Stop doubting yourself by putting more faith in God to do his part

Have you ever thought your life could be much happier if only you could stop doubting yourself?

Most singles have. None of us comes by solid self-confidence in one fell swoop. For most of us, it's a lifetime struggle.

Ironically, the best way to stop doubting yourself is to stop doubting God.

Whose responsibility
is it, anyway?

We singles put a lot of

pressure on ourselves, often too much. Some of us have the odd belief that we should be able to do anything, that we should be Superman or Superwoman.

Part of the problem is that we're trying to live up to someone else's expectations instead of our own. We want our parents, siblings, friends, church or whoever to be proud of us. We want to achieve great things, even when we're not sure what those great things are supposed to be.

We feel responsible for areas that are not ours to worry about, but are God's responsibility.

It's hard to stop doubting yourself when you're trying to do God's job.

Misplaced faith

We place our faith in ourselves instead of in God. We're filled with doubt over our competency because we're trying to do something that's not our business in the first place! It's God's.

If you have a tendency to be a control freak, you want to do it all. If you leave something for others, they might mess up, you think. Even God.

So you put your faith in your own abilities. You can't stop doubting yourself, but the real problem is that you're out of your league. You should doubt yourself when you're trying to play God.

Too proud to ask for help

Putting less faith in yourself and more faith in God is the surest way to stop doubting yourself. Most of us don't turn to him often enough. We fail to grow because we're not sure he'll help us.

Maybe you've failed in the past. Those memories stay with you, like a piece of tape stuck to the bottom of your shoe. You mistakenly reason, "Once a failure, always a failure." You start seeing yourself as a bad luck person.

Not only do you feel unsure about yourself, you even doubt that God would want to help somebody like you.

Wrong! God is in the business of helping his children. To stop doubting yourself, quit believing that another failure might kill you, and quit believing that God is unwilling or incapable of coming to your aid.

How we learn

We only learn by trying, not by hiding. Some things can only be accomplished by trial and error. When you start accepting your errors as necessary steps to show you how not to do something, your success is inevitable.

Counting on God to pick you up, dust you off and encourage you to try again if you fail is vital. Trust him. Put your faith in him. Put some pressure on him and take it off yourself. Believe me, he can handle it.

As you start to succeed, even in small things, your confidence will rise. When you build a string of victories, an occasional defeat won't seem so catastrophic. By allowing the all-powerful, all-competent, all-wise One to play a bigger role, you will stop doubting yourself. You have an unbeatable ally who will occasionally let you stumble, so you'll learn to depend on him more, but now you've learned the secret.

God pours his power into your life as you surrender to him. Then you'll stop doubting yourself for good, and pray like the Psalmist:

"The LORD is my strength and my shield;
my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.
My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks
to him in song." (Psalm 28:7)

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