It’s sad but true that sometimes, things that happened in our formative years, can still impact us emotionally today. Robbing us of a quiet, Godly confidence and assurance. 

If you watch TV for any length of time you can come to the conclusion that we live in a world of confident people. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has dignity, everyone has a flashy car, you know what I’m talking about. But whatever the TV wants to tell us confidence is something that happens to be in pretty short supply, you know even people who appear super confident on the outside often harbour doubts and insecurities and uncertainties that eat away at them on the inside.

I call those things confidence shakers, things that shake our confidence, like an earthquake on the inside, an earthquake that sometimes just goes on and on. So this week on the program we’re going to take a look at some of those confidence shakers, starting with the legacy that our parents left us, from our early years.

I wonder if you can think back to your childhood and teenage years, you know those formative years when we were growing up. Think back to some of the incidents that really stand out in your memory. I just jotted down a few just earlier on today. That’s just the first things that came to my mind. I remembered that I had very few birthday parties, the one I had when I was 7. They gave me a little matchbox car because I was into those things, was a little Mr. Whippy Ice Cream Truck.

My father had some wheels in the garage and he promised to make us a Billy Cart but he never did. We had a chicken run out in the backyard and I remember Dad killing it. Chicken for Sunday lunch. I remember the lemonade, you know kids always remember lemonade, it was a big deal, six bottles were delivered every few weeks, yellow and red and green and they were only for special meals. We always wanted some, we could never have it.

I remember having to clean my father’s work shoes every afternoon, these big smelly shoes and I thought it was so unfair. I remember school, whenever we were playing games, you know the cool kids were the captains and they chose their teams and they always chose me last. I remember my teenage years, I mean every teenager remembers this conflict with your parents, arguments and it all felt so unfair.

Now don’t get me wrong I didn’t have a deprived childhood, I didn’t have an abused childhood. Far from it. But I just rattle those things off because they were the things that first came to my mind. It’s interesting to me that when we do that it’s so often the negative things, it’s so often the things like, “How come I didn’t have more birthday parties?” So often the things that kind of leave their impact, the regrets and the insecurities.

Now I don’t know about your childhood, maybe you had just the most phantasmagorical childhood, maybe you had an appalling childhood, so many kids grow up in danger or abuse or just not loved.

You know the big thing amongst teenagers these days is not drugs, it’s not alcohol it’s not sex – its cutting. You know kids these day cut their bodies, they cut their wrists and their hands because of the deep depression and their reaction to all the difficulties that they are going through. Our daughter who’s 15 goes to a great school but there are several girls there whom we know who cut themselves.

What’s the point? I mean these seemingly small things along the way. They leave their scars. They leave their scars on who we are. Things people say or they do while we’re growing up can be such incredible confidence shakers. Years on, well into our adulthood, we get this somehow distorted image the world gives us while we’re growing up.

In effect when we’re growing up we’re laying down the layers of our characters and our personalities – who we are – layer by layer by layer. And when something happens in one of those deeper layers it leaves lumps and bumps and hurts and bruises and scars deep down that affect people for the rest of their lives. You know for some people this stuff is never resolved. Some people, they live with fears all their lives like an eternal earthquake of low self-esteem.

I was listening on the radio yesterday afternoon to some women being interviewed who had lived in abusive situations for long times with their husbands or partners. And they almost all made the same point that because they were so abused their self-esteem was so low they ended up believing that it was their fault.

I mean there’s never an excuse for abuse there’s never a reason to strike a person or emotionally abuse them and yet they responded to this terrible stuff with something that’s irrational but something that’s realistic because their self-esteem was so low. So people will live with those fears all their lives, they harbour resentment towards their parents or their husbands or their wives or people who have abused them. What’s the answer?

The only thing, the only thing that casts out all fear is perfect love, and the only place I’ve discovered that perfect love, as much as my wife loves me, as much as I love my kids, the only place you discover love that never disappoints, that never hurts, that never criticises is in Jesus Christ. Now I don’t mean to sound corny, I don’t mean to sound trite but it’s true.

I remember preaching in a church once and one of the people in the congregation was a really well-known Christian leader and I talked on the passage in Psalm 27:10 which says this:

Although my Mother and my Father have forsaken me, the Lord will take me up and adopt me as His child.

It was interesting, this man grew up as an orphan. God has used him so mightily in so many people’s lives through his work.

