“I feel like everything I touch is falling apart.”
We were sitting in a restaurant having breakfast together. I was pouring out to a friend how it felt like my life was a disaster. All the things that used to be good were now going bad. It felt like I was cursed or something.
At one time it felt like I had the Midas touch – everything I touched seemed to turn to gold. Now it was all turning to… manure. My work, my marriage, my ministry in the church, my relationships were all souring. What was going on?
My world was crumbling…
Another friend told me he had a dream about me. His dream was of a building that was in the process of being torn down. Piece by piece it was being dismantled by a giant excavator. The rubble was littered all over the ground at the base of the building.
He got the sense that the building was a picture of my life.
The problem with the building was that its foundation was flawed. The Master Builder wanted to make the building more significant, but the flawed foundation would not be able to sustain the planned structure. So, because the Master Builder had a greater vision for the building, He was dismantling it. His plan was to form a stronger foundation that could carry the weight of the larger building He was going to build.
Dismantling is never a pleasant process, especially when you are not aware what the plan of the Master Builder is. It feels like punishment. It feels like God has abandoned you. It feels like the life God promised you is a lie. When you are in the midst of Godly dismantling you need the Godly input of people who know God and love you.
One such friend said something that was a turning point for me:
“I think God is shifting you from self-confidence to God confidence.”
What does that mean? Lord, I need your help to understand what this means…
So the Lord took me on a journey of surrender to discover His strength and His confidence, not my strength and my confidence. I had a great deal of self-confidence, but that is not what God has called us to. God has created us and called us to discover His strength, His hope, His love, His joy, His peace, His faith, His freedom, and His life that is way beyond our own resources.
It’s not about self-confidence, it’s about God-confidence.
We have not been created to live in our own strength. The way of this world is to discover your own strength. Self-confident people are lauded as role models for others to emulate. Yes, God has created you with unique gifts, talents, abilities, interests and desires. You have a uniqueness the world needs. You need to discover your uniqueness and live boldly in who you are.
However, your true uniqueness as a created being can only be truly discovered in communion with your Creator. Your God-given strength can only be revealed in relationship with God. As you surrender yourself to Him, you shift from depending on your own strength to His; your own wisdom to His; your own resources to His.
As you surrender to God the foundation of your life will be rebuilt. It is transformed from the shifting sand of human wisdom and lies meant to keep us from God’s life, to the bedrock of God’s Truth. On the foundation of God’s Truth you can withstand the storms of this life.
There is only one way to live in God-confidence: surrender to Him. Not your will, but His. Not your desires, but His. Not your wisdom, but His. Not your life, but His. Not your plans, but His.
If you are feeling like your life is crumbling it may be that the Master Builder is calling you to surrender to Him. He is inviting you to discover His confidence. He is offering you a trade – self-confidence for God-confidence.
That’s a good trade. It has made all the difference in my life.
Philippians 3:3, 4, 7, 8
“For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who 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… But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.”
Isaiah 31:1
“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.”
Jeremiah 17: 7, 8
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”