“My Confidence”

Written By: Perla Aviles

 Hello there!

It’s been a while since I have written around here. Actually, since the last time Janny asked me to write something your girl has grown quite a bit. She is a little more confident these days. God is showing me some things about myself that I didn’t know I had within me.

How wonderful that with God we never stop learning and experiencing Him in a new way!

Well let’s get into this, shall we?

This time I want to speak more about that growth in my confidence over the years. I have always been the girl who is perceived as very confident, but if someone had an MRI machine of some sort they would probably see the true reality going on on the inside me. The truth is, I have struggled my whole life with shrinking myself to fit the size of someone’s opinion of me or their perception of me. This has caused me to experience a lot of pain and frustrations in the past because I wasn’t living the truth of God for my life or the design He intended for me, I was the living size of my insecurities and fears walking around wondering what box I needed to fit in next.

Yet, I can’t help but to look back and be so glad I experienced that. Yes! Glad! Now I see the schemes of the enemy a little clearer when he tries to come back and challenge the standards and attributes God has placed on the inside of me. Now, even when I’m scared, I take leaps of faith and trust God a little more. Trust that He knows best and that His will is “good, acceptable, and perfect” (Romans 12:2). This means that He knew this world needed a me to fulfill exactly that, HIS PURPOSE, and that my characteristics are part of His perfect plan for my life and so are yours. God knows that there is YOU that is needed for this time, with the exact characteristics and personality traits He designed for you even before you were born (Jeremiah 1:5, NKJV).

There are two things that honestly prevented me in the past from being more confident in the Lord. While not in every occasion I was very insecure, these roadblocks did make it difficult to walk into His purpose with little more authority at times:

The first is negative self-talk. I wish I could blame others for all the times I was insecure about myself or that I would rob myself of the joy of finding my confidence in God. The reality is, I used to do the dirty work all by myself. I, alone, would believe the dart of lies the enemy would throw at me like I was his perfect target. I, alone, would diminish myself with talking down on the talents and gifts the Lord so graciously gave me to use them for HIS GLORY. While I’m not perfect since we all have our days, there is something that I had to internalize just like I used to internalize the lies of the enemy; my confidence and strength comes from the Lord and comparison would rob me of that same joy He intended for me to have.

Coming from a family where women are very self-sufficient, strong, independent, it wasn’t easy to stripped of the old ways of thinking that were culturally embedded in me and instead take upon the Word of God and plaster it all over my heart. I had to constantly remind myself that my heart could no longer endorse the wicked tricks, the fear of what others would say, the negative thinking, and the self-sufficient spirit. I had to draw my strength and confidence from a different source; His name is Jesus, my counselor, the one whose resurrection power lives within me and you!

The second is honestly the weapons formed through the negative talk from other people. I don’t think everyone wakes up and intentionally determines in their heart to hurt others. Sometimes we just do it unintentionally by sharing our opinions that only reflect our own thinking, values, beliefs, but those things are not the same for everyone. There are stereotypical ways of thinking that came from the way that we were raised and we are all raised differently so

 what might be true for you, might not be true for me. Words still hurt! Now I always try to remember that before hurting someone because I know what it feels like to be hurt by other people’s words. When I do hurt someone, I try to tend to that wound by asking for forgiveness. I know what it feels like to be asked to be forgiven and I want others who are ever hurt by my words to experience that too.

Unfortunately, I can’t always control what other people say and honestly neither can you. People are their persons independently from you. We have to find other ways to fight against resentment, bitterness, hurt that are more spirituality effective than internalizing those words as absolute truths. One of those weapons, along with prayer, is actually confidence and I want to briefly (I’ll do my best to be brief lol) explain why I had to learn this.

Hebrews 10:35-36 says, “So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.”

Confidence, more especially, in the Lord allows us to develop endurance to do the Lord’s will. When you have complete trust in the Lord, His will you will do. God will always keep His promises. The reward we will receive, the inheritance, the privilege of joining Him in our eternity is attached to our obedience to His word. Therefore, confidence in itself might not be enough since it relies on human strength and abilities to perform. Trust in the Lord, however, makes you rooted enough to not be affected or pressured by social standards or negative talk from others. The confidence in the Lord is able to withstand the wicked strategies from the enemy to paralyze you enough that you desire to no longer do the Lord’s will, therefore robbing you of the privilege of joining Him one day.

So here is the thing… I am not about to sabotage my eternity over lack of belief in the Word of God, in His promises, and on who He has made me to be. Honestly, if I was God, I would be highly offended as a matter of fact. I think of it like this: God sent His son, took the time to create me, give me a purpose, and even offer me to join Him one day. Why would I disregard and undervalue such a privilege and such a gift over my lack of certainty in His Word when His Word has endured and will endure forever?

Every time I think about how God has come through for me in the most impossible, to my human eyes, of situations, when I thought there was no way out, He actually rescued me. God has the most reliable record that I have ever seen anyone have in my life. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family so TRUST ME! I would know.

So my dear friend, I invite you to walk into that confidence in God. I’m still working on it myself, I’m not perfect, but I have come a long way. Sometimes people mistake confidence with pride. Confidence in God is trusting who He is and what He said. Pride is self-centered and a deep satisfaction found in one’s self. There is nothing I could do that could surpass the goodness, the faithfulness, the mercy, and the love of my GOD.

If you are reading this and you have struggled to see yourself the way God does, you have struggled to trust in what He said, that you are FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made (Psalm 139:14) I want you to pray the following with me:

“Lord, I come before you recognizing that if I trust in my abilities and strengths I might become anxious and worried. I acknowledge that I am the work of Your hands and that in You I find what I lack. Create in me an unwavering spirit rooted in the firm foundation that is Jesus. Help me to trust You always even in the face of negative thinking, negative talk and even of my own insecurities. I pray for confidence to walk knowing that You love me, that You have called me, that You cleansed me and set me free. I receive Your strength in exchange for my weaknesses. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.”

If you prayed that with me, my hope is that you will start studying about being confident in the Lord more and that God places a fire within you to trust in Him and His Word more than you did before.

Your friend,

Perla