(as presented by Lisa Bishop)

In the book of Philippians, the Apostle Paul reminds us to put no confidence in the flesh but to put our confidence in The Lord. “Boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: (Philippians 3:3b-4).

And then in verses 5-6 he starts a laundry list of reasons for his flesh boosting confidence: “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless (Philippians 3:5-6).

In his days before following Jesus, I can see Paul pounding his chest with pride as he read through this list, but now that his allegiance is to Jesus and he is living his life for God, his posture is different.

Even with his own impressive pedigree, Paul warns us to put our confidence in the Lord and not in our accomplishments, in our own abilities.

We can so easily find ourselves boasting and bragging about our achievements that we can become arrogant and prideful. Proverbs 16:18 signals us about misplaced confidence when it says, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Now does this mean we can’t be confident in our abilities? No, but it does remind us that our ultimate confidence is not in ourselves but in Jesus himself.

On the other hand, maybe you are not arrogant and prideful and boastful. Maybe you sell yourself short and shrink back because you don’t think you are enough or that you are inadequate. That is putting confidence in your flesh too because you aren’t relying on who Jesus says you are and your identity in him. Thinking less of yourself is not the antidote to pride. Placing your confidence in Jesus is the ultimate prize.

Confidence in the flesh can go both ways. Boasting and hiding when our confidence is misplaced. What or who is your confidence dependent upon? Ask God to reveal areas where you are boasting in your flesh and not in him.

(as presented by Lisa Bishop)

Several years ago, 40 to be exact, my best friend and I wanted to be part of the 8th grade cheerleading squad. I had never done the splits, nor come close in my life, but we decided to practice and give it a shot. For several weeks we perfected our cartwheels and roundoffs. I remember inch by inch getting closer and closer to doing the splits as I looked in the wall of mirrors in my parent’s bedroom. I was trying to build my skill and my confidence as we prepared for tryouts.

Fast forward a few weeks and it was time to put our skills to the test. I distinctly remember walking into my middle school building and approaching the gymnasium with fear gripping me and butterflies in my stomach. Have you ever felt that? We got a few feet away from the door when we both looked at each other and in total fear and panic turned around and high tailed it the other way. We had lost our confidence and fear caused us to run. I never ended up trying out for cheerleading. I will never know if I could have made the cut but to this day I wonder what would have happened if I did not let fear of failure grip me. The fear of being rejected, not making the team, looking like a fool and what other people would think of me overruled my confidence to try.

It reminds me of when Noah built the arc. Now I am not saying that 8th grade cheerleading tryouts hold a candle to Noah building the arc, but stick with me here. We see Noah’s story in the book of Genesis. As God is preparing to bring judgment on the earth through a massive flood, he instructs Noah to build a huge boat when there is not even a drop of rain or a cloud in sight. Yet regardless of what he could not see, Noah obeyed God. He followed God’s instructions even when they did not make sense at the time. I can imagine the mocking and jeering that must have happened as Noah labored to build and obey God. He probably looked ridiculous. Yet, if Noah would have put his confidence in what other people thought of him, he never would have picked up that first piece of wood. Even though others probably thought he was crazy, he remained faithful. His confidence was not in what others thought about him but what in God instructed him to do.

When we put our confidence in the opinion of others, what people think about us, it will cause us to miss out. When we live our lives to avoid the feeling of rejection or in the mode of self-protection, we can forfeit a fulfilling future. When we give power to the opinions of others, we play small rather than stepping into obedience and a grand adventure with God.

Where are you putting your confidence in—the opinion of others and not in God?

It seems like more people are discontent with their jobs these days than ever before for lots of different reasons. Also, workloads seem to be much higher, and the loyalty between employees and employers seems much lower. So, if you find yourself in a job you really don't like, you've got company.

I can understand your predicament because I've had a job or two like that myself. But the Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians:

...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation....I can do everything through him who gives me strength

(Philippians 4:11-12).

So, I want to talk about how to be content in a job you hate. You know, when you and I learn this secret of being content, as Paul learned it, we can't lose because our fulfillment and satisfaction are not based on circumstances—not based on whether we have a terrific job that we love, or one that we hate!

Keep in mind that Paul had to learn this technique of being content, and so do we. So, are you willing to enroll in Contentment 101, and learn how to be content in your job? That's where it begins. If you're not willing to learn to be content, of course, you never will learn it.

If you insist on saying, "I hate this job, I refuse to change my attitude toward this job, I could never be content with this job and furthermore I don't want to be content with it," then you've already prevented God from changing you and giving you a new heart and a new attitude.