And he came up to me afterwards and we spoke, and this passage obviously touched him deep inside somewhere. I mean he’s well balanced and he’s so effective and he’s so good at what he does but growing up as an orphan leaves scars. And that hurt comes from not having a Mum and a Dad to hold and nurture as we grow up, or that hurt can come because of something one of them said or something little and it just lives on inside us.

Can I encourage you today? If you had those things in your life its time to bring them to the surface, its time to confront this confidence shaker. Sit down, list those things from the past that are holding you captive today. Come on what are they? I’m not talking about some navel gazing exercise or some touch feely sort of thing, I’m not into that stuff. But sometimes those things from the past bubble away under the surface and they make us insecure; they make us react badly; they damage our existing relationships; they stop us from forming new relationships.

Come on is it time for you to sit down and write down the things from the past whether it’s from your Mum and Dad or from some kid at school or whatever it is that are holding you back. Maybe it’s an abusive parent; maybe its parents who didn’t care; maybe its just one little thing that hurt you; maybe it was one person who called you fat when you were a teenager when you were growing up and you’re still trying to lose weight to please that person today.

Whatever it is today whatever that scar, whatever that things is that’s holding you back, perfect love casts out all fear and God is love. We know how much because we can see what He did for us through His Son Jesus Christ on the cross:

Although my Father and my Mother have forsaken me, the Lord will take me up and adopt me as His child.

He really means it. Anyone who believes in Jesus is a child of the living God and God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of adoption so that we can call him, “Dad”. Not a spirit of fear but of love and of power and of a sound mind because God wants us to live a confident life. And it’s His perfect love as we experience that day by day that takes away those confidence shakers, that takes away those fears and lets us live a Godly and confident life in uncertain times.

Isn’t it interesting how often we end up comparing ourselves with everyone else? And so often we come up with the conclusion that we’re the ugly duckling. So is it true, or are we missing something?

Chances are that you know the story of the ugly duckling. You know; this little duckling that grows up with all the other little ducklings except he was different. He was big and ugly. And as time went on this little duckling grew, not into a duck but into a beautiful, graceful swan. And it’s a story about you and me. It’s a parable if you will, about what happens when we compare ourselves to other people.

We live in a competitive world and so people are forever comparing themselves to the next person and somehow in our hearts we never seem to measure up. I call it ‘ugly duckling syndrome’. It’s one of those confidence shakers in the lives of so many people. It robs us of that gentle confidence and assurance that you know we all need in life.

I wonder if you thought about it right now, if you could identify the person or the people in your life that you compare yourself with or maybe even you compete with. Sometimes it’s a brother or a sister, sometimes it’s school. You know, we compete with our friends because they’re better looking or they have better marks and results or better situations or better parents.

Sometimes it’s at work; it’s often the case with men because we men seemed to be focused on careers and promotions and salaries and what car we get or how we get on compared to the next guy. Maybe it’s a neighbour or a friend and that’s often the case with women. “Oh, she’s got a better marriage” or, “she looks better” or, “she’s got a better figure” or, “she has nicer hair” or, “better eyes” or, “she’s in a more social set.”

Here’s the thing we do, let’s be really blunt about this and analyse this because it doesn’t make sense. This is what we do in our comparisons; we compare our worst features with other people’s best features. Women might look at another woman and say, “She’s lucky, she has a fantastic husband. She has a fantastic marriage. I wish I had that.”

But what’s the basis of the comparison. Well, on the one hand she’s looking at the things that are griping her about her husband and her marriage and her situation against the external veneer of the other person’s husband or marriage. Let’s face it, it’s hardly a reasonable comparison. We have no idea what’s going on behind the closed doors in that other marriage, do we?

We just have no idea so we pick just the bad things on our side of the ledger and compare them with an idealised, ‘good things version’ of the other person’s life, come on! Men, we go, “It’s not fair he got that promotion. I’m just as good as he is, now he earns more than I do.” But you know guys, we have no idea of the pressure that other guy’s under, of the size of his mortgage, of the state of his marriage, of his relationship with his kids.

Do you see what I mean? And then what we do, this is where it gets really crazy, is we compare all of our worst points with all of the best points of all the other people we know. It’s like one of those distorted mirrors that make us look really short and fat or really tall and skinny.

I saw a cartoon recently of how men and women see each other in a mirror and the woman, who is standing on one side of the mirror, has a lovely figure but in the mirror she sees this short, dumpy, fat image and the man has a bit of a stomach and in the mirror he sees this bronze, muscly man.

