Menlo Church
950 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 650-323-8600
Series: The Confidence Paradox
April 3, 2016
“The Confidence Paradox”
John Ortberg
I want to say hi to everybody in this room, folks at all of our campuses, people joining us online from all
around the world. I'm so glad you're here. Before I get into the message, we're going to take a moment to
celebrate what God did last weekend at Easter. I'll tell you one story.
At our San Mateo Campus, a woman came. She had never been to our church before. She said to one of
the greeters, "I loathe churches, and I loathe Christians, but I'm spiritual, and it's Easter, so I felt like I
ought to go someplace." She didn't believe the Bible. She sat through the service. In the first line of the
first song she said later she felt like God was speaking directly to her. Not only did she stay through the
whole service, but God spoke to her so deeply, she ended up committing her life, and she got baptized at
the service. That was like amazing!
I want to let you know. Some of you have been around for a while. You've been a part of when we
launched sites years ago. We were praying, "God, what might you do?" We had so much to learn. Again,
if you're part of the family, just for you to have a little update, last weekend at the Mountain View
Campus, we had over 1,600 people there. At San Mateo, we had over 1,300 people jammed into that
place. At San Jose that just got started a year ago, we had over 700 people. Stuff was rocking at the Café.
The spirit in here, the celebration, the way you guys celebrated for folks who made the baptism
commitment, that was so cool. Altogether we had very near 10,000 people at our church last weekend and
well over 100 folks who got baptized or reaffirmed their baptism. I just wanted to say, "Yay, God! Yay,
you. Way to go. Way to pray and serve and give." Thank God! Yeah! I believe doors are opening for us
right now. You'll be hearing more about this, but I think we're just at the beginning of the greatest season
God has ever had for our church.
We're launching a new series, and I was reading last week about a question, "What do you think is the
number one thing a woman is looking for in a man?" What do you think is number one? Money has come
up a couple of times. No, actually that's not the number one thing, but given where we live, it's not a
surprising answer.
At least according to what I read last week, it's actually confidence. It's confidence! If you think about
that, when somebody is living with authentic confidence, when they look you right in the eye when they're
talking with you, when they have this conviction that whatever life throws at them, they can handle…
They're willing to take risks. They're willing to run challenges. When they talk to you, you don't have to
guess what they really think. They just speak the truth, but they do it in a gracious way.
Right now, guys, if this is you, you're sitting straight up. Your shoulders are back. Your head is high.
You're ready for life. Who doesn't want to be around that? On the other hand, when somebody is living
where their confidence has gotten beaten out of them, when the Evil One whispers to you, "You can't do
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this. You can't make it. You don't have what it takes," it makes you less joyful. It actually makes you less
generous. It kind of robs life out of you. It makes everything harder. It's harder to do a job interview. It's
harder to ask somebody out for a date. It's harder to make a basket. It's harder to perform well at work.
Have you ever seen somebody where they're going to give a talk, and they're just like all flop sweat and
panicky? It's harder to give a talk. A natural question is, "Where can I get confidence?" Because we'd all
rather live with confidence. I was thinking this week, maybe the person, maybe the guy, who has more
grounds for confidence humanly speaking than anybody else would be this guy right here: Tom Brady.
Does anybody know Tom Brady? Wow. It's a woman clapping her hands, so no big surprise there.
He is just ridiculously good-looking, great hair, toothy smile, amazingly talented. He is a winner. He has
won four Super Bowls. He is married to a supermodel, for crying out loud. He is famous all around the
world. He has a gazillion dollars. Humanly speaking, if you want to live always confident, guys, just be
born Tom Brady. Just be born with incredible athletic ability and amazing leadership gifts and be really
popular and win four Super Bowl rings and marry a supermodel and have great hair and great teeth and be
a world famous gazillionaire.
If you're a woman right now and you're sitting next to a man and he looks a little crestfallen, just reach
over and pat him on the arm and whisper to him, "Too late, but there is another way if you're kind of
interested in confidence." No, don't actually do that. That was a joke. There is another way. Another really
different guy, the apostle Paul, made what I submit might be the most staggering claim about confident
living that's ever been spoken by a member of the human race. This is what Paul said. Think about this.
