Being more discerning in friendships… and having confidence

Excerpts from Joyce Meyer’s The Confident Woman
“A confident woman knows that she is loved. She does not fear being unloved because she knows first and foremost that God loves her unconditionally. To be whole and complete we need to know that we are loved. Everyone needs love and acceptance from God and others. Although not everyone will accept and love us, some will. I encourage you to concentrate on those who do love you and forget about those who don’t… God certainly Loves us and will provide others who do as well. If we look to Him and stop making bad choices about the people we bring into our circle of inclusion, I do believe we have what I call “divine connections” In other words, Pray for your circle of friends. Don’t just decide what social group you want to be a part of and try to get into it. Instead follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in whom you want to associate closely.”

Recently, I do think a lot about those who love me and those who do not.. I really have been questioning my friendships and who is worth my time and efforts. I want to surround myself with people I can really trust and who I can feel good about when they are around. I know I need to focus my attentions, time, energy, love, and giving on those who genuinely care about me as a person & who can help me reach my full potential.; Give up the rest. I don’t need or want fake people in my life. I don’t want to spend time with people just so that I don’t feel lonely or because we can mutually get something out of it.

I think so many times we try to force relationships in our lives. We desire to be friends with certain people and when it doesn’t seem to be mutual, we feel rejected and hurt. We can even open ourselves up to offense or bitterness when the relationship doesn’t grow into what we imagined it could be, or we find out the other person’s heart isn’t really into it. We are also drawn to certain people with certain issues, because God has placed a gifted us with a desire to help that type of person. But we must learn to give up and move on when that person does not accept it. otherwise we are “casting our pearls to swine” – (Matt 7:6) We don’t want our seeds of love and devotion falling to the way side. We want them to be planted and take root; in the lives of others and our own. “So that they may reap a harvest” for all eternity. We must discern who is good soil and who is not.
I hate wasting my time and emotions on drama and questioning what a person’s true feeling really are. We really must be more discerning in the friendships we make.


CONFIDENCE
http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/books/40/0446531987/chapter_excerpt23766.html

"What is confidence? I believe confidence is all about being positive concerning what you can do—and not worrying over what you can’t do. A confident person is open to learning, because she knows that her confidence allows her to walk through life’s doorways, eager to discover what waits on the other side. She knows that every new unknown is a chance to learn more about herself and unleash her abilities.
Confident people do not concentrate on their weaknesses; they develop and maximize their strengths.
The world is not hungry for mediocrity. our problem is that we often work so hard on trying to overcome our weakness that we never develop our strengths. Whatever we focus on grows larger in our eyes—too large, in fact. We can turn something into a huge problem when, in reality, it would be a minor nuisance if only we viewed it in perspective with our strengths.

Confident people make it a habit to think and act positively. Therefore, they enjoy life, and they accomplish a lot.
A person without confidence is like an airplane sitting on a runway with empty fuel tanks. The plane has the ability to fly, but without some fuel, it’s not getting off the ground. Confidence is our fuel. Our confidence, our belief that we can succeed, gets us started and helps us finish every challenge we tackle in life. Without confidence, a woman will live in fear and never feel fulfilled.
Confidence allows us to face life with boldness, openness, and honesty. It enables us to live without worry and to feel safe. It enables us to live authentically.
Confidence allows us to face life with boldness, openness, and honesty. It enables us to live without worry and to feel safe. It enables us to live authentically. We don’t have to pretend to be somebody we’re not, because we are secure in who we are— even if we’re different from those around us. I firmly believe that confidence gives us permission to be different, to be unique. God has created every person in a unique way, yet most people spend their lives trying to be like someone else—and feeling miserable as a result. Trust me on this: God will never help you be some other person. He wants you to be you! You can be sure of this!
People with low confidence, on the other hand, are not sure about anything. They are double-minded, indecisive people who constantly get frustrated with life. If they do make a decision, they are tormented by self-doubt. They second-guess (and third- and fourth-guess) themselves. As a result, they don’t live boldly. They live little, narrow lives, and they miss out on the big, rewarding lives God wants them to enjoy.
Similarly, God requires us to approach Him in faith—the deeply held confidence that God is trustworthy and will always make good on His promises. God loves you; He wants you to relax in the knowledge of that love. He wants you to experience the peace of mind that comes from resting in His love and living without the torment of fear and doubt. Too many people cower at the mention of God’s name, because they are afraid He is sitting up in heaven, just waiting for them to slip up so that He can punish them. I’m not saying that we never have to face consequences for our actions, but God doesn’t delight in punishing us. Instead, He wants to bless us and prosper us. He is merciful and if we are able to receive His mercy, He frequently gives us blessing when actually we legally deserve punishment. Thankfully He sees our heart attitude and our faith in Jesus and not just our actions.
When we have confidence in God and His love and kindness, we can progress to living confidently and enjoying the life He wants for us. Note that I said confidence in God, not in ourselves. Usually, when people think of confidence, they think of self-confidence. Think of how many times you hear TV self-help gurus or athletes urging you to “believe in yourself!” I beg to differ. I want to make it clear, right from the start, that our confidence must be in Christ alone, not in ourselves, not in other people, not in the world or its systems. The Bible states that we are sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency (Philippians 4:13), so we might also say that we are confident through Christ’s confidence. Or another way to say it would be, “we have self-confidence only because He lives in us and it is His confidence that we draw on.”
. . . we glory and pride ourselves in Jesus Christ, and put no confidence or dependence [on what we are] in the flesh and on outward privileges and physical advantages and external appearances. (PHILIPPIANS 3:3)