Go on! wake up! Let’s stop comparing ourselves with one another because you know what? When we compare with one another it’s a confidence shaker.

There’s one thing for certain, you are a different person to me and I am a different person to you. I have to tell you, if we were all like me it would be a really sad, old, boring old world and if we were all really like you maybe it would be just the same because the reality is we need variety and difference, skills and abilities. So why do we compare?

Have you ever been in a room with just a handful of people? Have a look around, how many of you look identical? How many of you have the same hair colour, the same body shape, and the same outlooks on life? We’re all different, that’s the point, that’s what makes the world go round, that’s why it’s fun.

I love my wife because she’s her and she’s different and she has incredible strengths that I don’t have. If you ever ring our ministry, chances are you will end up talking to my wife, Jacqui, and she loves talking to people and she loves helping and getting those CD’s out and responding and ringing you, she just loves doing that, right? And I praise God for that because we need people like that in our ministry.

But if you stuck her on this side of the microphone you wouldn’t hear a thing, we always joke, you’d just have dead air because Jacqui would hate to be sitting on this side of the microphone talking. That’s what I’m called to do and she can do things that I can’t do and I can do things that she can’t do. How dumb would it be if we beat each other up and kept comparing with one another and say, “You should be like me.”

But you know, we want other people to be like us because then they see the world our way and then life’s easier and we just want them to be like us. Wake up! When we compare with other people, it shakes our confidence because inevitably we look at the things that they can do and say, “I can’t do that.” It’s a confidence shaker.

I’d like to set you free from that today. The apostle Paul, 2000 years ago, well he had a problem, all the other apostles were actual disciples of Jesus, they’d been with Jesus for three-and-a-half years. But not Paul, and so people didn’t think of him as an authentic apostle. He spent a whole bunch of time having to convince other people that he was an apostle and people were obviously having a shot at him. Look at what he writes in 2 Corinthians, chapter 10, beginning with verse 12. He says this:

We don’t dare to compare ourselves with some of those people who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves they aren’t being wise. We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits but will confine our boasting to the field that God has assigned us, a field that reaches even to you. We’re not going too far in our boasting as would be the case if we hadn’t come to you for we did get as far as you with the gospel of Christ. Neither do we go beyond our limits by boasting about the work that others have done.

Our hope is that as your faith continues to grow our area of activity among you will greatly expand so that we can preach the gospel in regions beyond you. For we don’t want to boast about work already done in another mans territory but let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. For it’s not the one who commends himself that’s approved but the one who the Lord commends.

There is huge wisdom in that. God has made me to be who I am, God made Paul to be who he is. He doesn’t compare himself with himself, he doesn’t commend himself, he doesn’t compare himself with other people, he says, “God’s given me an area of operations and you know something, my area of influence, my area of operations, that’s what I’ve got, that’s it, that’s what I’ll do.”

Can I tell you? I still see that comparison sometimes today even amongst preachers, even amongst media preachers, ‘Whose ministry’s bigger?’ Can I ask you a question? Who cares? What’s the point of people comparing themselves; you know where I got my call? From God. Do you know where I get my delight?

Last night I met a woman who listens to our programs regularly, she’s a new believer and she was telling me how much God had done in her life through the programs. Just recently she’s come to faith. That’s what matters to me. And I used to be a compare-oholic. I used to be someone who was always comparing, I hated other people getting credit or kudos ahead of me and God set me free.

No more comparison, bottom line; my confidence is in God who made us what He called us to do. Sure, I listen to wise counsel but I’m not really interested in limelight or what people really think or say or how I compare and there is such an incredible freedom in it. A quiet confidence. Get a revelation; stop comparing, rest in what God’s made us to be and called us to do. Full stop. End of story.

You’ve doubtless heard the story of “The Little Engine that Could.” It’s a funny thing, but when we’re at the bottom of some huge great mountain, climbing it can feel completely impossible. 

Chances are, when you were growing up, somebody read you the storybook called, The Little Engine That Could. It’s a kid’s story about a little train, a train that saw this huge hill that it had to climb and at the bottom of the hill it was daunted by the climb. It’s always like that at the bottom of a steep hill and on the way up the hill, it said to itself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” And then, “I know I can, I know I can, I know I can.” That’s why the book is called The Little Engine That Could.

