By John Thiel, Confidence Without Pride

Scripture reading: Hebrews 6:11 And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: 12 That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Confidence without pride, this raises a very interesting question. Is it possible to be filled with confidence and assurance and know what we know and yet not be filled with pride? Is there such a reality to be absolutely confident that where we stand is absolutely correct and yet not be filled with pride? This question is addressed by the Lord in the following scripture:

Isaiah 30:15 For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.

Here God proposes an assurance and a confidence. Yet the people that He assures are standing in something else.

Isaiah 32:17 And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.

God proposes a confidence, an assurance that fills you with quiet peace and absolute restfulness and yet there is something in humanity that when God is proposing this, humanity says, no. Why? Why did God say, and ye would not? There is the background of why they said no:

Isaiah 30:9 … this [is] a rebellious people, lying children, children [that] will not hear the law of the LORD: 10 Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: 11 Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. … 16 But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift.

Here is an attitude of humanity that He describes as, we want our own way not yours. We do not want to rely upon you. We want to rely upon our own resources. We will flee upon horses. We’re going to rely upon our resources. We see that to have the confidence and assurance that is offered by God is to lay down our own self-assurance, that is what is conveyed. Humanity has an assurance of its own and becomes proud of its own capabilities and resources and God says, I want to give you an assurance that is much different to yours.

The pride of man, the assurance that comes from His own resources is something that God repulses.

James 4:6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse [your] hands, [ye] sinners; and purify [your] hearts, [ye] double minded. 9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and [your] joy to heaviness. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

The assurance, the confidence, the uplifting must come from God, not from our own source. You know what it is in the society around us, people always want to keep a good face. They always want to present a strong front. God says here that to be the centre of the party, stop trying to put something up there. Just humble yourself. Be afflicted and mourn and weep, let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. If you want to be lifted up, lay down your own self-uplifting. Totally resign yourself to me, then I will lift you up.

We now let the scriptures try to unfold to us the answer to this question of confidence and yet total humility.

Jeremiah 9:23 Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise [man] glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty [man] glory in his might, let not the rich [man] glory in his riches: 24 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I [am] the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these [things] I delight, saith the LORD.

He repulses the proud. If I am going to delight in you, then lay down your opinion about your wisdom. Lay down your opinion about your might. Lay it down. Let your laughter and your joy and your exuberance come down. Trust only in what I am going to lift you up with. Your wisdom is not to be gloried in. But it’s wisdom! That’s interesting isn’t it? When we show wisdom, we become very smug about ourselves. I’ve got wisdom. He says lay that down. Your own strength to be able to persevere, lay that down. It is only one thing that you should glory in and that is Me saith the Lord.

Many who profess the name of Christ and claim to be looking for His speedy coming, know not what it is to suffer for Christ’s sake. {EW 113.2}

Suffering? What’s that? For Christ’s sake, what does that mean?

Their hearts are not subdued by grace, and they are not dead to self, as is often shown in various ways. {EW 113.2}

It is shown in various ways whether a person is dead to self or not.

At the same time they are talking of having trials. But the principal cause of their trials is an unsubdued heart, which makes self so sensitive that it is often crossed. {EW 113.2}

When your self is being crossed, what do you do? Oh I’m so sensitive, I protect myself. That sort of thing.

If such could realize what it is to be a humble follower of Christ, a true Christian, they would begin to work in good earnest and begin right. {EW 113.2}

What is the right thing?

They would first die to self, then be instant in prayer, and check every passion of the heart. {EW 113.2}

Now here comes the direct counsel:

Give up your self-confidence and self-sufficiency, brethren, and follow the meek Pattern. Ever keep Jesus in your mind that He is your example and you must tread in His footsteps. {EW 113.2}

Give up your self-confidence and self-sufficiency. It’s easy to say that isn’t it? What does it mean?

Many who profess the name of Christ and claim to be looking for His speedy coming, know not what it is to suffer for Christ’s sake. {EW 113.2}

To lay down self is a suffering. It is a suffering that I have observed over a long period of time both in myself and in my fellow brothers and sisters. It’s an actual well-nigh impossibility. How can I deny what I feel, what I’m personally convinced of about my judgment? How can I give that up? This is a big problem. We want to look at an example to understand what it means to be an honourable person, to be somebody who can be absolutely assured and yet is totally filled with a sense of their own unworthiness. That’s Moses.