He writes to this church at Corinth, "Therefore, we are always confident…" Now Paul didn't just throw
words around loosely. You think about, "What would it mean every day…good day, bad day, good mood,
bad mood, difficult task, hard circumstances…to be always confident?" Here's the thing about Paul. He
was no Tom Brady. We don't know for sure what he looked like, but the oldest description of Paul is he
was short, bald, and had a hooknose.
He didn't have a lot of money. He had no money. He wasn't famous. He was kind of infamous. He was in
prison. He wasn't married to a supermodel or a trophy wife. He wasn't married at all. Here's the thing
about Paul. He was confident, but he was not self-confident. This gets us into the confidence paradox. It's
just a natural human thing. We'd love to face life with confidence, especially where we live. In the Bay
Area, to believe in yourself, to be confident in yourself, that's the Holy Grail.
With Paul, he had enormous confidence, but it wasn't in him. It was in God. God had put his Spirit in
Paul. Paul says, "Therefore, that's why I'm always confident." Here's the confidence paradox. Paul
actually put it like this: "For when I am weak, then I am strong." How weird is that? When I'm weak?
Really? This really gets into profound dynamics about human life.
A guy by the name of Andy Crouch has written a wonderful little book, and it's called Strong and Weak.
Andy talks about how we tend to think of weakness and strength as this continuum where you either have
one or the other. He uses the word vulnerability. You're either vulnerable, or you have authority. A lot of
us think, man, we would just like to have more authority, more money, more education, or so. Some
people are more comfortable actually being vulnerable, but we think of it as a single continuum.
Andy says actually you ought to think about this as two continuums, two dynamics. You can be high or
low in authority, and you can be high or low in vulnerability. When you look at the Bible, it's very
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interesting because it says God made us to have an enormous amount of authority. When God created
human beings, it says he made us in his image. God actually said to human beings, "I want you to exercise
dominion. I want you to reign for good, powerfully over the earth, like a queen, like a king, really high in
authority."
Then when it comes to vulnerability, he also made human beings very vulnerable. The text says, "Adam
and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." Now naked is a word about vulnerability. We
say in our day if I feel really vulnerable, "I felt naked. I felt so exposed." Part of what's so interesting
about this word is only human beings can be naked. Do you ever think about that?
Where we live, sometimes people will dress their cats or dogs up in little dresses or sweaters. Have you
ever noticed that? When they don't have their sweater on, you don't say, "Hey, look at that naked cat,"
because animals can't be naked. Only people can be naked. Kids notice this, and that's why they love to
make jokes about naked animals. There's an old one you will have all heard. "Why is it you never see two
elephants swimming together?" "Because they only have one pair of trunks." I feel a little naked right now
actually, a little vulnerable here in this room.
God made us to be high in authority but also high in vulnerability. When the greatest human being who
ever lived (Jesus) came, he was super-high in authority. He actually said "All authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me." At the same time, he was the most vulnerable human being who ever lived.
The Bible says he humbled himself, took on the form of a servant, and became obedient to death, even
death on a cross, the humiliating death of a slave.
People saw in Jesus more authority than they had ever seen, and they saw vulnerability like they had
never seen. See, he was revealing to us something very deep about the human condition. It's a brilliant
little book. He says that if you think about it as a 2x2 graph it basically describes the different modes of
life we can enter into. If somebody has a lot of authority but they feel like they're invulnerable, that moves
them into being exploiting or oppressive. Bullies do this. Tyrants do this. We read about this every day in
our world.
Now if somebody has no authority but they also don't want to experience any vulnerability, then they will
withdraw, just try to live in bubble wrap. A lot of people live here. If somebody has very little authority,
very little power, little education and resources but they're extremely vulnerable, then they suffer. If we
experience great authority and great vulnerability, we live in the dignity and worth of image bearers of
God, but we're transparent with each other, we're vulnerable with each other, we're dependent on God, not
ourselves, we're humble then human beings, then human community, can flourish.