What you may not know is that this little book was written around the time of the Great Depression and the stock market crash. It was written at a time when people’s confidence was shaken; when they were at the bottom of this huge hill and they didn’t know whether they had it in them to climb that hill.

One of the real blessings of my life, although it didn’t feel like it at the time, is to have had the opportunity to train to be an officer in the Australian Army. Our officer training academy, the Royal Military College Duntroon is set in the national capital in Canberra. In the most beautiful, picturesque setting. If you ever have the chance to drive through this place, it’s just a stunningly laid out beautiful place. But when you’re there training, I tell you, it is a tough brutal place.

Seven thousand people applied in my year, only 148 were accepted. Of those original 148 that arrived on the buses that day only 62 graduated after four years. Time and time again, they put incredibly tough challenges before us. Survival training in the bush, going without food, sleep deprivation weeks on end, maybe getting 1 or 2 hours a night sleep for day after day after day.

And the physical training that they did on us was just something else again. Running up the sides of mountains with packs filled with weights and night navigation exercises through close jungle that you had to hack through with a machete. Repelling out of helicopters, route marches for days on end without proper rest, carrying packs and machine guns and ammunition.

Now I was there between the ages of 18 and 21 years old but by the time you graduate there’s one thing that they’ve taught you and it’s this. That you can put up with just about anything, you can survive through just about anything and you can achieve just about anything, but boy what a brutal way to learn that.

I guess that’s a microcosm of life, what we learn in the school of hard knocks in life is how to crash through things and how to get through the other side even though it all feels incredibly daunting at the time. But, (and there is a huge but), can I say? Despite all of that training at a cost of millions of dollars for the taxpayer, I still get to some mountains in my life and I’m at the bottom looking up and I find them hugely daunting and I’m sure you’ve had that same experience

Later, after I left the Army I became a consultant in the IT industry and I used to have to write huge reports, you know hundreds of pages type stuff and some days, when I was about to sit down and start a new one of those, it was like being that little engine that could although I felt like the little engine that couldn’t.

You know, you’re at the bottom of the hill, you’re looking up and the inertia was debilitating, you just couldn’t get going. You’re paralysed by how daunting the whole thing appeared and that’s what happens when we don’t have the confidence to move forward. We just stop because we look up this hill and we think, “I don’t know if I can get over the top of that. I just don’t know whether I’ve got it in me to make it up that hill and to get over the top.”

It can be something at work, it can be a difficult situation that has to be confronted, and it can even just be cleaning the house or mowing the lawn or washing the car. A million little things, they feel like they’re insurmountable, like the mountains that we just can’t get over the top. And what’s going on is that we have a crisis of confidence.

This week we’re looking at the things that shake our confidence and one of them is the sheer magnitude of doing something, sometimes robs us of the confidence that we need in order to be able to do it. In my wanderings through the Bible I’ve discovered this one simple statement, it’s written by the apostle Paul, a couple of thousand years ago. He says this:

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

That’s a pretty confident statement but so what, I mean, words are cheap. Until you learn that he wrote this on death row in a Roman prison, actually the full gist of what he wrote is this, it’s in the letter to the Philippians in chapter 4 if you’d like to go and have a look at it at some stage. This is what he writes, he says:

I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me.’ So he’s writing to his friends. ‘Indeed you’ve been concerned but you’ve had no opportunity to show it. I’m not saying this because I’m in need because I’ve learnt to be content with whatever my circumstances are. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty but I’ve learnt the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether I’m well fed or hungry, whether I’m living in plenty or in want, I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me.

In other words, Paul isn’t putting his confidence in his own circumstances. Let’s face it, circumstances go up and down and for Paul on death row, they were definitely down. Paul’s not putting his faith or his confidence in what he has because, let’s face it, sometimes we have almost nothing and we seem to get through and other times we have it all and we just can’t seem to do what we have to do. Now Paul puts his faith in Jesus Christ and he was on death row on account of the fact that he was preaching Christ to people around him.

Circumstances will come and go. Sometimes they’ll be daunting; sometimes they’ll be difficult; sometimes they will seem absolutely insurmountable and the problem with the whole ‘little engine that could’ story is sometimes ‘I can’t’. Sometimes you and I don’t have what it takes in us and of ourselves to do the things that we have to do.