First of all, you have to give up your rights. Most of us think things like, "I don't deserve this job," or "I deserve to have a fulfilling job," or "It's not right that I have to work at a job that doesn't utilize my talents," or "I can't be expected to endure the kind of treatment I get on my job.” That's just our normal selfish nature, which has been fed and fired up by our humanistic society, teaching us "We have our rights.”

Dear friend, if you want to be a contented person, you must first of all tell God that you recognize you have no rights to all that you think you have a right to. If you're a child of God, you belong to him and he is the Master. Are you willing to give up your "rights" to have the job you want, and to allow yourself to be contented where you are? That is step one in being content in a job you hate.

Maybe you're thinking, "Well, why would God punish me with a job like this?” Let me assure you that God is not trying to make your life miserable. Just the opposite. He has plans for you that are good. But he can't work those plans for you until you surrender your rights to him. Most of the time God does not deliver us from difficult situations until we have learned to be content and to accept them. That is how we learn to trust God and have faith in him, and without faith it's impossible to please God.

So, step one in being content in a job you hate is to give up your rights for the perfect job and tell God you are willing to stay there and give him control.

Here's step two in being content in a job you hate: Change employers. That's right—just change employers right now, today. But, you say, "You just said be willing to stay in the job you have. Besides, I can't just change jobs like that.” Oh, I didn't say change jobs; I said change employers.

Paul wrote to the Colossians: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men.” Did you realize you can change employers without changing jobs? Just say out loud, "I no longer work for that company or that person, I have a new boss. I now work for the Lord.”

Keep that thought in your mind all day long as you're working and keep telling yourself over and over this truth: "I report to Jesus.

Do we really need self-confidence? As we've looked at the Apostle Peter and his example as well as other Scriptures, self-confidence is not what we need. Indeed, it tends to fail us just when we need it the most. What we truly need is God-confidence.

Why would we want to run on self-confidence when God-confidence is available to us? Can we doubt that God-confidence has much more to offer and self-confidence is unreliable? Then why do we run back to the world's weak and miserable principles?

May I suggest that it is because the philosophy of self-confidence looks good, and it appears to work for some people. So, we swallow the bait, and are deceived again by the master-liar, the father of lies, our enemy, Satan.

If you're still running on self-confidence, you can either make a choice to abandon it, or you can keep on until it runs out of gas on its own, which it will eventually do. Maybe that's happened to you already, and you're now wallowing in the shambles of that failed self-confidence. Either way, if you will choose God-confidence, it can be yours.

To have God-confidence, you must first have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which requires repentance and a turning away from your sins. Then, you must pursue knowing God as your highest priority. You must be willing to allow the Holy Spirit to control your life, and that is your choice.

That will not happen by accident; it will happen as you purpose in your heart to know God. I can assure you of this, the more you know him, the more confidence you will have in him. The more his Word is the central focus of your existence, the more confident you will be.

So, I encourage you to abandon your quest for self-confidence. Pursue, instead, a dedicated commitment to know God and have his confidence dwelling in you. Like Peter, you will see a transformation in your life when you go from operating on self-confidence to operating on God-confidence.

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Have you discovered that self-confidence is very undependable? Just when you think you've got it down pat, it falls apart on you. Just when you need it the most, self-confidence seems to shatter. That's been my experience.

I spent ten years building my life on self-confidence in my own achievements. I could list the successes I had in the business world during those ten years, and you might think I had done pretty well. I had self-confidence, but it kept falling apart on me all the time.

I thank God that my self-confidence was shattered many years ago because then I finally turned to my Savior and said, "I just can't do it anymore. I'm a failure, I can't cope, I'm an emotional yo-yo, I'm just a mess.” In spite of the successes I had stacked up in the business world, I was at the end of my self-confident rope.

Once that self-confidence was shattered, then I turned back to God. And then the God-confidence began and each day is another opportunity to grow in my trust of God and to operate now in his power instead of my own. But it began when my own self-confidence was shattered.

Paul wrote to the Philippians: "We are, remember, truly circumcised when we worship God by the Spirit, when we find our joy in Jesus Christ and put no confidence in what we are in the flesh" (Philippians 3:3, Phillips). He was reminding his Jewish brothers and sisters that outward rituals and signs are not the evidence of our relationship to God, but we are truly rightly related to God when we are Spirit-controlled, when we find our joy in Jesus Christ, and when we have no self-confidence.