Moses

It was implicit faith in God that made Moses what he was. {CT 408.2}

Did God honour Moses? It was implicit faith in God that made Moses what he was.

According to all that the Lord commanded him, so he did. All the learning of the wise men could not make Moses a channel through which the Lord could work, until he lost his self-confidence, realized his own helplessness, and put his trust in God; until he was willing to obey God’s commands, whether they seemed to his human reason to be right or not… {CT 408.2}

Let those words really sink into living reality. Moses was trained under the wise men of Egypt. You know what it’s like when you listen to some of these wise men out there, oh, they shoot you down, they’ve got wisdom, they’ve got knowledge. Here am I a little nobody and we think, yes, we’ve got to go to these colleges, we’ve got to go to these places to be well trained. That’s what the world is being trained to think. But Moses did not rely upon this. It actually says that.

All the learning of the wise men could not make Moses a channel through which the Lord could work, until he… {CT 408.2}

Until he what?

…until he lost his self-confidence, {CT 408.2}

What’s that? Lose your self-confidence? That is contrary to a natural state of humanity. To lose his self-confidence, and realise his own helplessness, and connected with that to put his trust in God.

…until he was willing to obey God’s commands, whether they seemed to his human reason to be right or not…. {CT 408.2}

According to our human reason, how many times have we come up face to face with something that God has communicated to us and we go, I can’t see that? This is what is happening because we’ve got the testimony of Jesus in the Spirit of prophecy. I see this being done continually, I cannot see light in that therefore I will not practice it. But it’s plainly written. It’s plainly expressed by the Spirit of prophecy. It’s God’s commands. Moses did it whether his reason told him it was right or not. There are many people that over the years I have studied and laboured hard with to show them and to lead them to become convinced, yes, that is reason, that makes good sense. But then they changed their minds, because according to all human ideas that does not make sense. If God has said it and I can’t see any sense in it, should I do it? This is the challenge. Moses was a perfect example.

Explore now this contrasting element of perfect assurance and confidence void of all pride and human self-confidence and self-importance. That’s what my greatest burden always is. It’s easy enough to address this as we’ve just done, but how does this translate into my living experience? There is the instruction that we need to explore in living application and the direction that is given by the apostle is very powerful.

Hebrews 6:11 And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: 12 That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Assurance of what? Assurance of hope. Hope? Hope in what? What actually is hope? This is an assurance, an absolute assurance that this is right, but it’s a hope and an assurance in hope.

Romans 8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?

It is often stated, I don’t believe unless I see it. I don’t trust anything unless I see it. But we have to trust something that we don’t see. That is how we’re going to be saved. That does not gel with a confidence that is natural to humanity.

Romans 8:25 But if we hope for that we see not, [then] do we with patience wait for [it].

To follow those who by patience wait for it; those who’ve gone before us, who have believed in something that they did not see, who according to human reason were ridiculed for their kind of faith. And Moses is such a perfect example. He endured as seeing Him who is invisible. He had hope, and this is what we are admonished to understand, the assurance of hope, something that you can’t see, something that doesn’t make sense to the human senses.

Lamentations 3:24 The LORD [is] my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. 25 The LORD [is] good unto them that wait for him, to the soul [that] seeketh him. 26 [It is] good that [a man] should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.

Hope? Assurance of hope? With an assurance that we are saved by hope, we quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It doesn’t show up. It doesn’t satisfy the human reason, but God has said so we remain very consistently confident. We don’t waver. We know that what has been given to us is of the Lord but it may not make sense to my human reasoning. Again, this is not natural to human nature.

Inside of every one of us, the quietness and confidence promoted by God struggles with the restlessness of human, self opinionated impulse. Examine that as I continually do within myself. There is a struggle as to seeing something that by human-opinionated impulse you must run in and deal with it, and on the other hand the Lord says no. Remember the story of Uzza? According to his impulse he saw the ark on the back of the horse cart ready to fall according to his observation and he reached out to protect it and he was struck dead. Should he have touched it? God had said, no one is to touch it. But it was going to fall! According to reason it was. But God said no. Simple direction from God and human impulse, self-opinionated impulse will go to and do something which is not God’s direction.

This is demonstrated again in the experience of the disciples. Jesus Christ, the Prince of peace said when he was amongst them:

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.