Are You Suffering from Confidence Deficiency?
Under-confidence is a condition; it might even be considered a sickness. And just like many other sicknesses, under-confidence is caused by a deficiency of one thing (confidence) and too much of another—in this case—fear. I refer to fear as an emotional virus because it begins as a thought in your head, then affects your emotions and behaviors—just like a flu virus might invade your body via a handshake or a sneeze and then make you feel miserable all over.
Fear is a dangerous virus, because a fearful person has no confidence and can never reach her potential in life. She won’t step out of her comfort zone to do anything—especially something new or different. Fear is a cruel ruler, and its subjects live in constant torment.
It breaks my heart when I see people living fearfully, because without confidence, people can never know and experience true joy. The Holy Spirit of God Himself is grieved, because He has been sent into our lives to help us fulfill our God-ordained destinies. But you can’t seek out your destiny when you’ve let fear slam and lock the door of your life. Instead, you cower behind the door, filled with self-hatred, condemnation, fear of rejection, fear of failure, and fear of others.
Many victims of fear end up being people-pleasers, prone to being controlled and manipulated by others. They give up the right to be themselves and usually spend their lives trying to be what they think they ought to be in someone else’s eyes.
Sadly, when we try to be something or someone we are not intended to be, we stifle ourselves and God’s power in us. When we have confidence, we can reach truly amazing heights; without confidence, even simple accomplishments are beyond our grasp.
Throughout history, God has used ordinary people to do amazing, extraordinary things. Yet, all of them had to take a step of faith first. They had to confidently press forward into the unknown or unfamiliar before making any progress. They had to believe they could do what they were attempting to do. “Achieve” comes before “Believe” in the dictionary, but the order is switched in real life.
It’s important to note that, in many cases, successful people have tried many times and failed before they ultimately succeeded. They not only had to begin with confidence, they had to remain confident when every circumstance seemed to shout at them, “Failure! Failure! Failure!”
Consider inventor Thomas Edison. He once said, “I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet in two cases only did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.”
That means that Edison developed 2,998 failed theories en route to arriving at success. In fact, the true story of the light bulb is a long, tedious tale of repeated trial and error. Imagine how Edison must have felt as the failures piled up by the dozens, then the hundreds, then the thousands. Yet, through it all, he kept pressing forward. He believed in his bright idea, so he didn’t lose his determination.
Just because ordinary people take steps to accomplish extraordinary things does not mean that they do not feel fear. I believe the Old Testament hero Esther felt fear when she was asked to leave her familiar, comfortable life and enter the king’s harem so she could be used by God to save her nation. I believe Joshua felt fear when, after Moses died, he was given the job of taking the Israelites into the Promised Land. I know I had fear when God called me to quit my job and prepare for ministry. I still remember my knees shaking and my legs feeling so weak that I thought I would fall down. I remember the fear I felt then, but it frightens me more now to think of how my life would have turned out had I not faced the fear and pressed forward to do God’s will. Fear does not mean you are a coward. It only means that you need to be willing to feel the fear and do what you need to do anyway.
If I would have let the fear I felt stop me, where would I be today? What would I be doing? Would I be happy and fulfilled? Would I be writing a book right now on being a confident woman—or would I be sitting at home, depressed and wondering why my life had been such a disappointment? I believe a lot of unhappy people are individuals who have let fear rule in their lives.
How about you, my dear reader? Are you doing what you really believe you should be doing at this stage in your life, or have you allowed fear and a lack of confidence to prevent you from stepping out into new things—or higher levels of old things? If you don’t like your answer, then let me give you some good news: It is never too late to begin again! Don’t spend one more day living a narrow life that has room for only you and your fears. Make a decision right now that you will learn to live boldly, aggressively, and confidently. Don’t let fear rule you any longer.
It’s important to note that you can’t just sit around and wait for fear to go away. You will have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Or, as John Wayne put it, “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” In other words, courage is not the absence of fear; it is action in the presence of fear. Bold people do what they know they should do—not what they feel like doing.
