It’s
a conversation at work, one of those idle ones that people have while they sit
in a conference room. You’re waiting for a meeting to begin, or waiting on the person
who called the meeting to show up and get this thing over with.
After
the usual banter about the rudeness of people who call meetings, the
conversation eventually turns to the idea of confidence.
“I
really don’t feel confident in this plan,” one says. “I know we’ve been talking
about it for weeks, but it’s just not well thought through.”
“Is
it the plan,” another asks, “or is it that you don’t have confidence in our
ability to implement it successfully?”
“Some
of both, I think,” the first person says. “we’ don’t really have all of the
experience we need, and we’re struggling how to figure out what success looks
like.”
The
conversation goes on (the meeting organizer is really late). I think about the
things that we base our confidence on, or what we place our confidence in.
Experience.
Skills.
Intelligence.
The
right resources.
Professional
training and education.
Outside
consultants.
Experts.
Senior
or top management.
These
are all work-related things, but they apply to just about any kind of human
situation. Participating in a church activity. Raising children. Going to
college. Booking an airline flight. Farming. Running your own business.
Teaching a class.
This
is a very human thing to do, to place our confidence in what generally seems to
work in our specific culture.
But
there’s another kind of confidence, and that is confidence in God. And it’s
radically different form the human and cultural things we often place our
confidence in.
As Bob Sorge says in The Fire of
Delayed Answers,
“Confidence happens when we come to understand God and his ways. When we really
get to know God, confidence is automatic. If we truly come to know Him, we’ll
be confident that He will be true to His person.”
I look at some of
the key moments in my life, and ask the question, did I place my confidence in
God?
In some cases, the
answer is yes. In other situations (too many), the answer is no. I have too
much a tendency to rely on myself and what I know. Sometimes it works out okay.
Other times, it doesn’t.
I’m in one of those
situations right now. Everything in my experience is screaming at me, “Do this!
You know it will work! It will work this time! It has to! Go talk to him, or
talk to her. They’ll know. They can help.”
Yet there is this
small voice struggling to be heard amid the shouting.
“Wait. Just wait. Put
your confidence in what you know is rock solid.”
And it’s not my
experience, my skills, my training, my intelligence, other people, or sufficient
resources.
This
time, I think I’ll wait.
Led
by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Fire of Delayed
Answers. To see more posts on this chapter, “Confidence in His Ways,” please
visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.
Photograph by Alex Grichenko via Public
Domain Pictures. Used with permission.