That's what we're going to be looking at. Man, this series is so needed I believe all over the world but
especially in the Bay Area today where everybody wants to have a lot of authority, but nobody wants to
be vulnerable. We're going to go after this by looking at this character in the Bible who wrestled a lot with
confidence and authority and vulnerability. He is a fascinating guy by the name of Jacob. We're going to
roll up our sleeves today, but we're going to go on this journey with him for some weeks. It's going to be
really, really, I think, fun and potentially life changing.
His struggle begins even before he is born. There's kind of a fun beginning to his story. His mom and dad
are Isaac and Rebekah. They were married for 20 years. They weren't able to have children. In the ancient
world, that's an even bigger deal than it is in our world. So Isaac prayed for 20 years for his wife, and
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finally God moved. She was pregnant, but her pregnancy was so painful, she didn't think she could stand
it. Here's where this story starts.
"When her time to give birth came, sure enough, there were twins in her womb. The first came out
reddish, as if snugly wrapped in a hairy blanket." That sounds like a cute, little kid, doesn't it? "They
named him Esau (Hairy). His brother followed, his fist clenched tight to Esau's heel; they named him
Jacob." Which could mean "the grabber" or "the deceiver." The idea here is that his story begins even in
the womb.
Way back in the womb, little fetal Jacob looks at little fetal Esau and says, "He is closer to the exit than
me. He is going to get out first. That will make him the firstborn. That means he'll be the heir. He'll get the
birthright. He'll get the blessing. He'll get the land and all the money. He'll be Dad's favorite, and I won't.
He'll be number one, and I'll always be number two.
I can't trust Mom or the universe or the uterus or whatever is in charge out there to take care of me, so I
have to look after myself. I will grab my brother's heel and yank him back at the last minute, and I'll get
out of the womb. Then I'll be number one. I'll be the firstborn." But his plan doesn't work. There's all this
travail inside Rebekah, but he doesn't get out first. He fails. He is a little fetal failure, and that's going to
haunt him his whole life long until it saves him.
So they're born. The text goes on. "The boys grew up. Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman.
Jacob was a quiet man preferring life indoors among the tents." Esau? He has it, man. He is like Tom
Brady with hair, with fur. Jacob has a lot less testosterone. Then their parents come into play. We're told,
"Isaac [the dad] loved Esau because he loved his game…" Esau was a hunter. Isaac just loved the food
Esau would bring him.
People are such mixed bags. You have to know this about the Bible. Somebody was asking, "Why is God
gracious to Jacob in this story when he gets so much stuff wrong?" The Bible is not a story about
examples of character virtues. It's a story about God working with real, ordinary, mixed-up people like
you and me.
People who don't understand this flatten out the Bible. They never get it. Isaac, on the one hand, is so
devoted to God that he prays for 20 years for God to make his wife pregnant. He is so shallow that he
plays favorites with his own sons. He loves Esau for this reason: because he likes the food Esau brings
him. He might as well have named him "Little Cinnabon." That's why he loves him best.
"…but Rebekah loved Jacob." Why does Rebekah love Jacob the most? Again, the Bible is so
fascinating. It doesn't tell us. We have to fill in the blanks. Maybe it's because she felt sorry for him.
Maybe it's because he was an indoor kid, so he was with her more. Maybe it was because she had
problems with Isaac, and this was a way of getting back at him.
For whatever reason, she loved Jacob but not Isaac. As Jacob grew up, see, his identity became, "I'm not
Esau. Esau is the strong one. Esau is the hunter. Esau is my dad's favorite." Your self is so extremely
sensitive to rejection, to not being loved. This is Jacob's identity. "I am the one my father doesn't love."
Man, that will wound you right to the core. Everybody knows that feeling one way or another. "I'm the
one my mother does not love. I'm the one my husband does not love. I'm the one my wife does not love. It
breaks my heart. I'm the one my daughter does not love. I'm the one my son does not love."
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We can't bear that. Then all of this stuff happens inside us. We think, "You know, if only I were Esau. If
only I had Esau's body or Esau's wealth or Esau's gifts or Esau's personality." You carry this wound, this
scar, this gift. You weren't made to be, so you're just made to be you. If God is ever going to bless you, it
will have to be you right there in your life, your body, your circumstance, your age, your situation. That's
the only place where God can bless you.
