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This week we bring you five quotes as usual and two bonus quotes! All quotes are taken from Be a People Person. This week we examine the topic of confidence.
Confidence is crucial to being a leader and leading people into a relationship with Jesus Christ. We must be confident in our worth and message. That confidence is found in Jesus Christ. There's no need to live in timidity and fear when you have access to confidence through Jesus.
These verses cannot be separated because there is an absolute relationship between experiencing life’s lows and enjoying its highs. The apostle Paul is resting on the assurance that his strength is in God alone. He understood that confidence and contentment gave him stability in every situation he encountered in his tumultuous life.
Contentment is taking your present situation—whatever obstacles you are facing, whatever limitation you are living with, whatever chronic condition wears you down, whatever has smashed your dreams, whatever factors and circumstances in life tend to push you under—and admitting you don’t like it but never saying, “I can’t cope with it.”
Helen Keller said, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Confidence helps a leader to believe in other people. Don’t we see others as we see ourselves? Show me a leader who believes in other people, and I will show you a leader who has a lot of confidence in his or her life.
If you study the life of Paul, you may note he uses the word “confidence” in three distinct but related ways. Six times Paul refers to confidence in his relationship with Christ, six times to his confidence in himself, and six times he mentions his confidence in relationships with other people. There must be a balance because all three areas are related. Without confidence in Christ we could be tempted to become egocentric and cocky. Without confidence in ourselves we are defeated, powerless Christians. Without confidence in others we are suspicious and untrusting.
First, confidence is not the result of an absence of problems. … Observation number two is that confidence is a result of trusting God in our problems. In the midst of his difficulties, the psalmist kept focusing on God and not on his difficult situation. “The Lord is the defense of my life.” Third, victories yesterday give more confidence for today.
- Establish your worth according to God’s value system.
- Focus on God and not on your situation.
- Develop friendships with confident people.
- Put a few wins under your belt.
- Find one thing you’re good at and then specialize until you are special.
- Begin to develop a knowledge of people and product.