I’ve been told lately that girls like men with confidence. Shocker. For most of my life, I was seriously lacking in the confidence department and thus my dating life has read like a sad country song by Patsy Cline. But a conversation with some married friends got me thinking.

Maybe to be confident, I should act confident. You could say pretend to be confident. Do all the motions of confidence until the actions become habits, and the habits become a lifestyle. In other words, I act like who I will become instead of who I am. Make sense?

In the same way, we are called to act not out of present sinfulness, but out of who we will be in Christ. We will overcome, so we act like overcomers now. We will all be full-time worshippers, so we act that way now. We live out of the promises of God like they are already ours.

I don’t create my own reality by thinking it. But when I live out God’s reality, it becomes my own reality. I become the person God has already declared me to be: a completely righteous carbon copy of Jesus Christ. Granted, I don’t get 100% there, but I go a lot further than if I just live out of present guilt, shame, and fear.

Don’t let anyone or anything else tell you who you are or where you are going. Don’t even listen to your own feelings and thoughts, because they will lie to you at times. Believe and live out what God says of you and how He feels about you. Live out of belovedness and son (or daughter)-ship. Live like the victory’s already won, because when Jesus said, “It is finished!”, he MEANT IT!

From now on, no more bowing to the idols of self-doubt and fear and shame. We say to those and other lies of the devil, “You can go to hell!” Satan has no more authority over God’s children any more and he has no right any longer to speak to our minds and hearts. At the name of Jesus, he must LEAVE!

Believe that this Christmas and live out of the empty tomb and the resurrected Christ while you adore the infant Christ in the manger. We have everything and we have what it takes because we have every bit of Christ, and better yet, Christ has every part of us! Christ in you, the hope of glory!