Jacob just thinks, "Man, if I were only Esau." There's a struggle between them. "Who is going to get the
birthright? Who is going to get the blessing?" you know, all through their life. Then when Isaac is an old
man, his senses are failing. He is quite feeble, and he thinks he might be dying. He says to Esau, the
favorite, "Go kill an animal, and make some stew like I love. I'll eat it, and then I'll give you the blessing."
Now Rebekah (the mom), hears this, so she gets her son Jacob (her favorite), and she tells him what's
going on. She says, "I'll make some stew really fast before Esau can get back." You go into your dad, and
you pretend to be Esau. You get the blessing. You get the good stuff. You grab it." Jacob responds to his
mom, Rebekah, "…my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I have smooth skin. What happens if my
father touches me?" "I would appear to be tricking him." He wouldn't just appear to; he'd be tricking
him. "I'll bring down a curse on myself instead of a blessing."
He is not concerned about the ethics of this. He just doesn't want to get in trouble. "I don't want to have a
curse." Rebekah's response is so interesting. His mother said to him, "…let the curse fall on me. Just do
what I say." Now this tells us something about Rebekah. We go back to those four quadrants. Rebekah
has a very high sense of authority, but she doesn't feel vulnerable at all. She is in this quadrant right here.
They lived in a patriarchal world. Isaac is the dad. He is the one who is supposed to be in charge, but the
wife, the woman, actually has a stronger personality. She actually has a more forceful will. Does that ever
actually happen in marriages? It does in this one, man. Her response to Jacob is, "Oh yeah, I'm really
worried about your dad. He really scares me. Let the curse fall on me."
She'll use her authority and her invulnerability to exploit Isaac, her husband, and Esau, her son. She says
to Jacob, "You know, you just do what I tell you to do." We're going to talk about this quadrant now,
quadrant number four, because this is where oppression and exploitation happens. This is the lure, see,
guys? Where we live right here is the promise. You can have all authority but no vulnerability. Who
wouldn't want that?
You experience that temptation all the time. You come into a room like this. We all will have felt this.
There are hundreds of people gathered together. Now for a lot of people, that's kind of a threatening thing.
For some, you know, we have that moment where we greet each other. If you're introverted, you hate that
moment. You'd stay till after that moment is over if you could.
For extroverts, you love it. There are a few among us. You're ultra extroverted, and you love that moment.
What's going on in your mind is, "Hundreds of new friends, and they all get to meet me today! How
fabulous is that? How lucky for them! How much I'm going to enjoy this!" You know who you are (we all
know who you are; the rest of us do), and we think you're truly bizarre.
What if you go away, and there's a party? You're going to school or something like that, and you feel like
a stranger. You feel like an outsider. What if somebody invented a beverage, something you could put in a
glass, and you could drink from that glass while you were walking around, and it made your discomfort
just magically melt away? What if there was a kind of liquid you could just drink it, and it would make
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your sense of vulnerability diminish and your sense of confidence enhance? What if there was a beverage
like that? Wouldn't somebody make a million dollars selling a beverage like that?
There actually is. We don't serve it here, so don't look so excited, but there actually is. See, when you use
alcohol to manage your vulnerability, you're going into quadrant four. That's exactly what you're doing.
You're going to have more authority without vulnerability. The irony is, you keep doing that enough, and
eventually what happens is it requires more and more of that stuff, and the feeling grows smaller and
smaller. Eventually if you get hooked on it enough, you end up down here in quadrant two where you're
robbed of all authority.
Authority, Andy says, is the capacity for meaningful action. That's authority: the capacity for meaningful
action. Eventually, if you get addicted to anything, your ability to keep your word, to maintain your
relationships, to be your best self all gets eroded, and your vulnerability goes up. You can't live without it.
You end up with intense suffering. See, this is sin. This is temptation. This goes back to the beginning of
the Bible in the book of Genesis. If you're a Bible person, you may know this story.
The Serpent comes to the woman, to Eve. His comment to her was, "If you'll trust me, if you'll disconnect
from God, you will be like God. That means you'll have high authority, and you will surely not die. You'll
have no vulnerability." She listens to him, and she defies God. Of course what actually happens is
absolutely the opposite of that. See, temptation, sin, promises all authority and no vulnerability, but
ultimately it gives you all vulnerability and no authority.
