Arrogance vs. Confidence
I constantly am blown away at the interaction that happens between Jesus and the people that make up the crowds following Him. It always seems like there are people throwing questions eft and right to try and make Him slip up. And almost always the people throwing the questions are ‘religious’ people. People testing His knowledge, people trying to get Him to sound like a heretic, people wanting to see Him fail. One of the things that i admire so much about Christ was the fact that He never backed down from these questions, in fact He always fired back with a verbal smackdown. I love it.
The fact of the matter is that out of anyone who ever walked the face of the earth, Jesus would have had every right to be arrogant, He is the Son of God. But He is never arrogant, He is humble. In fact, Jesus was so humble that He was confident, i mean, truly confident. He completely drew His confidence from God the Father. This may be a no brainer to you theologians reading this post (are there any theologians actually reading this blog anyway? lol) but think about it, today’s culture equates being humble to being weak. It’s sad but true. But being humble doesn’tcome from being confident, in fact most times being overly confident will just result in you being humbled. The equation actually puts humbleness in front of confidence.
You see when you are humble in the Lord, you draw your strength from the Lord, the ultimate source of strength. And when you tap into the omnipotent power of God, then confidence is not yours to own anymore, in fact, you are just a reflection of the strength that God holds. Sure, our insecurities, sin, and depravity throw a couple smudges on that mirror of reflection, but even so, we should speak with all confidence when we are confidnece in humility.
The problem is when we mistake arrogance for confidence. Given time, you can always spot someone who speaks from their arrogance than from true confidence. The signs are unmistakable. Here is a list of signs:
1-arrogance says, “I”
CONFIDENCE SAYS, ”HE AND WE”
2-arrogance says, “get out of my way, i know what im doing”
CONFIDENCE SAY’S, LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, I WANT YOU TO BUY IN”
3-arrogance says, “don’t question me”
CONFIDENCE SAYS, “HOLD ME TO THE HIGHEST FORM OF ACCOUNTABILITY”
4-arrogance says, “that’s not my job, im above that”
CONFIDENCE SAYS, “IM GOING TO GET THE JOB DONE NO MATTER WHAT I NEED TO DO”
5-arrogance says, “i can do it all myself”
CONFIDENCE SAYS, “I AM BETTER WITH OTHERS”
Remember, confidence doesn’t come from always being right, confidence comes from not fearing to be wrong.
