I Will Be Confident Series

Text: Psalm 27

You know when I was a kid I struggled with confidence. Even today at time I struggle with my confidence. But when I was a kid that lack of confidence created this fear in me. I always feared that I would do something wrong or that what I did wasn’t going to be good enough. No one told me those things It was just me in my head. It was just me telling myself that I wasn’t able to do it. My confidence was very low. I would constantly try to find the confidence in myself, but the more I looked at myself for confidence the less I would find it. Actually I found that I would have less confidence, because I would just go in circles and searching and not finding and searching and not finding. One specific time was when I was in football in Jr. High. At that time I played wide receiver so I spent most of my time just catching the ball. Well one day at practice they were looking for a back up quarterback, because our quarterback had gotten hurt. So I thought I should try it. I had always wanted to be a quarterback and be behind the center and call plays. So I volunteered. We lined up for the play and I began to get nervous. Through my nervousness I began to tell myself I wasn’t good enough. That I was going to mess up. I tried to be positive and tell myself I could do it, but I just couldn’t get myself to believe it. I called hike and dropped back to pass and I saw my friend who was wide open and I went to pass the ball and instead of going where I wanted it to it went nowhere close to its intended target. I had spent so much time tearing down my confidence that when it came time I did exactly what I said I was going to do. Fail. Everyone got a good chuckle and I just walked back to my place as a wide receiver and that's where I would stay.

Have you ever have times where your confidence is just at an all time low. You are going through something in your life, or you are struggling with sin, and you don’t believe in anything, you have no faith. I think we can all say that at some point in our life we have gone through that valley. We have all gone through points where our confidence is so low that we don’t think it will ever build back up. And you know a lot of the writers of the Psalms felt like that. If you have ever read through the Psalms you get a mix of all kinds of emotions by the authors. They are going through different things in their life and they just let it all out on their paper. All of them at times lacked confidence. Lacked faith that they would ever get out. That they would ever be delivered from what they are fighting through. But sometimes the author gives us a glimpse of hope. Sometimes they encourage us and tell us that there is still one place that we can find our confidence. The place that we should have been going all along. You see we are starting a sermon series called O, My Soul and we are going to be walking through some of the Psalms and taking a look at what the authors are going through and what they have to tell us today. And the first Psalm we are going to be looking at is Psalm 27. So this Psalm is really broken down into four sections here. The first benign verse 1-3 where David talks about having confidence in God’s presence. Then 4-6 where David prays for God’s presence. Next is verses 7-12 with continued prayer for God’s presence. And then he finishes up with verses 13-14 talking about having confidence in God’s presence. Its really complicated. But lets look at these four sections. You see the Author of this Psalm, David, is going to tell us a little something about confidence. So lets read together.

So David here is obviously going through something. From reading this we can assume that it seems like there are people coming after David, maybe in some battle or war or it may also be in reference to when David was being chased by Saul trying to kill him. But the point is that David is facing something that's huge and scary. Something that seems insurmountable to most. Maybe this battle doesn’t seem winnable or the war may seem lost. But David here finds his confidence in two things. In the first three verses he talks about The Lord being the light and a stronghold. You see David's confidence isn't with his own abilities or in the strength he has, its in God. He puts His confidence in God being His light or His salvation. David knows that God has promised victory to His people. God has always watched over His people and promised to deliver them. He can find his confidence in that. He also puts his confidence in God being his stronghold or his refuge. God is the strength for His people and He provides a place of refuge a place of rest and protection against those who come against His people. David says that even though there are enemies at his doorstep its the enemies who are going to lose not David. Fear won’t rule his heart. Because his confidence isn’t in himself, its in God.