I wonder, have you been on a misguided search for self-confidence? Though you know God through Jesus Christ, have you been running your life by the world's principles, as I did for so long? Paul wrote to the Galatians: " Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?” (Galatians 4:8-9).

Self-confidence can be an enslaving principle. We need instead God-confidence.

I'd like to ask you to picture two scenes. Picture the Apostle Peter as he stood outside the gate at Jesus' trial and denies that he ever knew Jesus, denying it with cursing and swearing. And only a few short hours earlier he had been totally confident that he never would do that—never! Now, picture a second scene. Peter healing the lame man, who goes leaping and jumping into the temple, praising God for his healing.

What happened to the Apostle Peter in the few intervening days between those two scenes? In the first instance, though totally self-confident, he had failed miserably. In the second scene, he displays a confident approach, and yet the results are quite different. He was not a miserable failure.

What happened was that Peter lost all his self-confidence and gained in its place God-confidence. After he had healed that lame man, he said to the amazed people who were watching: “Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go... By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see” (Acts 3:12-13, 16)

When Peter spoke now, he was filled with the Holy Spirit. No more shooting off his mouth as before when he operated out of self-confidence. With the self-confidence destroyed and replaced by God-confidence, Peter spoke with great power and was successful in his service for Jesus.

Notice, however, that the loss of self-confidence didn't turn Peter into a sniveling, cowardly wimp of a man. He didn't walk around with his head hanging down; quite the opposite. He was more bold than ever before, because he was controlled by God and his confidence was in someone much more capable and powerful than himself.

My dear friend, self-confidence is a deceptive allurement that this world system has fostered upon us. Maybe like Peter, you have gone from one sad experience to another, as your self-confidence fell apart. Or maybe your self-confidence brought some temporary achievements, you’ve discovered that it is so fragile and so easily intimidated, that it falls apart at the first adverse wind that comes along.

The good news is, you don't need that undependable self-confidence, you need God-confidence, and you can have it.

Do you really need self-confidence? Most everyone would tell you that it is absolutely essential to success, but I have discovered that my self-confidence usually lets me down when I need it the most. The same was true of the Apostle Peter. He was extremely self-confident, but over and over again that self-confidence fell apart.

However, there was a great change in Peter which we can see beginning in the book of Acts. You remember the story of Peter and John encountering a lame beggar at the temple. Peter looked at that lame man and said in his most confident manner, " In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (Acts 3:6). And guess what—the man went into the temple walking and leaping and praising God.

When questioned by the religious leaders as to how he had done this, Peter gave a most confident response: “By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see" (Acts 3:16).

This man Peter, who had failed miserably at every turn when he relied on self-confidence and who had cowardly denied Jesus three times, now stood tall among people who were seeking to harm him and proclaimed to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Verses 13 and 14 of Acts 4 are very revealing: “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.”

Peter's confidence amazed them but notice that it was not self-confidence. These people knew that Peter was not able to heal this man or speak as he did because of his own education or training. Peter was no longer operating on self-confidence. That had been totally shattered. But his confidence and trust in Jesus Christ the Nazarene gave him a boldness he had never known before, and power. The lame man was healed, he was able to persuade thousands of converts, and he led the early church as they changed the course of history.

Self-confidence—a word which defines itself. Would you describe yourself as a person with good self-confidence? Are you confident about your abilities and talents, your accomplishments and experience? The world says you have to have self-confidence in order to succeed, especially in the business world.

When I think of a very self-confident person, I think of the Apostle Peter. Now, here was a man very confident in himself. He was the only disciple who was confident he could walk on water. He was confident in his fishing abilities and knowledge. He was confident that Jesus was wrong to say he was going to die and rebuked him for it. He was totally confident that he, Peter, would never deny Jesus, even if everyone else did, even if he had to die with Jesus.

Peter did not lack self-confidence. However, all that self-confidence failed him at the critical moments of his life. He began to walk on water but very soon started sinking. Self-confidence didn't keep him up. Self-confidence didn't fill his empty nets with fish after a long night of fishing. Only when he followed Jesus' instructions was he able to catch fish. Though he was very confident in rebuking Jesus, Jesus not only did not take his counsel, but considered it to be satanically inspired. And within hours of his most confident assertion that he would never deny Jesus, he did so three times with cursing.

Peter's example tends to give self-confidence a black eye. We've been led to believe that self-confidence is the key to success, but Peter's experiences could cause one to lose confidence in self-confidence.

