"I am Confident" - Devotional #38 About an Identity Your Christ

Confidence is defined as the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something. The synonyms of “confidence” are “trust,” “belief,” “faith,” and “conviction.” Did you know that you can be confident in Christ? If you have complete faith in who Jesus is and what He did for you on the cross, you can be confident that all things are possible for you through Christ. How I arrived at this life-giving breakthrough is described in my blog post called “My Testimony.” If you want to know how devastating, destructive, and desperate my life used to be without having faith and confidence in God, read “Getting To Know Anna Szabo.” I have been a Christian for a few years now, and my heart is on fire for God. That’s why I wrote this Biblical devotional for you called “I am confident.” May it encourage and empower you and be a blessing to you today!

Table of Content hide

1 Introduction

2 You Can Be Confident

3 Confidence vs Doubt

4 Confidence Comes from God

5 Confidence and Health

6 Confidence and Grace

6.1 “I am Confident” Affirmation

I am Confident #52Devotionals Devotions for Women by Anna Szabo

Introduction

I used to live my life in my own power. Trapped in the culture-induced toxic positivity, I believed that my positive thoughts could do miracles. I didn’t know God and neither did I think that I needed Him. Until… I came to the end of myself. In 2014, I hit the rock bottom and learned that I don’t have any super-powers without God but with Him, I am powerful. In that moment of spiritual awakening, I fell on my knees, prayed to God to make me His, and invited Jesus Christ into my heart to be my personal Lord and Savior. Ever since that day, I’ve been learning and realizing where genuine confidence comes from…

Self-confidence is an illusion.

God-confidence is what we all need.

This Biblical devotional explains what having confidence in God, through Christ, can do to you. I will share with you the miraculous power of God-based confidence I personally experienced when I began dwelling on God’s grace, drawing closer to Him and His throne, and cherishing the gift of the sacrifice Jesus made to give me life and freedom. This is where I explain to you the kind of confidence I have.

You Can Be Confident

In May of 2016, I got married to a man who in the next few weeks rapidly destroyed my mental health and life. I describe the details of that marriage in my blog post called “Narcissistic Relationship Abuse.” Ultimately, the narcissistic mental cruelty tactics used on me every day led to my suicidal depression and significant deterioration of the executive function of my brain. Because the narcissist pulled me in and out of multiple realities, projected his own faults on me to make me feel guilty, and manipulated people and circumstances to make me feel crazy, I lost my ability to make decisions, stopped trusting myself, doubted my own discernment, and became extremely confused.

My trauma counselor said: “The narcissist wants you dead.” I knew it was true. I just lost confidence in my intelligence and judgment, so I was trapped in a fog. I didn’t know what to do, when, how, or why. So, eventually, I ended up nearly paralyzed by suicidal depression, in bed for days, not showering, because I couldn’t even decide what to do after getting out of bed. It was truly the most devastating season of my entire life. Then, I bought a wall decal that declared: I can do all things through Christ. Slowly but surely, my narcissistic abuse recovery began. Instead of waiting t have confidence in my own ability, I leaned on the Lord, and He got me out of that deep, dark, dangerous pit.

Whenever you doubt your future, your competence, your ability, or your skills, remember this one most important truth about yourself: you can do anything and everything through Christ.

I can do all this through Christ who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:13

In 2017, after my divorce, God called me to ministry, but I doubted… Can I do it? Am I good enough? Is there anyone who could do it better? Am I equipped for ministry? What is I fail God? Today, when I’m writing this, is December 2020. I started Online Discipleship For Women in 2017 after Michel and I were divorced. This Christian blog now has over one million words of helpful content sharing hope in Christ. My Christian podcast for women The Anna Szabo Show has been downloaded almost 100,000 times worldwide. More than 82,000 people visited my website and 223,143 people watched my YouTube videos. It’s been scary, but I can do all things through Christ! So, I did it.

You can do all things through Christ. Don’t do anything in your own power. If the desire of your heart is to go to a law school but you’re doubting yourself, have confidence that all things are possible for you through Christ! If God put on your heart to build a ministry but you don’t feel qualified, remember to be confident in Christ who gives you strength, making all things possible for you. If you have a book swirling within you looking to get out, you can become a published author. You can become an award-winning and best-selling author! How do I know? I know that God’s word is true, and it says all things are possible through Christ. If you want to change the world and make a significant positive impact on God’s Kingdom, you can! Why? Because nothing is impossible when you are convinced that Jesus gives you strength.

What if you simply want to feel beautiful and accepted? Can God help you get that kind of confidence? Let me share a simple story with you from my personal experience.

Confidence vs Doubt

The image of me on the banner of this blog post was featured in a swimsuit magazine in 2010. By the time I got married in 2016, I gained some weight. You can see what I looked like on my wedding day by watching my wedding video. I remember one early morning in our marital residence. Michel and I were still in bed. We were just waking up. I turned toward Michel to give him some affection…

I need to tell you something important.

When Michel and I were in premarital counseling, discussing sex with our mentors, he expressed verbally and in writing that his hope was for me to pursue him sexually after our wedding. That’s what I did that morning. What happened next was unexpected, shocking, and heartbreaking. It wounded me.

Michel pushed me away, jumped out of bed, and screamed at me: “I don’t want none of this, I need to save myself for my IronMan training!” What? … I was confused. Prior to that, Michel had told me already told me “My bicycle is my other wife I cheat on you with!” He literally admitted in court that he spent 60 hours a week with his bicycle in addition to working full time. Michel was absent in our marriage. And now this? I was rejected every day by the man who begged me to marry him. I felt devastated. I felt ugly and fat. I felt stupid and deceived. I felt cheated on. I felt traded in for an IronMan bicycle.