She says to Jacob, "You know, come on over to my quadrant. You can pretend. You can put on Esau's
clothes and smell just like him. We'll put a goatskin on you so you'll be hairy. You'll feel just like him,
and you can talk like him and act like him." Jacob goes in to his dad. It's like a scene in a movie. It's
amazing drama.
"He went to his father and said…" Now think about what's going on in his heart in that moment. "…and
said, 'My father!' 'Yes?' [Isaac] said." Isaac is very feeble, and his senses are failing. "'Which son are
you?' Jacob answered his father, 'I'm…Esau.'" Then there's a world of emotion in this next phrase, as if
he wasn't sure which Esau it was. "I'm your firstborn son Esau." "Son number one. The one you love."
It works, and he fools his dad.
Jacob learns this little lesson that if you cannot get what you want by being who you really are, maybe
you can get it by pretending to be who you are not. Maybe if you can't get it by being Jacob, you can get it
by trying to be Esau. I was thinking where we live and even in the church how often we just pretend. We
just pretend to be and think and believe who we're not.
I grew up as a church kid, and I just got good at pretending. I'd pretend with my parents when I was really
little to be smarter than I really was and happier than I really was and more popular at school than I really
was. I'd pretend as I was growing up that I didn't want to drink because, "I'm really devoted to God, and I
wouldn't want to do something like that" when the reality is actually I kind of really did, but I didn't want
to get caught. I was afraid of getting caught.
I didn't date very much in school, so when I was growing up with my parents, I would kind of pretend
like, "I'm kind of above that. I'm kind of really into studies and really into sports and stuff like that. I'm
not really into girls." In my head, I was desperate to date a cute girl. I would've sold my grandmother to
date a cute girl, and I love my grandmother.
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Literally over time, I pretended to agree with people I don't agree with. Who is this person? Why would I
do that? Why would I try to be someone I'm not? Because I think, "If I'm just me, if I show up with just
me, I can't get the good stuff." See, when Jesus came, all authority and all vulnerability, he had this
amazing dynamic where people would just be themselves. They'd stop pretending. Tax collectors and
Gentiles and prostitutes and lepers, this little community where people would just take off masks.
He hated it when people pretended. He actually went after it. He called it hypocrisy. He actually coined
hypocrisy as we use that word. Jesus was the first one to use it in that way, because he hated it when
people would use faith or God or religion to make other people pretend to be better than they are, to be
somebody they're not.
Guys, for us to be a community where you can just come in and be real, that's the only way to actually
have true confidence. Jacob doesn't do it. What happens is Jacob ends up in this quadrant down here. His
brother Esau says, "I'm going to kill him." Rebekah hears about that, and she says to Jacob, "You know,
Esau is the hunter. You don't stand a chance against him." So he runs away from home (40 years old). He
had lost everything.
In the Bible in Genesis, anytime somebody goes on a journey like that, there will be a village. Hospitality
was a big deal in the ancient world. Some people would come and offer hospitality. Not Jacob. Jacob was
all by himself, sleeping alone in the wilderness, rocks around his head to protect him in case a wild animal
comes. Why? Because he is now at his maximum vulnerability. Then it happens. He has this vision. He
sees this ladder.
There's a song "Jacob's Ladder." "We are climbing Jacob's ladder…" In this story, Jacob is not climbing
up to God. Heaven is coming down to Jacob. The angels are gone. "There above it stood the LORD, and
he said: 'I am the LORD…'" This is the only time this title is used in all the Bible. "…the God of your
father Abraham and the God of Isaac."
Now of course Isaac was Jacob's real dad, so why didn't God say, "I'm the God of your father Isaac"?
Well, Isaac was Esau's dad. Isaac was the father who loved Esau. Jacob was not Esau. I think God is kind
of saying, "I know. I care. I'll be your father. I will heal you if you'll let me." Jacob has his first spiritual
awakening. It doesn't solve all of his problems. He has a lot of mess to go through in this story, but what
he says is, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." "God was right here."