Sometimes we have to confront a difficult situation with someone. Now I’m not someone to mince words but I don’t like difficult situations much, I’d much rather just gloss over them. Sometimes I don’t have what it takes, that’s true of everyone, it’s true of you. And that’s the problem with self-confidence. Confidence in self relies on how good or bad I am on a particular day.

But confidence in Jesus is another thing entirely. Jesus who created all things, who has all things in the palm of his hands. You see, that’s what Paul had learnt. Here he was on death row, he wasn’t afraid to die because he knew that when he was executed he’d go to be with the Lord. He just said, “Look, I know what it’s like to have a lot and I know what it’s like not to have everything, I’ve learned to be content with whatever I have and I rejoice in God.”

He’s got his confidence in Christ and when you and I can’t, Jesus can and because he can, we can. It’s quite simple really but so often we want to place confidence in ourselves. I’m someone who’s pretty good at what I do, I get to the end of things, I achieve almost everything that I set out to achieve. But I know that I have a crisis of confidence from time to time because in my own abilities I just can’t do it. But when we put our faith in Jesus Christ, He who has everything in the palm of His hand, He strengthens me, He strengthens you and we can do what we have to do because of him.

Every now and then, something hits us in life completely out of the blue. Like a Tsunami. No warning. And in its aftermath, finding any sort of confidence to get on with life can be really tough.

I still look back on that Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and wonder what must it have been like. People just sitting on the beach, no noise, no warning and all of a sudden hundreds of thousands washed away and drowned. Completely out of the blue, no inkling that it was coming. Those communities in Indonesia and Sri Lanka and that whole region are still recovering from the impacts that will linger for years, for generations.

When something like that happens in life, the death of a loved one or a marriage breakdown or retrenchment, whatever it is, completely out of the blue, it knocks the stuffing out of us. And we all have those things at some point in our lives. At that time, in the aftermath, one of the things that happen is that our confidence, our hope, our optimism for the future is completely washed away. It’s the ultimate confidence shaker.

Most of us have experienced tragedy in our lives, it’s sad but it’s true. We’d love to think that we can go through life without experiencing tragedy but you know, tragedy is a part of life. We have no warning sometimes and the rug is just pulled out from underneath us, whether it’s a broken relationship, whether it’s abuse, whether it’s retrenchment, whether it’s hunger or financial problems. For many who listen to this program around the world, it’s fear and war and conflict.

Some people are fortunate. Some people only experience those sorts of things once or twice or three times in their lives. But for others, particularly those who are living in real poverty and where there is starvation, and where there’s war and there’s unrest, for those people it’s a constant reality. Circumstances can conspire so mightily against us and when that happens it can completely destroy our confidence, completely rob us of a sense of optimism and hope for the future. And that’s a tough way to live.

This week on the program we’ve been looking at some of the things that I call ‘confidence shakers’, things that shake our confidence. We’ve been looking at them I guess from a different perspective, from Gods perspective. And it is important to me that we talk about this one because there’ll be a lot of people listening today who are right in the middle of one of those tsunami’s in life and so many more that may just have one coming around the corner. We don’t know.

Sometimes you know I lie in bed at night and when my wife, Jacqui, has gone to sleep and I look at her and think, “One day, one day we’ll be parted. One day either she or I will die and the other will be left and that’s it.” It’s a sad thought but that’s it. Now I’m not being morose, that’s life, that’s what happens, right? And in the middle of all of that, in the middle of life, God’s Word is a powerful and mighty and awesome thing.

You know, when God speaks, as he still does today, through his Word, the Bible, it’s not some boring or dry or theologically ‘rule based’ thing that’s happening. No! God’s word is sharp and active and living and it cuts right through and it does something in our hearts. And if you’re traveling through one of those tsunami’s at the moment – maybe you’re not and maybe one day you will be and God will bring this back to your memory.

I just want to share this very short part of God’s word, it comes from the Old Testament book of Proverbs, chapter 3, verses 25 and 26. This is what it says:

Have no fear of sudden disaster or of ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared.

