Jesus Is Greater Than _______________.

Fully Confident

Do you have a hard time trusting people?  Think about it.  I mean really trusting people...?  I think for a lot of us, confidence or assurance are words we don't use much.  Yeah, we will say in a whim that we trust people, or we have confidence that they are who they say they are or will do what they promise to do.  But really, do we actually mean that?  When it comes down to it, when asked to bet your life on that "assurance"...would you?
The truth is, we live in a broken world.  Another way to say it, is that we live in a fallen world filled with sin.  This means that trust and assurance are hard to come by because quite frankly, people let us down and the things of this world that promise us anything and everything...well...oftentimes don't come through.
Here is our issue.  Most of us have tried to put our full confidence and assurance in something or someone and it has let us down in a obviously hard way.  For others of us, we haven't found what we were looking for when we put our confidence and assurance in something, and we are left wondering "Is this it?"
Here are some examples...
- Yours parents let you down
- Your closest friend lets you down
- You put all your confidence in being a great athlete, only to find out, its not totally satisfying
- You try to master a skill or ability to win people's approval only to find out, they don't care, or if they do, you don't really care that they care...know the feeling?
We go our entire lives trying to find full assurance and confidence...something can rest in...something that won't let us down, let us fall, or leave us feeling empty.  Problem is, we won't find that in this life...it has got to be something out of this world...it has got to be Jesus.
Are you fully confident that Jesus is who He says He is?  That He will do what we promises to do?  Using the analogy of a carabiner, are you fully confident that Jesus can hold you...that He won't let you go...that He really does love you and nothing can change that...?
As you begin a new school year surrounded by a bunch of things that want your full confidence...our prayer is that you will find that Jesus is greater than anything else in this world and the only one we can find full confidence and assurance in!

Use these questions and passages of scripture to help you diagnose where you are when it comes to full confidence in Jesus.

1. How do you define what confidence is?

2. What does it look like to have partial confidence vs. full confidence?  Is full confidence even possible?

3. How have you been let down by something or someone in your life that you had confidence in?

4. Read Hebrews chapter 11 this week a few times.  What seems to be the theme between faith (confidence enough to move you) and actions?

5. Describe your relationship with Jesus?  On a scale of 1-10, where is your confidence level?

6. Sometimes we feel like we can never be good enough...never have enough faith...never be as confidence as the people in Hebrews 11 were...and
we end up feeling guilty. Put look at some of those people...Abraham, Moses, David...these guys didn't have perfect confidence in God.
- Read Hebrews 11:26...the key looking towards the reward...looking to Jesus.
- What does looking to Jesus look like in your life as a teen?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His Glory and Grace

Join us at Matt & Amanda's this Thursday night at 7pm as we take this first week of "Fully Confident" deeper in our lives and with each other!