READ: IronMan vs Marriage

To say that I lost my confidence after that very sad morning would be an understatement. I wanted to be invisible and disappear. I didn’t want to live. I got severely depressed and suicidal. I ended up isolating myself and not wanting to go anywhere because of how ugly, fat, stupid, and worthless I felt all the time. That was all the result of my doubt. In my blog post called ‘How To Feel Beautiful,” I describe the details of how Michel’s morning scream, continued rejection, dehumanization and devaluation of me all impacted my mental health, job performance, career overall, and my mental health.

Confidence is of God. Doubt is not!

Confidence Comes from God

God used that season of suicidal depression and stillness to do some good work in my heart. He never wastes our pain. Satan gives us a miserable mess. God turns it into His glorious success. God revealed Himself to me and showed me that my confidence was placed in Michel instead of Jesus. My Heavenly Father asked me to refocus from what Michel said about me. He asked me to focus instead on discovering what God said about me. I started searching the Bible to find out: who am I in Christ? What is my identity? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? Thankfully, I discovered 52 truths about identity in Christ.

With each new truth I discovered, God gave me a Biblical devotional to create, memorize, and recite to renew my mind every moment of every day. Below are the 52 Biblical truths I discovered. I grouped them all into a free ebook you can download. Today, I practice these affirmations whenever doubt attacks my mind. I declare the truth about who I am and what I am capable of as a daughter of the king of the universe. I leave no headspace for doubt or confusion when God’s word is occupying my thoughts. I dwell on God’s truth, and He gives me confidence. Here are the affirmations God gave me.

52 Devotionals

Getting to know Anna SzaboGetting to know Anna Szabo

Confidence and Health

As God did His divine work in my heart and mind, I was able to accept myself, my body, my weight, my story, and I finally felt liberated from doubt. I felt beautiful and confident! After that, I lost 21 lb in under 60 days. My weight loss story is shared here.

The reason why I lost my unwanted weight along with my doubt was that it no longer defined how I felt about myself. Instead, I just wanted to honor God with my body (1 Corinthians 6:12). I wanted to do all things for the glory of God, including eating and exercising (1 Corinthians 10:31). However, from that point on, how I feel about myself is defined by God, not by anyone or anything else.

I started walking 10,000 steps daily, took on 100 squats a day challenge, became a whole-foods-plant-based vegan, and changed my daily habits. I got healthy because I got confident in God! The most important thing was that my weight no longer affected my confidence. My identity in Christ affects my confidence. God’s word is where my confidence comes from now. I trust Him wholeheartedly.

Another aspect of my confidence is that God continues His divine work in me. I have firm trust that what I need to know He will reveal to me, what I need to be able to do He will teach me, what I need to have He will give me, and what I need to do in His Kingdom He will prepare me for and fully equip me for that work.

…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6

God’s work in me never stops.

And neither dow His work through me.

That’s why I started this my ministry.

God equips me daily to do what I need to do.

Confidence and Grace

The more I dwell on the grace of God, the more I believe that all things are possible for me through Christ. The closer I draw to God, the more confident I become in my ability to do the good work He prepared in advance for me to do (Ephesians 2:10). The more I think that God loves me so much that He sent His son to die for me, the more I treasure the confidence I get to have in God, thanks to Jesus. The more I look back on my life, the more evidence I have that anything is possible through Christ. I am now confident. I can rely on Jesus for everything. I am convinced that “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

What about you?

The reason why I emphasize “for me” when I talk about possibilities through Christ and confidence in God is that many people believe the Scriptures in general, but not personally. Let me explain. When I ask a woman: do you believe that all things are possible through Christ? She responds: yes. But when I ask “Do you believe that you can do all things through Christ?” typically, the answer is silence or a “no.” How come? Because believing God’s word and His promises to you personally requires having a very intimate relationship with God. If you have firm trust in Jesus Christ, you have confidence that all things are possible for you. Now, here’s my hard question…

Do you believe?

If you do, memorize the Biblical affirmation below and practice it daily to remember where your confidence comes from and what it empowers you to do: anything!

“I am Confident” Affirmation

I am Condident #52Devotionals

I am confidently claiming: 
"I can do all things through Christ!" 
Drawing closer to the grace throne,
Treasuring His sacrifice.

Anna Szabo

Anna Szabo is the founder of Online Discipleship For Women, a Christian ministry committed to helping alleviate suicide among women globally by sharing hope in Christ. Anna teaches how to create a joyful life by embracing God’s word based on her six pillars of joyful living: faith, food, fitness, finances, felicity, and fortitude. She is a Christian speaker, YouTuber, artist, poet, and blogger who created 2,000,000 words of Gospel-focused content to encourage and empower you. Donate to show your support.

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Introduction

You Can Be Confident

Confidence vs Doubt

Confidence Comes from God

Confidence and Health

Confidence and Grace

“I am Confident” Affirmation

“Whoever Brings Blessing Will be Enriched” Proverbs 11:25

Bless Online Discipleship For Women

Introduction

You Can Be Confident

Confidence vs Doubt

Confidence Comes from God

Confidence and Health

Confidence and Grace

“I am Confident” Affirmation

“Whoever Brings Blessing Will be Enriched” Proverbs 11:25

Bless Online Discipleship For Women

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