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is action in the presence of fear. Bold people do what they know they should do—not what they feel like doing.
God told Joshua, “Fear not, for I am with you.” He is sending you that same message today: FEAR NOT! God is with you, and He will never leave you, nor forsake you.
I know what it is like to live in fear. Fear can actually make you sick to your stomach. It can make you so tense and nervous that everyone around you notices that something is wrong; it’s that evident in your facial expressions and your body language. What’s more, just as confidence is contagious, so is the lack of self-confidence. When we possess no inner confidence, no one else has confidence in us either. Imagine a timid, cowering basketball player, standing in the corner of the court with her arms wrapped around herself. Is anyone going to pass her the ball? Is anybody going to call out plays to her?
When we think people are rejecting us, we feel hurt by them. The basketball player in the example above might think that her teammates hate her or have something against her. But, for fearful, under-confident people, the root of the problem is that they are rejecting themselves. They are rejecting the person God intended them to be.
A Little Godly Confidence Goes a Long Way
Katie Brown weighs only ninety-five pounds, and she is just a bit over five feet tall. She stands a lot taller than that, however, once she’s nimbly scaled a 100-foot climbing wall (that’s equivalent to a ten-story building).
Katie is a “difficulty climber,” an endeavor in which she’s a world champion and multiple gold medalist at the “X Games”—which you may have seen televised on networks like ESPN2.
As you might imagine, it’s intimidating for a small person to attack climbing walls and cliffs that are twenty times her height, but Katie says that her extreme faith brings her peace, even when facing extremely dangerous challenges.
“I know that I couldn’t have done what I’ve done without being a Christian,” she explains. “My faith in God doesn’t get rid of my healthy fear or caution when climbing extreme heights, but it does help me deal with it. It takes away a lot of the pressure, because you know that God’s not going to condemn you if you don’t win. So there’s nothing to worry about. When I see others competing, I wonder how I could compete if I didn’t have faith in God.”
The “walls” you face in your life might not be literal or physical. They might be emotional or relational. And it’s okay to feel intimidated or frightened by the walls in your life. As Katie notes, it would be unhealthy not to appreciate the significance of a major challenge.
But, like Katie, you can rest secure in the truth that God will not condemn you if you can’t get to the top of your wall—or if it takes you hundreds of attempts. God is more concerned in your faithful effort—an effort built on your confidence in His love for you.3
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again
I believe that failing is part of every success. As John Maxwell says, “We can fail forward.” History is filled with examples of people who are famous for doing great things—yet if we study their lives, we find that they failed miserably before they succeeded. Some of them failed numerous times before they ever succeeded at anything. Their real strength was not their talent as much as it was their tenacity. A person who refuses to give up will always succeed, eventually.
Consider these examples:
• Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded.4
• NBA superstar Michael Jordan was once cut from his high school basketball team.
• After his first audition, screen legend Fred Astaire received the following assessment from an MGM executive: “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.”
• Best-selling author Max Lucado had his first book rejected by 14 publishers before finding one that was willing to give him a chance.
• A so-called football expert once said of two-time Super Bowl-winning coach Vince Lombardi, “He possesses minimal football knowledge. Lacks motivation.”
• Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because he lacked ideas. Later, he went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.
• Upon his election as U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln was called “a baboon” by a newspaper in Illinois, his home state. The paper went on to say that the American people “would be better off if he were assassinated.”
• A young Burt Reynolds was once told he couldn’t act. At the same time, his pal Clint Eastwood was told he would never make it in the movies because his Adam’s apple was too big.5
The people listed in the examples above succeeded in a variety of different endeavors, but they had one thing in common: perseverance. succeeded because he had a classic case of confidence. A refusal to give up is one of the symptoms of confidence. I encourage you to keep trying, and if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again!"

Copyright © Joyce Meyer 2006