Is Too Much of Your Confidence Put Away in Storage?

It’s spring in the Rockies, which means as I write this I have turned the calendar to April and am watching it snow outside. I’m using these cold spring days to do some cleaning in the crawl space, where we store most of our worldly possessions.

Yesterday I brought up a Rubbermaid filled with years of my work. It contained a stack of Bible study guides I had written for our last church, to go with sermon series. An orange folder held the VBS curriculum I had written for church one year. There were several binders filled with adult Bible studies and AWANA lessons I had written. So many years and hours of heart and soul held in one plastic container. I threw it all away.

Today I am going to tackle the bins filled with the seven years of blood, sweat, and tears I put into creating high school Spanish lessons. Now all in the crawl space collecting cobwebs. I will throw it away. 

Paul’s words came to mind, as he talks to the believers in Philippi about confidence. Could anyone possibly have more reason to put their confidence in the flesh than Paul? He rattles off his past accomplishments and then calls them rubbish compared to knowing Christ NOW. 

“One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13b-14)

I wept over that stack of study guides in my lap. For years I wrote those for every sermon series. Spanish? AWANA? VBS? Bible studies? I can hear Paul add, Pharisee? Zeal? Circumcision? Hebrew of Hebrews? So many good things in the past. So many reasons to be completely confident in the flesh and what has been accomplished.

But is it really a solid confidence if it is in a Rubbermaid sitting on visqueen in a crawl space for years?

Am I pressing on to win the prize, if my heart is resting on the accomplishments of the past?

God has turned my heart toward guiding women to build their homes, and as I focus on this I see a ton of communication out there about clutter. It makes me wonder how much of this clutter is because we hold onto what was for the sake of our inner confidence. Boxes and boxes of what was.

Rubbish?

That’s the word Paul used. All of those laurels he set out on the front curb for the Tuesday morning trash pickup. My goodness does it take a lot of courage to physically hold in your hands what you’ve done in the past and toss it out like yesterday’s salmon bones, empty milk carton, and coffee grounds. 

Can we put our confidence in pressing toward the future God has for us? Future work. Future meaningful relationships. Future good deeds. Nothing to put in a Rubbermaid yet except a wisp of faith.   

What do you literally need to throw away so that you can build confidence in what is ahead instead of what is behind?