‘Have no fear of sudden disaster …’ That’s it because it’s that sudden disaster, that life tsunami, that’s so completely outside our control. You know, even if it comes from the consequences of our own behaviour, there’s no marriage that falls apart in an instant you know, it takes two to tango or not to tango and it happens over months and years but when it happens it is such a shock, it is such a painful thing and God’s saying, ‘Have no fear of sudden disaster …’

When they happen – as they will in life, these sudden disasters – our immediate reaction is to panic, this huge fear is to run around like a chook with our head cut off. And God is saying to you and to me, here and now, ‘Have no fear of sudden disaster …’

How much fear should we have of sudden disaster? Answer: None. Now you might say to me, “Berni, that’s a really cool theory, I know it’s in the Bible but it’s not natural.” I mean when a tsunami hits us in life, there’s fear; when there’s death of a loved one, there’s fear; when there’s retrenchment, there’s fear you know and God’s saying, ‘Have no fear.’ But how realistic is that?’

You may have heard me talking about a man called George who I met in India just recently and he’d just lost his wife three weeks before we met, he lost his wife of fifty years. And yeah, look he was sad and he was a little bit teary sometimes and yes, he loved her and he missed her terribly. But George has been walking with Jesus Christ for most of his life. I guess he’s in his 70’s.

And I talked with him quite a bit over that time of that week we were together and there was no fear, no bitterness and there was no panic of this sudden disaster. Why? Because just as this thing in Proverbs says, the Lord was his confidence. ‘Have no fear of sudden disaster…’ Because the Lord himself will be your confidence.

Is this double think? I don’t think so; it’s what happens when someone like George is walking faithfully with God, day after day, week after week, drawing close to Jesus and one of these sudden disasters strikes, you know what happens? God himself steps into our very being; God himself becomes our confidence and it’s a confidence you can’t explain; it’s a confidence you can’t put words around; it’s just the most wondrous thing. If God is for us, who can be against us?

I’m not sure how you see all of this, how you see life but this is how I see it. Life, your life, my life, life’s a mixed bag. We have some great things, we have some good things, we have some boring things, and we have some bad things happen some days. Some days are great, other days people are horrible or nothing seems to go right and some days, not too many, but some days sudden disasters happen.

They come out of the blue without warning and have such a huge impact on life. We don’t know why but God does. He holds the whole thing in the palm of His hands. He has a plan for your life and my life that we don’t fully understand. When we walk quietly with Him every day, just living our lives the best we can and on those bad days we don’t understand, we can just rest in Him for the Lord will be your confidence.

One day this life will be over; one day we’ll stand before him; one day I’ll hear him say the one thing that I long to hear him say, “Well done good and faithful servant.” Not because I’m some superstar, I’m not. Not because I get it all right, I don’t. Not because of what I did but just because I walked along quietly in His plan and I put my trust in Jesus Christ.

It’s that simple. Have no fear of sudden disasters for the Lord will be your confidence. Have no fear of things that come out of the blue, have no fear of things that might hurt us, have no fear because when we just walk, day after day, quietly in step with the Lord, hand in hand with the Lord, He promises us, through His word that when those sudden disasters happen, He will be our confidence for us.

A lot of people in a lot of places are wandering around, completely exhausted. So much to do, so little time to do it. I’ll just have to cram more into my day. And that exhaustion, it turns out, can rob us of our confidence, of any sense of optimism for the future.

One of the greatest maladies of our day is sheer exhaustion. So many people doing so much just to survive. The number of people who walk around bleary-eyed, day after day, because of the hours they have to work, the amount of effort they expend. And sometimes, I’m one of those. And the longer this tiredness goes on, the lower our spirits sink.

There’s a definite link between our emotions and our physical state and when it goes on for too long people suffer burn out. They become really dysfunctional. This week on the program we’ve been looking at a number of different confidence shakers that we commonly experience in life, things that rob us of our confidence and I tell you, tiredness, exhaustion is definitely one of them.

And you know nobody is exempt, nobody misses out, and nobody is excluded from that sense of tiredness and exhaustion. Have a listen to this, it was written by John in his gospel, chapter 4, verse 6, says this:

Jacob’s well was there and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Now Jesus had a kind of like a ‘rock star’ kind of existence only there were no air-conditioned limo’s or private jets for Him to get around in. Huge crowds pressed in on Him again and again and yep, some days, like this particular day we just read, He got tired. It happened to Him and it happens to you and to me.

We can be juggling so many different things. Women are often a mum and a wife and they work, some study. At work we can have ‘to do’ lists as long as our arms, more emails flooding into our in-trays than we know what to do with. And have you noticed? Have you noticed the pace is relentless?

I remember, here in Australia, when we have our summer break at Christmas, the place used to close down in mid December to mid January, that was summer holidays. But these days there’s a frenetic pace right up to Christmas Eve and people are back at work in the first week of January.