He gives it a name. He says, "This is Bethel, the house of God. Surely this is the gate of heaven. God has
come to me, little Jacob, son number two, the deceiver, the grabber. I could trust God. God could be with
me." God says, "All peoples…" Think about this. Think about this word coming to little Jacob the
grabber. "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will
watch over you wherever you go…"
Wherever you are, the most ordinary place could be extraordinary, not because you're doing something
extraordinary but because God will be with you. He invites Jacob into a life where he could be always
confident in this quadrant of flourishing, where he could live with all the authority of being an image
bearer of God and all the vulnerability of a dependent, finite, sinful, little human being.
That's where it becomes possible to live with genuine confidence. It's such an interesting word (that word
con-fi-dence). Fi comes from the Latin. Semper fi, always faithful. One of the guys in our church who is a
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Marine was telling me after one of the services that semper fi, always faithful… He said another phrase is
"Semper Gumby." Have you ever heard that one ("Semper Gumby")? Always flexible. Anyway, never
mind. I feel vulnerable. I feel naked again.
Confidence…to place confidence in God. What matters is not how much confidence you have. What
matters is what are you putting your confidence in? I was playing in a tennis tournament with my dad
years ago. We played doubles, and we ended up playing against a team that was way better than us. These
guys had actually planned in Wimbledon. I knew they were going to kill us.
We were playing, a couple of games in, and my dad called me over. He was serving. He said, "John, I
don't know what the outcome of this match is going to be, but I know this. You have to believe. You have
to have confidence, or nothing good is going to happen if you don't actually have confidence." My dad
was serving to the guy in the backhand court, and the guy would each time just hit a crosscourt kind of
low shot. There's kind of an etiquette if you know you're way better than the other guys. He was doing
that.
I decided, "My dad is right." As soon as he went to hit his return, I took off, and I poached. I banged a
volley away for a winner. I thought, "I can do this." I stood taller, which is a good thing because the next
time my dad served to this guy, he hit a return as hard as I have ever seen a ball hit in my life, and it was
directly at me. It was about one inch above the net with tremendous topspin, and it actually went between
my legs. I said to my dad, "I don't need more confidence. I need the angel of the living God if I'm going to
stand at the net while you're hitting serves like this."
Here's the thing. It doesn't matter how much confidence you have if you have massive incompetence.
Here's the thing. It's better to have a little confidence in the right object than massive confidence in the
wrong object. It's better to have a little confidence in God than massive confidence in yourself. That's
what Paul is writing about. See? Your self is going to be in trouble one day. Your self is going to take on
an enemy that your self cannot handle. That's the enemy Paul is talking about when he talks about being
always confident. This is the verse.
Paul says, "Therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we
are away from the Lord. […] We are confident…" That word again. "…I say, and would prefer to be
away from the body and at home with the Lord." Paul, who is no Tom Brady, says, "When the ultimate
enemy, when death comes, I will be confident because my confidence is not in myself."
I'll tell you something about yourself, Bay Area. No matter how magnificent your self looks, no matter
how educated your self might be, no matter what kind of great connections your self has piled up, no
matter how impressive a résumé your self has written, the day is going to come when your self is going to
be old and wrinkled and feeble and frail. Death is going to come on, and your self is not going to beat
death.
I don't care where your self has been or how strong it's looked. It doesn't matter how connected you are,
how bright you are, how smart you are, how pretty you are. It doesn't matter if you were Tom Brady or
Tom Cruise or Tom Selleck or Tom Hanks or Tom Brokaw or Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison or
Thomas Payne or Tom Thumb. It doesn't matter what kind of Tom you were. Okay?
Our confidence is not in anything we have done. Our confidence is this. Our God is able. Our God is able
to roll away stones. Our God is able to forgive sinners. Our God is able to give grace. Our God is able to
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replace despair with hope. Our God is able to make weak hands strong. Our God is able to make the lame
leap for joy. Our God is able to bring light into darkness. Our God is able to do immeasurably more than
all you can ask or imagine. Our confidence is in the God who is able. That's where our confidence is.
That's why Paul says, "Therefore we are always confident…" That's what we're going to learn in this
series, this tremendous adventure together. When you leave today, at every site, there's this little card,
"Always confident." I invite you to pick one up and take it with you this week. Put it in your Bible, or put
it in your pocket or wallet or whatever.