The last part is a very important phrase there. While He the Prince of peace was there and saying I’m going to give this to you, His disciples were struggling among themselves. How true that is with the Christian circles? Christ Himself is among them and they struggle amongst themselves as with Israel of old. He wanted them to have that peace, comfort and that confidence, as Isaiah 30. But notice now as Jesus did with the disciples, God did with the Hebrews. We were reading about the quietness and confidence but they said, no, I can’t see any reason in this, we will do what will do, and God says okay then, you do what you think you have to do.

Isaiah 30:16 But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses;

We’re going to rely on our own resources.

Isaiah 30:16 …therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift. 17 One thousand [shall flee] at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill.

This was before Babylon came and took over and they said, no, no, no, we’re going to do it, we’re going to resist Babylon. He said to Jeremiah tell them you are not to resist, you are to submit yourself. No! We will not rest in that! Because they said this, He said right, you will go ahead and do it.

Isaiah 30:18 And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD [is] a God of judgment: blessed [are] all they that wait for him. 19 For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee. 20 And [though] the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: 21 And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This [is] the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.

Although the Israelites resisted God’s offer of perfect peace and perfect confidence, they said no and God said alright, I’m going to wait. And He waited and everything happened because they would not and they ended up in Babylonian captivity. Then there in Babylonian captivity, they were actually singing their lamentation about the fact that they were under the trees of Babylon crying and singing for their promised land. The Lord said yes, I’m going to wait and after seventy years then you’re going to know.

This is the story of how God would then send the true messengers and they would recognise not only the one He sends them but they will remember Isaiah and they will remember Jeremiah and they realise now we’ve gone through the affliction, we are in desperate straits and the Lord says, I’ve been waiting for this, now I will show you. They like Moses and the disciples learnt a very important thing, to willingly obey God’s commands whether they seemed to their human reason to be right or not. What Isaiah said and what Jeremiah said, did not seem right. What Jesus said did not seem right to the disciples. How many times Peter said it and at the end he was really vocal. He said it shall not be so! So human reasoning continues to reveal itself. But Moses learned the lesson, they learned the lesson, and some among Israel learnt the lesson and this is written for our admonition.

As the Hebrews in the wilderness wanderings went through their experience of the Lord leading them like Moses, we read:

It was not the teaching of the schools of Egypt that enabled Moses to triumph over his enemies, but an ever-abiding, unflinching faith, a faith that did not fail under the most trying circumstances. At the command of God, Moses advanced, although apparently there was nothing ahead for his feet to tread upon. {CT 408.3}

Stop to think here what this is saying. Can you move forward when you don’t know where you’re going? You don’t know where to put your feet and God said move. That’s the kind of experience that is to be learnt, that according to human reason it doesn’t make sense but God said do.

Whatever subject it is.

More than a million people were depending on him, and he led them forward step by step, day by day. God permitted these lonely travels through the wilderness that His people might obtain an experience in enduring hardship, and that when they were in peril they might know that there was relief and deliverance in God alone. Thus they might learn to know and to trust God, and to serve Him with a living faith. {CT 408.3}

This is the lesson to learn that like the Hebrews in their wilderness wanderings, the lessons that we were to learn from that are applicable to us that we like Moses and the children of Israel would move and act according to the directions of God even if it didn’t make sense to us. Look at the experience of the disciples, their hopes were dashed! They had expected according to their reading of the Scriptures together with the Pharisees, that Jesus would come to be king and what happened? They were absolutely shattered. All their expectations were shattered. This is what the Lord will let happen to us too. What we think has to happen is not going to happen the way that we interpret something. I’ve watched this over the years within Adventism. Expectations and they do not happen the way they expect. But they read it, they expected something different to what was actually meant by God. The humiliation of dashed hopes, the humiliation of having made plans and they were dashed having expectations but they are shattered having structured certain things and spent a lot of money to make something look good and right and it falls to pieces. Nothing is more humiliating than that. When nothing is left but God’s pure straight word and intention in that word which has been miserably misinterpreted by the disciples, by the churches then in that shattered condition, in that condition of absolute loss of sound conviction that what I believed was right and it’s not after all, God’s word comes and says:

Isaiah 30:20 And [though] the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: 21 And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This [is] the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.

God comes to the rescue. When everything false down around us that we expected, God comes to the rescue. Look how Jesus came to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and to them sitting up there in the little room, scared stiff of the Pharisees. Jesus came to the rescue and restored and taught and now that little company, that tiny little company, the Lord used to arouse the others in Israel. Is it going to be any different for us?