I’m not sure why that is but we all seem bent on self-destruction through more and more and more and more work and activity. Now if you relate to that then hop onto our website christianityworks.com and have a look at the series, Living Within your Means, which we did on the program a few weeks ago. We go through some of the reasons, so listen to the programs, the web address again is christianityworks.com because this whole tiredness and consumption issue is one that some people really struggle with.

Now here’s the impact of it. As we get more and more tired, we’re less and less able to focus on the important things: on relationships; on spending time with each other; things that in our heart of hearts really matter. And then what happens is life gets out of balance. And when your life is out of balance, when you’re tired, our emotions go all over the place, just all over the place. We react badly to things; we are grumpy; we get tight and stressed and it’s just not good for us. And under those circumstances, we find that we just can’t cope.

Confidence, what’s that? Quiet self-assurance and self-confidence turns into desperation. When is this going to end? How long is this going to go on? A lot of people have a sense of being trapped by their circumstances; of being like a little mouse running around inside those wheels. Do you know what I mean? And there’s no way out.

Now, I understand that people sometimes think, “What would this guy know? He does a ten minute program once a day on the radio, what a life.” But running a global ministry is hard work; managing people, the ministry is growing and more stations and more countries and more demands on my time and raising funds to support the ministry. I tell you, I have enough work to keep me going 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, not a problem at all.

And when you are that tired, how do you deal with that emotional and physical exhaustion that robs you of your confidence in life and living, and in the future and what God’s up to. It’s really easy to happen and for me, because I am someone who works hard and I enjoy my work. But also part of my work is doing this, it’s being creative, it’s sharing things, it’s being enthusiastic. I’m no good to you if I’m burnt out. You know I’m no good to you if I’m so tired that I’m not enjoying my life and enjoying God, if I’m not confident in what I’m doing.

There’s a great passage in Hebrews, chapter 4, if you have a Bible you can grab it later. Hebrews 4, verses 9-11 and the writer of Hebrews says this, dealing with the whole question of exhaustion which robs us of our confidence:

There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work just as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no-one will fall by following their own example of disobedience.

In other words, God means us to rest, its part of God’s plan. God created the universe and on the last day he rested. If you read about Jesus in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you know what you see? You see this rock star existence of crowds and people and Jesus was always healing them and doing miracles and preaching. That’s tough and on top of that, as I’ve said, He didn’t have a limo to drive around in, He didn’t have a jet to fly around in, Jesus spent most of His time walking from town to town.

If He was lucky He might have got a ride on a donkey and this Jesus was constantly drawing away from the crowds, spending time with God the Father in prayer, early in the morning. You see it time and time again. That was His rest and you know that’s the only thing that I’ve discovered that works. Not just rest but His rest. It’s like being filled with fresh living water. Not a chore at all, it’s a delight.

When I was preparing for today’s programs, the night before I’d had a very late night at ministry and I got to bed somewhere towards midnight. Now I’m someone who likes to get to bed early because I’m an early riser but you know before I went to bed, I prayed. I said, “Lord, I’ve only got a few hours in bed tonight and I have to get up tomorrow morning and I have to prepare for these programs and that’s an important thing, Lord, I need a double helping of rest tonight.”

And I was up before 5.00am before my alarm went off! And I had a time of prayer and you know as I sat down to prepare and to write and to think and to research, I had such a sense of rest and joy and peace and freshness and you know something, confidence that I had the energy and the delight and the wherewithal to serve you today.

So often sleep alone doesn’t do it. So often even a holiday alone doesn’t do it. Notice the sort of rest the writer of Hebrews was talking about? He was talking about a Sabbath rest. In other words, resting in God. That’s huge! Those quiet times of being still, just knowing that He’s my God. Listening, hearing, and reading. No noise, no interruptions, no answering emails, no phone calls, just Jesus Christ and me.

Now that’s rest. And I do have uncertainties in my life just like you do and I do have pressures in my life, just like you do and there are uncertainties and there are risks and there are stresses and strains. But God’s plan is that we should have a confident life amidst all of those things.

You know something, as we rest in Him, you’ve heard that saying, “Recharging your batteries.” But it’s so deep, it’s so refreshing, it’s so amazing to be filled up with God Himself and God becomes our confidence and God becomes our rest and that’s His plan, that’s His heart, that’s His desire for you and me, today.