Quiet Confidence

Ive been reading Isaiah at the moment. So much in the book has spoken to me and often reminds me of some pretty major parts of my life. As a kid growing up I wasn't the most popular. (My current friends will probably say that nothing has changed...) I was never in any one group of friends but just seemed to hang on the fringes of every group in the school. I could talk to the cool kids or the some of the geeky kids, but was never really excepted by either. I hung out with the sporty guys and the music guys, the science guys and the computer guys. I had friends in most year groups in the school but never had a group of friends I could call my own.

The first 3 years of my secondary school life were not great. I felt alone and nervous, I had issues at home and issues in myself (mostly related to girls...) and my way of coping was just to keep quiet and get on with it. I knew I had strength in me but never figured out how to get it out. Part of me always just assumed that in order be confident I had to be loud, extrovert and the centre of everything.

Isaiah shows us that this really isn't the case. Isaiah 30:15 says 'For thus said the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.' Its odd that Isaiah put these 2 words in the same sentence, because as I said I always thought that quietness and confidence were total opposites.

It wasn't until I was around 14 or 15 that I started to realise that I had something to offer to the people around me and I didn't have to be on the fringes of everybody else's lives. At the time I was taken on by a few key young men from my church back in Somerset. They took me under their wings when I most needed some strong male guidance and allowed me to see that I was capable, that I mattered and that I had something worthwhile to offer. All of these are key messages for a young lad.

I grew in confidence but was still fairly quiet. I still am today sometimes and I still have a tendancy to hang on the fringes of many groups, but I have a quiet confidence, knowing that God loves me, knowing that people that I love and care for feel the same way and knowing that my life matters.