This week practice confidence in God. When I get up in the morning, my first thought gets to be, "God,
this is you and me facing this day together. I'll look forward to it right now. When I'm with other people,
I'll look them right in the eye and be confident in God. God, I'll be confident that through you, there is
some way you're going to care for this person, some way you're going to love this person. I don't have to
worry about, 'What am I saying?' or, 'How is that coming across?'"
This week I won't compare myself to anybody, not even Esau. This week I'll say what it is I'm really
thinking in great confidence and trust that God will work in that. This week I won't obsess over my
money. I won't worry about that. It's so interesting, with Jacob, when he has this encounter with God, the
response is, the last thing he says is, "God, I'm going to tithe everything I have." Why? "Because I trust
now, God, that you're watching out for me." So Jacob the grabber becomes Jacob the giver.
This week when you go to school, when you go to work, instead of worrying about all the problems and
all the stuff you haven't figured out, "I will be confident it's not just me. It's me and God together, and we
can do this." Always confident. Then one more word about the difference between self-confidence and
God-confidence, and then come back next week. There's kind of a surprise next week. You will want not
to miss next week.
I have to say this one more word about why God-confidence is so different. We live in a society where
self-confidence can be very much an individualistic thing, and people think, "It's just about me enhancing
my life," kind of a self-help thing. What God says to Jacob is very interesting. He says, "I will bless you,
but it's not about just you getting blessed." "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you…" "Jacob,
you little Jacob, you you little grabber, you little deceiver, you're going to be a part of what I'm doing so
that the whole world, the most vulnerable can flourish."
I met a guy a couple of weeks ago. I wish you all could have met him. His name is Doug Mazza. He is an
amazing man. Humanly speaking, he has a lot of authority. He is the top exec in America in Suzuki. Then
he was tapped to be the head of the American division of Hyundai. He has a lot of connections, a lot of
brains, a lot of ability.
He is also a dad, and he had a son born to him, Ryan. Ryan was born with profound disabilities. Ryan was
born with a skull that was misfused, so his brain as it began to grow actually grew out of his eye sockets,
actually pushed his eyes out of their sockets. He couldn't see, couldn't speak, couldn't walk, wouldn't last a
moment taking care of himself. He was profoundly vulnerable…profoundly vulnerable…no authority,
except his dad found his life and heart strangely touched, strangely ennobled by caring for this son who
would realize none of the dreams most dads have for most sons.
Ryan's vulnerability transformed Doug's heart, and he ended up going to work for, taking a leadership
role, with a ministry called Joni and Friends, which seeks to extend the love of God to the over 600
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million people with profound disabilities all around the world who so often are forgotten, who so often are
ignored, who so often are relegated to the margins.
We serve a Jesus who came to earth with great authority but who said, "Whatever you do for the least of
these, for the naked, for the blind, for the alone, for the imprisoned, for the impoverished, for the most
vulnerable, whatever you do for these, you do for me." Doug said he considers himself now to be Ryan's
junior partner. He considers himself to be the junior partner, because Doug has blessed Ryan with his
authority, but Ryan has blessed Doug with his profound vulnerability.
Do you see? It's not about self-confidence. It's not about smart, strong people living smart, strong lives.
When authority and vulnerability dance together, there is Jesus. There is the kingdom of God. Doug says
he doesn't know what all is able to go on in Ryan's mind, but he will often read to his son Ryan about
Jesus from the Gospels. When he does, Ryan smiles. Always confident.
Would you pray with me? I want to invite you now. Wherever you might feel vulnerable, wherever you
might feel hurt, wherever you might feel disappointed, "I wish I was somebody else," tempted to compare
yourself to somebody else, not loved, God is saying to you right now, "I will be with you where you are,
who you are, what you've done, where you've been. I will love you. I will watch over you." Bring all your
vulnerability to God.
I want to sing. There's an old song. Probably none of you will know it, but I kind of grew up with it.
"Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." There's this line in it, "Little ones to him belong.
They are weak, but he is strong." When we get to that line, see, we're the little ones (you and me). You're
the little one. I'm the little one. He is the strong one, always confident.
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For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
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