’s about having an accurate understanding of self. Sometimes that is really hard and as we may not like what we see and in other areas, we may like what we see. But when we combine growth and humility confidence begins to flourish! Bradon, give us an example.
Bradon: Ok, so a person may not be overly skilled in a particular sport, knowledgeable in a subject, or perhaps they have some character flaw. You would think that a person like this may not have much confidence. Still, if they are growing as an athlete, becoming more knowledgeable in a subject, or making better decisions around a past struggle, they will likely be a confident person even though they might not be the best. They are aware they have more growing to do but are confident in who they are and who they are becoming because they are self-aware.
Jon: That is interesting. Being self-aware can help a person be humble and confident.
Bradon: Like me? LOL except for a trust fall and anyone catching me.
Jon: Just like you! You are a humble and growing person. I will say that if the trust fall wasn’t a game and you would have confidence in me to catch you!
Bradon: You are right I mean. I would have more confidence in you catching me than most any other person.
Jon: Ok, time for a couple of stories based on our lesson today, “Humility Brings Confidence.” You have a story about humility and then I will follow it up about a story of Confidence.
Application
Bradon: Looking back at our text today. James writes about the idea of when we humble ourselves God will honour us.
Jon: One of the natural things that will come out of humility is confidence and there is a very specific reason for this.
Bradon: One thing that comes with humility is growth. Humble people tend to be people who are growing personally. When we think of our faith and having confidence in Christ, being honest with ourselves is super important. As we become more aware of inconsistencies in our life we have a choice to grow out of them or to hide them. We can either be self-focused and mask our hypocrisy or transparent and authentic and deal with issues.
Jon: This is exactly what James is talking about. Let me summarize it. We should humble ourselves – be honest and transparent about everything within us. Then he tells us to get real with God and tell him all the things that are not right. The sin, the garbage that just needs to be dealt with and to be authentic and filled with sorrow for those things.
Bradon: James then teaches us an important lesson that as we humble ourselves God will honour us. One of the things we gain is confidence. As we humble ourselves God grows our confidence in him and establishes it in His grace rather than our own efforts.
Jon: I think that is a really important distinction, in how humility brings confidence. As a follower of Christ, we acknowledge that we can’t do it on our own. We can’t save ourselves from sin – humility brings confidence because we are aware of Christ’s love and grace for us.
Bradon: And, because we look outside of ourselves for grace our confidence can grow beyond our own abilities, character or friendships. Humility brings confidence when it is rooted in God’s love and grace for us!
