Be Confident in GodNäide

Do not be overly self-confident

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5)

Many people promote self-confidence. If you are convinced that you can do something, you’ll generally achieve better results than if you are insecure. If you ‘believe in yourself’, you’ll probably feel better than if you constantly doubt and underestimate your own abilities. However, there is a great risk involved here. If we do not put our basic trust in the Lord God, a healthy amount of self-confidence can easily evolve into “being wise in our own eyes” and “leaning on our own understanding”. Then we have put ourselves in the highest place that only God deserves. The Bible gives a clear warning not to do so: “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26).

Basically, this is the same warning as we read yesterday about not putting your trust in other people. For just as others are fallible and helpless in the face of life’s hardest challenges, so are we.

If we are overly self-confident, we don’t really know ourselves. We don’t acknowledge that our mind and heart has been affected by sin. In fact, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). We can’t rely on ourselves. We need someone wiser and stronger and morally perfect.

Don’t trust in yourself, but be confident in the Lord God!