John has struggled with being confident and humble. He knows the Bible teaches us to be humble and yet confident, but he cannot figure out how, at once, to live and act with confidence and humility? It must be possible and vital because Christ loved both qualities. In Matthew 5, Jesus said that the meek would inherit the earth, and then in Matthew 21 he told the disciples that if they had enough faith they could get a mountain to throw itself into the sea. Actually, we can be meek and still move mountains. The question is, how?
The Biblical basis for coupling humility and confidence is clear. In humility we acknowledge our gifts are from God; we have nothing to crow about. Pause and reflect on this fact; our gifts are from the Creator God of the universe!
What can give more confidence than that? In humility we acknowledge our waywardness, while remembering we have been set free from the consequences of our wayward life by no less than the Lord God of the universe on the basis of the life of Jesus Christ. In humility we recognize that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.
Acknowledging the limits of our capacity and our wayward nature is humbling, but it also reminds us that God has equipped us to succeed in whatever God calls us to do. And it also reminds us that ultimately our success is not about what we have or what we do; it is about what God has done, and what God continues to do. At once, we should be the most humble and confident of all people. When we are confident and not humble we deny the grace of God. When we are humble and not confident we deny the power of God. We can confidently claim God’s promise God “who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).