There Goes My Confidence

This morning I was making some notes and contemplating the contents of some business letters I need to write in the next week or two. As I was pouring myself a cup of tea, I had a flashback to some embarrassing incidents that happened in my business almost eight years ago. I could feel my face heating up with the embarrassment of it, even though I was alone with my thoughts, and even though the incidents happened almost eight years ago. My gut reaction was something like, "what do I think I’m doing, thinking I can do this? Eight years ago, I did that."

To give you a little background, I have had my business for eight years and four months. Prior to that, I had never worked in an office or done any type of business work whatsoever. I was totally green. And when you’re totally green, you do things you aren’t "supposed to do" because you have no idea that you aren’t supposed to do them. Most people start out in their occupation working for someone else . I came in cold.

So I did some embarrassing things. Once. I may have had zero experience, but I’m not actually stupid, and once my mistakes were pointed out to me, I never did them again.

But my accuser never takes that into account. And if you want your confidence to evaporate like the morning fog on a hot summer day, all you have to do is spend a minute or two listening to your accuser telling you about some stupid thing you did once.

The book of the Revelation (speaking in the past tense) indicates that our accuser is to be subdued (not courted or even tolerated) and there are two weapons used. One is Jesus’ blood, referred to as “the blood of the lamb,” indicating that our errors have been rendered legally useless. The second is (apparently spoken) evidence.

I can’t claim to understand the full implications involved, but I can tell you that when I’m blasted by the past, I can subdue it and go on by doing two things: Remember that Jesus’ blood has washed it away; and catalogue the evidence that I’m a new person. I don’t do those things anymore, and no one­not even me­has the right to look down at me because of what I’ve done some time in the past.

I believe it’s necessary to understand how vitally important this is. Do we even have a clue how much of what we do today is rooted in our guilt over the past? We see ourselves as having little value because fifteen years ago we didn’t know much. We see ourselves as unlovable because we did something very bad a long time ago. We see ourselves as unworthy because we make mistakes (as though other people don’t make mistakes). Every one of those thing effects our actions today.

But I’m not that ignorant person anymore. I’m someone new. You are, too.

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