Confidence

How to Be Confident

To describe someone as ‘confident’ is usually meant as a compliment. But, there is a right and wrong form of confidence. The wrong form of confidence involves valuing yourself over and against God. This is arrogance. The right form of confidence involves valuing yourself in and through Christ. ‘Confidence in the natural world is self-reliance. In the spiritual world, it is God-reliance’. Supremely, it involves confidence in the presence of God.

Confidence lost

Psalm 137:1–9

There is something very comforting about the raw anger that is expressed in this psalm. It is a reminder that you can be real and honest with God, and that you don’t need to censor your prayers. He can cope with even your darkest thoughts.

The people of God had lost their confidence in the presence of God. The psalmist is in exile, in Babylon, away from Jerusalem and the temple of God’s presence. The worst thing about the exile for God’s people was this sense of being away from God’s presence: ‘By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion’ (v.1).

Their violent response and desire for revenge – ‘treat them as they treated us’ (v.8–9) – is a far cry from the New Testament command to love your enemies (see Matthew 5:44). But it is a cry within a lament of people tormented (Psalm 137:3), and desperate for God’s presence.