The Most Dangerous Place for a Christian Is When He Thinks He Is Strong

The Christian is in the least danger when he is fearful and trusting God, and in the greatest danger when he feels the most self-confident. That may sound backwards at first because we are constantly told that confidence is a strength and fear is a weakness. We are encouraged to believe in ourselves, trust our abilities, take control of our circumstances, and move forward without hesitation. But Scripture presents a very different understanding of where our real strength comes from, and it should make every Christian think carefully about what happens when life starts going well and we begin believing we can handle everything ourselves.

There is something about difficulty that can bring a person closer to God because difficulty has a way of reminding us that we are not in control. When you are facing something you cannot fix, when the answer is beyond your ability to produce, when you do not know what tomorrow is going to bring, you are forced to confront a reality that success can allow you to ignore: you need God. Fear is not good in itself, and Scripture does not tell us to live controlled by fear, but there is a profound difference between being afraid of what may happen and believing that you have no need for God because you are capable of handling whatever happens.

That second condition is far more dangerous.

Think about how easily self-confidence can develop. Things begin working out. The business grows. The money is coming in. Your relationships are stable. You have accumulated experience, built connections, solved difficult problems, and survived things that once seemed impossible. After enough success, it becomes very easy to look at what you have accomplished and conclude that you know what you are doing. You begin trusting your judgment because your judgment has worked before. You trust your experience because your experience has produced results. You trust your ability to solve problems because you have solved problems for years.

None of those things are necessarily bad. The danger comes when the confidence God allowed you to develop through experience becomes confidence that no longer recognizes its dependence upon God.

That is a subtle transition, and it can happen without you even noticing it.

You still believe in God. You may still pray. You may still read Scripture and attend church. Nothing about your outward life necessarily changes. But somewhere underneath it all, you begin approaching life as though the outcome depends upon you. You stop asking God for wisdom because you believe you already know what to do. You stop seeking His direction because the path seems obvious. You stop depending upon Him because you have become comfortable depending upon yourself.

That is where confidence becomes dangerous.

Scripture gives us a very clear warning about this. "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." 1 Corinthians 10:12. The warning is not directed toward the person who knows he is struggling. It is directed toward the person who thinks he is standing securely. There is a reason for that. When you know you are weak, you are more likely to seek strength outside yourself. When you become convinced that you are strong enough, you can walk directly into danger without even realizing you have stopped looking to God.

Peter is a perfect example. He was absolutely convinced that he would never deny Christ. His confidence was sincere. He was not pretending. He believed what he was saying. Yet when the moment came, he discovered that his confidence in his own ability to remain faithful was not nearly as strong as he had believed it was. His failure did not begin when he denied Christ. The deeper problem was that he had placed too much confidence in himself before the denial ever happened.

That is why humility is not thinking poorly of yourself. Humility is knowing where your strength actually comes from.

There is nothing wrong with being confident in your ability to do something well. There is nothing wrong with having experience, competence, ambition, or the willingness to make difficult decisions. Those things can be gifts, and they can be used for good. But the Christian has to remember that none of those things makes him independent of God. The moment your abilities become the reason you believe you no longer need His direction, those same abilities can become the source of your greatest vulnerability.

This applies to far more than obvious spiritual decisions. It shows up in the way we handle money, business, relationships, parenting, success, failure, temptation, and even our response to problems. When things are going well, we can begin assuming that our plans will continue working because they have worked before. When we have enough money, we can begin believing we are secure because we have resources. When we have experience, we can stop listening because we assume we already know. When people respect us, we can begin believing our judgment is beyond question. When we have built something successful, we can start thinking the success proves that everything we are doing must be right.

It does not.

Success can be just as dangerous to your dependence upon God as failure can be devastating to your confidence.

That is why some of the most important moments in a Christian's life may not be the moments when everything falls apart. They may be the moments when everything is going exactly as planned. Difficulty tends to expose our weakness immediately. Success can conceal it for years.

When you are desperate, you pray differently. When you have no answer, you seek God differently. When you know you cannot fix something yourself, you are much more willing to admit that you need Him. But when you have the money, the experience, the contacts, the reputation, the knowledge, and the ability to make things happen, you can slowly replace dependence upon God with dependence upon yourself while still calling yourself a Christian.

That should frighten us far more than admitting that we are afraid.

The answer is not to become incapable of confidence. The answer is to put confidence in its proper place. Be confident in what God has given you to do, but never become so confident in yourself that you forget who gave it to you. Use your experience, but recognize that experience does not make you omniscient. Make plans, but remember that your plans are not sovereign. Work hard, but understand that your ability to work is itself something you have been given. Build something worthwhile, but do not allow what you have built to convince you that you are the one holding everything together.

There is a reason Scripture repeatedly calls us to trust God rather than ourselves. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding, acknowledging Him in all our ways. That does not mean abandoning understanding. It means refusing to make our own understanding the final authority.

There will be times when you are afraid and have no idea what to do. Those moments can become some of the most valuable moments of your life if they drive you toward God rather than away from Him. There will also be times when you feel completely capable, when you know exactly what you are doing and everything appears to be under control. Those moments may require even greater vigilance because they can quietly convince you that you no longer need the One you have always needed.

So perhaps the question is not whether you feel strong or weak today. The better question is where your confidence is actually resting.

If it is resting in your own ability, eventually something will happen that exposes the limits of that ability. If it is resting in God, then even when you recognize your own weakness, you are not without strength. You know where to turn.

The Christian is not safest when he believes he can handle everything. He is safest when he knows that he cannot and has learned to trust the One who can.

That is not weakness.

That is where strength begins.