But, thank God, that's not the end of Peter's story. We see a transformed Peter in the book of Acts. He was still extremely confident, still assertive, still a leader, but the results were very different

If you've been struggling with your own self-confidence, Peter's experience should come as very good news for you today. You really don't need self-confidence, but you do need God confidence, and you can have that.

Having been to Israel many times, leading tours, I have a much clearer vision of what a crucifixion was really like, and how horrendous it must have been to have watched anyone dying on a cross. We have tended to romanticize the cross a bit, with our jewelry and pictures of a cross on a hill far away, but actually the place of crucifixion was the most horrible place in Jerusalem. It would have been by a busy roadway so everyone could see and mock and be terrified by a crucifixion. It was meant to be a deterrent to crime and rebellion, to cause anyone who thought they might challenge the rule of Rome to think twice, because they would have to endure this horrible death.

Knowing how awful a crucifixion was, it is amazing to read in Matthew 27:55-56 that “Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Moses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.”  In Mark 15:40-41 we read: “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.”

Luke tells us that “A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him” (Luke 23:27). And John tells us “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25).

By my count, there are seven women who are identified in the four gospels, but we know there were many others as well. It’s interesting to me that the women are named, and yet there are no named men at the cross. Certainly, there were men there, but how many were the friends and disciples of Jesus Christ?  We only know for sure that John was there, because Jesus refers to him in John 19, as he instructs him to care for his mother. Where were the other disciples?

And why were all these women there at this ugly scene? It was not a place for a woman; if it was your close relative, you might have been there, but typically women did not go to such a horrible place. Yet there were all these women at the cross of Jesus. These women had gathered there to mourn and to wail the crucifixion of their Savior, Jesus Christ.

They were there because they loved Jesus. They had been delivered from their sins and their pasts by Jesus, and they were determined to stay with him until the end, as ugly as it was. Can you even imagine what it meant for these women to stay there throughout the whole crucifixion?

Mary Magdalene was there. We know that Jesus had delivered her from seven demons. There have been some scurrilous writings and suggestions that Jesus had a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene. That is a lie and totally unsubstantiated by Scripture or history. But for sure, this woman had deep feelings for Jesus because he had delivered her from her past. And it was an awful past.

Can you even imagine being possessed by seven demons? What could be worse than to be indwelled by seven demons from hell? No doubt she had been abused and suffered great harm from these demons for many years. No doubt she was full of guilt and gloom and despair, fearing she would live all her days possessed by these demons.

And then she met Jesus. In Mark 16 we read that Jesus had driven out those demons. However he did that, it had to be dramatic, perhaps painful, but no doubt the best day of her life. She was set free from her past, her guilt, her shame.

And because Jesus is risen from the dead, he is able to do the same for you today. It may not be demons you are dealing with, but whatever it is in your past that haunts you, Jesus is a qualified Savior because he is risen from the dead, and he can deliver you,

Of what or who do you boast? Or in our vernacular, what do you brag about?

Paul said to the Galatians: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). Can you imagine what this sounded like to Jewish people of that day? Boasting in the cross? That was unthinkable—and yet it is because of the cross that Jesus was able to purchase our salvation.

I have led many tours to Israel and each time I went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus spent those agonizing hours before he was arrested, I was reminded that it’s not a fairy tale, it’s not just a story that has been passed down through the ages. No, the cross of Jesus Christ was real. He suffered that shameful death for me—and for you—so that God could forgive our sins and we could have the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to us and therefore making us eligible to spend eternity with God.

There’s something about sitting in that garden, still filled with olive trees, and knowing we are on sacred ground, walking and meditating there where Jesus agonized until his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground, praying “Not my will but thine be done,” as he faced the reality of being separated from his Father and bearing in his own body the sins of the world. Each time I came away from that Garden more humbled and more aware of just what it meant for Jesus to give himself a ransom for many—for me—and to be willing to die on a cross.

As you and I celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, let us glory in the cross, because without it, we have no hope. Boast about the cross and what Jesus has done for you. Tell everybody you can why this celebration is so vital and precious to you. And we will celebrate with great joy the fact that the grave could not hold Jesus; death had no victory over him. He arose from the grave.

What kind of god dies? Only the true God, the only God, who died so that we could live. Let it sink into your mind and heart as you stand in awe that Jesus died for you. Don’t ever take this story, this truth, for granted or allow it to become just another story. Understanding the enormity of his death on a cross is sobering and amazing, and it is reason for great joy.

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