Self Assurance

“I am going somewhere, and you can’t go with me now.  However one day you will follow me there”

“Why can’t I just go now, I can go anywhere with you, I would die for you, that’s how dedicated I am”

“You would die for me?  Listen to me, the roosters won’t even have woken up in the morning before you will have turned you back on me”

Perhaps the above is much too feeble of an attempt at the modern paraphrasing of an ancient conversation.  However, the dialogue isn’t one that ceased with Peter.  Overconfidence is a dangerous state, and hubris an agent of intoxication that leads to many a misstep.  The confident batter swings for the fences, and instead of a game winning base hit, ends up being caught out on a deep fly.  The confident commander extends a mile too far into enemy territory and is cut off from his supply lines.  The confident believer chooses to stay and resist temptation, rather than flee the situation and avoid the temptation altogether.  Again and again, people are captured by their own confidence.

However, confidence itself is not the problem.  Rather, the issue is self confidence.  The believer can be confident of standing in the time of trouble, overcoming temptation, and conquering whatever may come, but that confidence must come in knowing that we overcome not by will or any personal merit.  Instead, you must rely upon the assurance that Christ is sufficient, and in Christ alone, you stand!

2nd Corinthians 3:5 says “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;”

Check yourself.  Confident.  Great.  But in whom are you confident?