Well, am I confident or am I just arrogant?

We get this question a lot because we have to answer this question for ourselves but lion-heartedness

and humility are not contradictions in God's will and nor are they contradictions in the life of the

Savior he came to bring peace and he

came to bring a figurative sword. But in our own lives we must figure out the

difference between confidence and arrogance and and that's the challenge a

listener named Max wants to figure out today. Hello Pastor John, Max writes in his

email to us, my question for you is this, can we feel powerful or confident or have a high self-worth in who God has made us to be through Christ?

How do you distinguish this from pride that leads to destruction?

If so, how do we do this? How do we pursue the feeling of power or confidence or

high self-worth in living out what God has created us to be, but humbly so. You seem like someone who does it well. Thank you.

Well, I have to admit that I gag on the terms high self-worth.

The reason I do is because I have watched now for 50 years, years, that term and its sister term, self-esteem be used by secular godless culture as an explanation for most negative

psychological conditions and as a remedy for how to make

person more useful and productive. Lack of self-esteem is the diagnosis for a thousand problems today.

Higher self-esteem is the prescription for a thousand improvements.

And the reason for that, seems to me is pretty obvious.

When God disappears, the next most likely focus for esteem and confidence and reliance and trust is me.

Self.

I think that was exactly the temptation in the Garden of Eden.

I think that's the biblical essence of sin replacing God with self as our treasure, our trust,

our esteem, our worth.

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