self-confidence

181:1.8A cer­tain amount of both sto­icism and op­ti­mism are ser­vice­able in liv­ing a life on earth, but nei­ther has aught to do with that su­perb peace which the Son of God be­stows upon his breth­ren in the flesh. The peace which Mi­chael gives his chil­dren on earth is that very peace which filled his own soul when he him­self lived the mor­tal life in the flesh and on this very world. The peace of Je­sus is the joy and sat­is­fac­tion of a God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual who has achieved the tri­umph of learn­ing fully how to do the will of God while liv­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh. The peace of Je­sus’ mind was founded on an ab­so­lute hu­man faith in the ac­tu­al­ity of the di­vine Fa­ther’s wise and sym­pa­thetic over­care. Je­sus had trou­ble on earth, he has even been falsely called the “man of sor­rows,” but in and through all of these ex­pe­ri­ences he en­joyed the com­fort of that con­fi­dence which ever em­pow­ered him to pro­ceed with his life pur­pose in the full as­sur­ance that he was achiev­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

111:6.9Of all the dan­gers which be­set man’s mor­tal na­ture and jeop­ar­dize his spir­i­tual in­tegrity, pride is the great­est. Cour­age is val­or­ous, but ego­tism is vain­glo­ri­ous and sui­ci­dal. Rea­son­able self-con­fi­dence is not to be de­plored. Man’s abil­ity to tran­scend him­self is the one thing which dis­tin­guishes him from the an­i­mal king­dom.

181:2.27Then the Mas­ter went over to Si­mon Pe­ter, who stood up as Je­sus ad­dressed him: “Pe­ter, I know you love me, and that you will ded­i­cate your life to the pub­lic procla­ma­tion of this gospel of the king­dom to Jew and gen­tile, but I am dis­tressed that your years of such close as­so­ci­a­tion with me have not done more to help you think be­fore you speak. What ex­pe­ri­ence must you pass through be­fore you will learn to set a guard upon your lips? How much trou­ble have you made for us by your thought­less speak­ing, by your pre­sump­tu­ous self-con­fi­dence! And you are des­tined to make much more trou­ble for your­self if you do not mas­ter this frailty. You know that your breth­ren love you in spite of this weak­ness, and you should also un­der­stand that this short­com­ing in no way im­pairs my af­fec­tion for you, but it lessens your use­ful­ness and never ceases to make trou­ble for you. But you will un­doubt­edly re­ceive great help from the ex­pe­ri­ence you will pass through this very night. And what I now say to you, Si­mon Pe­ter, I like­wise say to all your breth­ren here as­sem­bled: This night you will all be in great dan­ger of stum­bling over me. You know it is writ­ten, ‘The shep­herd will be smit­ten and the sheep will be scat­tered abroad.’ When I am ab­sent, there is great dan­ger that some of you will suc­cumb to doubts and stum­ble be­cause of what be­falls me. But I prom­ise you now that I will come back to you for a lit­tle while, and that I will then go be­fore you into Gal­i­lee.”

194:0.1About one o’clock, as the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers were en­gaged in prayer, they all be­came aware of a strange pres­ence in the room. At the same time these dis­ci­ples all be­came con­scious of a new and pro­found sense of spir­i­tual joy, se­cu­rity, and con­fi­dence. This new con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual strength was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a strong urge to go out and pub­licly pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and the good news that Je­sus had risen from the dead.