Getting up from my pew, a woman grabbed my arm and handed me a book on the sly, “The Confident Woman.” It was around the year 2000 and I did not realize how much I needed that book. Nor did I realize the devastating storm that was about to wreck my world and any confidence I might have thought I had. But more than that, even now, the Lord just reminded me of a group I was asked to lead in 2018, “Finding Confidence in Christ.”
God has been trying to get my attention on this subject for years. I did not realize how much the world had stolen from me…and how much legalism had stifled my worth and confidence. There is so much more that God has revealed to me on this in His precious Word that I will be unpacking here in the coming year and on my new Theology at Home podcast.
Finding Your Confidence Again: Not In the Culture
Women have been objectified in our culture, trivialized, and even minimized in the Christian culture. But women were never intended to be relegated to a position where they could not speak. We don’t see that in the whole of Scripture. Check out this article for some Scriptures on this topic.
Yet this past week someone once again told me that because I am a woman, I should be silent. And I am embarrassed to say that I once believed that. I did not have the confidence to examine God’s Word for myself to see that people were exploiting God’s Word and building an ideology on a couple of verses, stripping them of their context. But pursuing a PhD in Bible Exposition has shown me just how much what we understand in Scripture has been handed down to us, often errantly. We have got to be students of God’s Word.
Finding Your Confidence Again: Not in Errant Theology
This individual went so far as to say that I was unbiblical because I was teaching the Bible. Why was this? Because I am a woman. Because God supposedly said I am supposed to be silent. Yet this was on my own YouTube channel. It made me realize how people will even use God’s Word to shame others. That is so very sad and definitely not God’s intention.
This is not the first time this has happened to me. Just a couple of months ago on another platform when I was answering a question someone asked about the Bible, I was rebuked for “speaking” when I was actually writing. I guess that person’s theology (if you want to call it that) flexes to whatever he wants it to be, as long as women just don’t communicate the gospel. Hmmm…I think we know who is really behind this, don’t we?
Finding Your Confidence Again: In Christ Alone
This world marginalizes everyone in one way or another. People are minimized for everything under the sun…the color of their skin…their finances… their inferior gender…their birth order. Our confidence was never supposed to come from these things, our talents, or our looks.
Our confidence has always been in Christ alone.
Sin marred us, but Christ completed and healed us. So when people try to say we are inferior in some way we need to remember that confidence placed in frail humanity is not lasting.
Finding Your Confidence Again: No More Apologies
I am one of those people who has often apologized pretty much for existing. When people were upset with me, I would feel this sense of guilt and shame, even when they were completely wrong. This sounds almost a bit bold to say, but I don’t want to apologize anymore for something that is not my fault. When people don’t like us, or cast shame on us, we do not have to receive it. We can stand in Christ and His confidence when we have none of our own.
So I am finding my confidence again, and it is beautiful. It is not boastful, but humble. It is not brash, but gentle. And it looks like peacefully resting and trusting in Christ—no longer needing to prove myself to anyone. Finally Free!
Check out the Seeing Deep blog this week for a mindset hack and a free song to help you walk in the freedom of Christ’s confidence.