You know very well how all Job had built up was lost, absolutely lost. There he was sitting with boils. Have you ever had a boil? Just one, one big boil. He had lost everything to all his senses. Everything that he had built up was shattered. Then he was full of boils, not just one. The disaster of the experience was; God has left me, this is just too much. This is the kind of mind exercise that affects people when they are in that position. I am describing to you from God’s word the kind of experience where pride is completely shattered because everything that the prided-mind has been trying to establish has been disastrously removed.

Job 23:8 Behold, I go forward, but he [is] not [there]; and backward, but I cannot perceive him:

Where is God? I can’t see Him anymore.

Job 23:9 On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold [him]: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see [him]: 10 But he knoweth the way that I take: [when] he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. 11 My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.

To stand firm even if the heavens fall. This is what Job did. These are the people who will be absolutely sure that when God has stepped in and showed them the way out of their darkness they know, they have the assurance, they are confident but not in themselves because themselves have been totally shattered. It’s the cycle of this kind of experience that was expressed by the psalmist. Here the psalmist was shattered and like Job, he came to the position where he thought oh, where is God? The people would say to him, where is thy God?

Psalm 42:3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where [is] thy God?

Where is thy God? He goes through this horrible discovery of his absolute helplessness and dependence and he says:

Psalm 42:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and [why] art thou disquieted in me?

Can you see how he’s trying to get himself back out of this disquieted condition, this oppressed depression? He says, I should know better. Why am I like this?

Psalm 42:5 … hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him [for] the help of his countenance.

Okay, at the moment I’m all disquieted, but He’s going to help me out of it. Like with the Hebrews in Isaiah, God said, I’ll quietly wait, you just do what you have to do and then you’ll meet your disquieted condition and then what I promised you will become real to you. It is quietness and assurance when your heart condemns you.

Psalm 42:11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God:

The assurance of hope. Where? In God.

Psalm 42:11 …for I shall yet praise him, [who is] the health of my countenance, and my God.

It is our privilege to feel our weakness, our unworthiness, {TDG 209.3}

To feel it, not just not make a profession that I am weak and I can’t do anything, not just to make a profession that I rely heavily on the Lord, no. It is our privilege to feel our weakness, our unworthiness,

…and then claim the help that God has provided for us. {TDG 209.3

Then when I feel my weakness, it is then my privilege to claim the help that God has provided for us. He said, I’ll wait patiently. You go and do what you have to do. You go and say that thing that you have to say. You do it all and then when you’ve met your experience, I’ve waited and now I’m going to show you my salvation. It is my privilege to claim His help. He is so kind.

Psalm 32:8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. 9 Be ye not as the horse, [or] as the mule, [which] have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.

God is not going to deal with us like a horse. Sometimes people expect Him to do that. Sometimes people expect God to just pull them into line. Well He says, no, you do what you have to do. I’ve called you, I’ve pointed out to you this is what I want you to have, but you said, no I want it this way. Okay you’re free. I’m not going to hold you like a horse in bridle. You go and do what you have to do but you’re going to learn.

Psalm 32:8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.

Don’t go the other way. Stay under my guidance, just do what I say. I see things differently to you. This is the assurance He wants us to get to. It is in that position that He wants us, a position of our total conscious knowledge that it is God who I am to follow directly every step of the way in His instructions that we have in truth and this truth is not of our own contriving but of God. There is our assurance. There is our confidence. Nothing that in my own self I am finding confidence about. Nothing. It’s all been shattered. I have nothing to rely on inside of myself. It has been proven. All my heavens have fallen down around me. And now God says now you can learn the assurance and the confidence that I want you to have. I will guide you with my eye. That’s a beautiful way to walk with God, to just poise the ear and the eyes to the Lord, what is it Lord? Nothing. Alright. What is it? Ah. That’s what I want you to do. Right. I do it and then that’s it. I’ve forgotten about it. I’ve just done what the Lord said, that’s all. This is where the Lord wants us.

Hope, the assurance of hope. As it said, hope thou in God. When all your hopes have been shattered and all that’s left is the God who is going to lead you and direct you correctly, this is the direction:

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. 7 Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.

We will be brought and we have been brought into strait places and we need God’s way out of it not our own conjecturing. It must be God’s way and He has promised if you trust not your own understanding but trust in the Lord, He will direct thy path. The second part is the discovery of my incapability and waiting upon the Lord and following His direction, hoping in the unseen.

