Our Confidence in Christ

The Rookie Mistake

I want to tell you about two failures — both mine, both recent, both entirely preventable.

The first: Kenya, the trip from which I am currently returning. Just a quick trip to Olderkesi — easy — or so I told myself. Somewhere along a road I knew too well, I let my guard down. I contracted a parasite. For several days before I could even board a plane home, my body reminded me in uncomfortable and persistent detail that I had miscalculated.

The second happened earlier this year, in Hanoi, during the final days of TET. I had been to Vietnam before. I knew the airports, knew the rhythms, knew what I was doing. What I had not accounted for was that TET operates by its own rules entirely. The car hire I had arranged simply did not arrive. I ended up calling a Grab Taxi, arriving at the airport late, and sprinting through check-in and security to make my gate. That heady confidence — the kind that whispers I’ve got this — was precisely what undid me. Somewhere in that frantic rush through the security tray, I left both my laptop and my iPad behind. By the time I realized it, it had cost me a full day of travel to sort out.

Two trips. Two failures. One common thread: my own confidence.

I am not sharing this to be self-deprecating. I am sharing it because I suspect you know exactly what that whisper sounds like — I’ve got this — and I want us to sit with what Scripture says about it.

What Paul Actually Said

There is a passage in Philippians that has been sitting with me since I first fell ill.

“For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

— Philippians 3:3 (ESV)

Paul does not say put less confidence in the flesh. He does not say balance your confidence between Christ and your own competence. He says put no confidence in the flesh.

And he knows what he is talking about. By his own accounting, he had more to be confident about than most of us ever will — a pedigree, a record, a resume of religious achievement that would silence a room. And he called it all loss. Rubbish, in fact (Philippians 3:8). Not because it was worthless in the world’s estimation, but because placing confidence in it was a distraction from placing confidence in Christ.

Later in the same letter, he writes the verse we love to put on coffee mugs:

“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

— Philippians 4:13 (ESV)

We quote Philippians 4:13 as if it is a declaration of our own capability. But read it again. The strength is not ours. It flows through a Person — the One who is the source of all genuine confidence.

Paul makes this even more explicit in 2 Corinthians:

“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.”

— 2 Corinthians 3:5 (ESV)

Our sufficiency is from God. Not assisted by God. Not partnered with God. From Him.

The Man Who Knew Better — And Still Did It Twice

Before we are too hard on ourselves, we should note that this is not a new problem. The oldest patterns are the most persistent ones.

Meet Abram.

God had just appeared to him. Called him out of Ur. Made him an extraordinary promise — land, descendants, blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:1–3). And Abram believed. He went. He built altars. He worshipped. And then a famine came, and Abram took matters into his own hands.

“When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, ‘I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, “This is his wife.” Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.'”

— Genesis 12:11–13 (ESV)

This is not trust. This is a man calculating the odds, assessing the risks, and engineering a solution — one that placed his wife in Pharaoh’s household to protect his own skin. It was self-reliance dressed as pragmatism. And it nearly cost everything.

What makes this story particularly striking is that it happens again. In Genesis 20, ABRAHAM — now older, now the bearer of the covenant, now a man who has walked with God for decades — does the exact same thing. Same deception, different king. Abimelech of Gerar this time.

“And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, ‘She is my sister.’ And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.”

— Genesis 20:2 (ESV)

Same whisper. Same calculation. Same misplaced confidence in his own strategy.

We are in good company in our failures. But that is not a comfort — it is a warning.

The Shape of True Confidence

Here is what I want us to understand: confidence in Christ is not passivity. It is not the absence of preparation, skill, or effort. ABRAM was not called to be naive. Paul was not called to be reckless.

Confidence in Christ is the active, deliberate choice to locate the source of your sufficiency in the right place. It is the difference between walking into a difficult situation saying I know what I am doing and walking in saying He knows what He is doing, and He is with me.

I know what that looks like — not as a concept, but as lived reality. There have been seasons of ministry, trips into places where the dangers were entirely real and the budget was genuinely lean, where self-confidence was simply not an option. Where the only path forward was one step at a time, in complete dependence on God to do what we never could. And in those seasons, He did. He did far more than we were ever capable of on our own.

Reverend David reminds me of this often: we have seen His faithfulness before — which means we can be confident that He will carry us through whatever comes next. On my final day in Nairobi, as I was preparing for this journey home, that is precisely what we talked about. We committed to each other that when we reconvene in the coming weeks to serve together in Marsabit, our confidence will be wholly placed in Him — not in our experience, not in our planning, not in the assumption that we know the terrain.

That is the posture Paul is describing. That is the shape of true confidence.

Ruth Stull knew this terrain — not as metaphor. She spent years as a pioneer missionary in the jungles of Peru, on real rivers with real whirlpools. She opened Chapter VIII of Service on the Trail with this:

“There is danger in adventuring for souls. The risk, however, is covered by divine oversight.”

— Ruth Stull, Service on the Trail

And she closed it:

“Then, on into the service! Our trust is in God! Our hearts set on Christ our Leader. Seeking, not the saving of our own lives but the giving of them into His care, for service. Never compromising, because whirlpools threaten.”

The danger is acknowledged. Stull does not soften it. But notice where the confidence rests — not in experience, not in preparation, not in knowing the terrain. In divine oversight. The risk is real, and the risk is covered.

And the enemy does not need to manufacture catastrophic failure to undo us. All he needs is our confidence — the small, quiet, ordinary assumption that we have got this. That we know the airport. That it is just a quick trip.

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

— 1 Peter 5:8 (ESV)

Sobriety and watchfulness are not achieved through self-confidence. They are achieved through dependence — on the One whose eyes see what ours miss, whose strength does not flag when ours does, whose sufficiency is never in question.

A Different Kind of Confidence

There is a confidence available to us that takes the pressure off — and that is not the same as taking the responsibility off. We are still called to prepare well, show up fully, and bring our very best. Excellence is not optional. But the weight of success does not rest on our shoulders. It is held by Him.

This confidence does not rise or fall with our performance. A missed tray at security, a parasite contracted on a road we thought we knew — these do not disqualify us from the work, and they do not diminish the One in whom our confidence is placed.

Paul names it plainly:

“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.”

— 2 Corinthians 3:4 (ESV)

Through Christ. Toward God. The direction matters. Confidence flows through Him, not from us — and it is oriented toward God, not toward our own outcomes.

Abraham understood this — eventually. The man who twice calculated his way into disaster also knew what it was to be carried through by something entirely outside himself.

This is not weakness. This is wisdom. It is the hard-won, faith-tested posture of a man who has been to Pharaoh’s court and Abimelech’s palace and finally learned that the only confidence worth having is the kind that has its roots in something other than himself.

The question we each have to answer is the same one ABRAM had to answer in Egypt — and again in Gerar. When the pressure comes, when the famine hits, when the trip gets difficult and the stakes feel high:

Where are we placing our confidence?

Soli Deo Gloria,

Mathew