What’s your stick?

In my last post I wrote how I had lost a considerable amount of confidence in my previous job. These next few posts are dedicated to how I’ve begun to regain it.

Confidence is a strange thing. You can have confidence in yourself, but people can lose confidence in you no matter what you feel. Confidence can be affected by external factors, like what people say about what you do or how you work. But you can affect your own confidence too, make choices that increase or decrease how confident you feel about something. In fact the verse of the day that I read this morning (Hebrews 20:35) it said: “So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.” Confidence therefore is something that you can choose to get rid of. Or maybe we can choose to stop doing the things that once made us confident, and therefore we lose confidence.

During the Summer this was made clear to me at the New Wine Summer Conference. During a talk by Danielle Strickland a question was asked: “what’s your stick?” Danielle Strickland went on to relate the story of Moses who when finally he had got his people the Israelites out of Egypt was presented with the seemingly impassable boundary of the Red Sea. The Egyptian army, the mightiest army of the time was on their tale, time was ticking and it seemed that the Israelites were doomed to be destroyed. They moaned to Moses who in turn reassured them that everything would be alright if only they stood still. But God’s response contradicts Moses. He told them to stop crying out and get moving and he reminded Moses to use his stick (OK, the passage says ‘staff’, but that just makes me think of Gandalf.)

Oh yeah, thought Moses, my stick. The same stick that I had with me when God, the infinite being, spoke to me from the burning bush. The same stick that I had when I called ten plagues down on Egypt. The same stick that turned into a snake and ate all of the snakes of Pharoah’s wizards. That stick.

That stick.

I forgot that I’ve been given things that have got me through tricky times before. These things are the metaphorical equivalent of Moses staff. Or maybe Moses staff is the metaphorical equivalent of them. I’m not quite sure which way round it is. These habits have worked before but I’ve forgotten them, fallen out of practise at using them, but they are the best things at reminding me, who I am. They keep me confident. In other words, I had thrown away some good habits – chosen to lose my confidence.

And they are simple things. Like being creative – writing some words or a song to express how I feel, singing, playing my guitar, praying, singing in tongues, cycling. These are things that don’t take much time or effort. And they are good for me.

And of course these things are different for different people. As you read this you will know that you have a good habit which when you practise makes you feel good about yourself. You’ve probably got more than one. Practising them keeps your confidence up, so do them. Do them more. They’re good for you.

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