Hebrews 6:12 That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Who are we to be followers of? Those who’ve gone through that experience, those who relied entirely upon God. To be followers of them. Followers of Moses, followers of the disciples, followers of who in these modern times?

Proverbs 11:14 Where no counsel [is], the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors [there is] safety.

The multitude of counsellors is safety. Who are we to follow? A great multitude of those who’ve been before us. Isn’t that written in Hebrews 12? Having just gone through chapter 11 where all these people of faith were laid out before us, Moses being among them, it now says:

Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

Be followers of them, that great multitude of counsellors. How many times we fall into the trap of thinking we’re going to have a multitude of counsellors today? But has there always been a multitude of counsellors in every given circumstance? It’s always been a little remnant that have had to rely on the multitude who had gone before them and they are the ones that continue faithfully. That’s the counsel that is given here, to be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Hebrews chapter 11, faith and patience. This multitude is our dependence that we should follow.

Specific for our times we who are standing here today are called upon to rely upon those mentioned in the following statement, to rely upon their counsels. We must get it very clear what our position must be, not to come along and think we know better than them. The heading of the statement is very adequate: “Let Pioneers Identify Truth”. Indeed let pioneers identify it. Let’s rely on them in regards to getting our bearings.

When the power of God testifies as to what is truth, that truth is to stand forever as the truth. {CW 31.2}

The early Adventists were dependent upon God to lead them out of their disappointment, do you remember that? For that first generation of Adventists who had gone through the disappointment, this was very fresh in their experience and they were being hailed down by all their opposers, you come from those people who thought that Jesus was coming in 1844. They had to fight their way through all that. They went through an experience of shattered hopes and came out with the Lord showing them what was right to do. The teachers were no longer hidden from them. The Lord directed them according to Isaiah 30. God had shown them and they relied upon what God had shown them.

No aftersuppositions, contrary to the light God has given are to be entertained. Men will arise with interpretations of Scripture which are to them truth, but which are not truth. {CW 31.2}

That’s the thing. Interpreting things that to us are truth but they are no truth. Men will arise doing that.

The truth for this time, God has given us as a foundation for our faith. He Himself has taught us what is truth. One will arise, and still another, with new light which contradicts the light that God has given under the demonstration of His Holy Spirit. {CW 31.2}

What did these people rely on? The demonstration of the Holy Spirit. That’s what happened to the Reformers. It was the demonstration of the Holy Spirit that gave them courage and strength to stand on the original pioneer truths and they were slaughtered for their faith, they were shot in the First World War. Only a few people were left, and they became God’s faithful people then, the Reform movement. That’s the reality. They stood firm on what God had shown them even though it didn’t seem like it was the right way to go to the great majority.

A few are still alive who passed through the experience gained in the establishment of this truth. {CW 32.1}

That was written in Sister White’s time. They made the experience of what I’ve just described here in our research. They went through discouraged moments. They were used of God and He showed them the truth and we are to rely on and follow them.

God has graciously spared their lives to repeat and repeat till the close of their lives, the experience through which they passed even as did John the apostle till the very close of his life. And the standard-bearers who have fallen in death, are to speak through the reprinting of their writings. I am instructed that thus their voices are to be heard. They are to bear their testimony as to what constitutes the truth for this time. {CW 32.1}

We are not to receive the words of those who come with a message that contradicts the special points of our faith. They gather together a mass of Scripture, and pile it as proof around their asserted theories. This has been done over and over again during the past fifty years. And while the Scriptures are God’s word, and are to be respected, the application of them, if such application moves one pillar from the foundation that God has sustained these fifty years, is a great mistake. He who makes such an application knows not the wonderful demonstration of the Holy Spirit that gave power and force to the past messages that have come to the people of God. (1905.) {CW 32.2}

Experience is what she is talking about. Not just the doctrines but how those doctrines came into existence through their experience. When human opinion, human confidence and human impulse were laid down by God’s orchestration, the Lord could then show them the truth. For us today, where are we to get our assurance? From our personal dependence upon God and following those who have done the same thing. That is what we read in our scripture reading. It is humbling to be followers of others. It is humbling, but we can safely follow the presentations of those who have humbly followed God’s revelations.

It is my prayer that He will grant us an assurance and a confidence of this kind of caliber. It will protect us from pride. And may we understand the title of this sermon, confidence without pride.

Amen.