A while back I came across a statistic that stopped me in my tracks. A leadership conference speaker mentioned that seven out of ten pastors in America were looking for other work. When I dug into the research myself — Barna Group, Lifeway — I couldn’t find that exact figure, but what I did find was arguably more alarming.
Leaders reporting that they felt less resilient than before. Pastors describing a sense of being ghosted — not by strangers, but by the very people they had given their lives to serve. Budgets under pressure. No real time off. A creeping, quiet discouragement that had settled in like damp in an old building. And then there’s the thing nobody says out loud: there is an Enemy, and leaders are a giant target.
I want to talk about something we don’t address often enough: confidence.
The writer of Hebrews doesn’t mince his words:
“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” — Hebrews 10:35-36
The word translated “confidence” here is the Greek παρρησία (parrēsia), and it carries far more meaning than our English word suggests. In classical Athens, παρρησία was a civic term with sharp political edges — the right and obligation of a free citizen to speak openly and boldly in the public assembly, even at personal cost. To possess παρρησία was to have standing. To lose it was to lose your voice.
The writer of Hebrews reaches for this loaded word deliberately, and crucially he has already used it once in the same chapter: in 10:19, παρρησία describes the bold access to God himself — the right to enter the Most Holy Place — that the blood of Jesus has thrown open to every believer. These two uses form an intentional literary bracket around the whole passage.
What you must not throw away is not self-belief, not optimism, not willpower. It is the Christ-won, blood-purchased right to approach God directly.
That changes everything about how we read the warning. And notice the verb: ἀποβάλητε — “throw away” — is active and deliberate. This isn’t a confidence that slowly erodes. It’s a confidence that gets handed over.
I’ve come to believe there’s a direct attack on the confidence of leaders right now. And when we lose confidence, we make predictable trades: comfort over care, control over courage, caution over conviction. We downsize our vision. We lose perspective. We survive instead of lead.
There’s a moment in the Gospels I keep returning to. Immediately after Jesus’ baptism — that extraordinary moment where heaven opens, the Spirit descends, and the Father speaks — the very next verse says he was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. From the heights of absolute confidence to the testing ground of absolute pressure.
And what does Satan target? Twice he opens with the same phrase: “If you are the Son of God…”
This is not just an attack on Jesus’ identity. It is an attack on his confidence. And Matthew 4 gives us three anchors — three unshakeable sources of confidence — that Jesus draws on to defeat every assault.
NT Wright notes that Matthew frames the entire scene as a deliberate echo of Israel’s forty years in the wilderness — Jesus is the true Israel, facing and defeating the same tests that Israel repeatedly failed. Every one of his three responses is drawn from Deuteronomy 6–8, the chapters immediately following Israel’s great confession: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And the Greek word translated “if” (εἰ) in “if you are the Son of God” is better understood as “since” — this is a first-class conditional. Satan isn’t questioning the declaration the Father just made at the Jordan; he is using it as a lever. The question was never are you the Son of God? It was: will you be the kind of Son God intends — or the kind the world expects?
1. Our Confidence Comes from God’s Word
Jesus has been fasting forty days. He’s hungry, isolated, and by any measurable standard, not looking like the Son of God. Satan senses the moment and presses in: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
The real temptation wasn’t food. It was this: do you still believe what God said about you when the evidence is pointing the other way? Because at the Jordan, the Father had said, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” And now, alone and starving in the desert, that voice felt a long way away.
I know that feeling. In November 2017 I woke up one Thursday evening and noticed the left side of my face was dropping. By Friday I was in hospital. Scans confirmed it wasn’t a stroke — it was Bell’s Palsy, and I had it at the most severe level possible.
I preached at Ikon Church that Sunday. I didn’t mention it in the first service — people thought I was having a stroke right there in the pulpit. In the 9:15 service, I told the congregation what had happened. And during the worship that morning, I laid hands on my own face and prayed.
Two things happened. First, I felt a clear rebuke to carry on as normal — not to step aside, not to hide. And then a verse arrived in my mind, from the story of a man with a withered hand who comes to Jesus for healing:
“Then Jesus said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other.” — Matthew 12:13
As whole as the other. I knew God was telling me: this side of your face will be restored just like the other. I held onto that. I kept preaching — including at a friend’s church in the north-east, which was, I’ll be honest with you, not my finest hour.
In less than two weeks, my face was completely restored. When I went back to the consultant six weeks later, he told me this was a miracle. With that level of Bell’s Palsy, full recovery is rare. This particular consultant — who I served alongside on a board of trustees — used that exact word.
Every single person around me in those weeks had a story of someone who never fully recovered. My mum, my aunty, my uncle. The voices of discouragement were real, and they were kindly meant. But I had to learn to say — and I mean really say it, in the middle of the night with my hands on my face — just like the other.
That trust is powerful. Somebody needs it today. Whatever the bad report, whatever the voice of criticism or fear or discouragement — you can believe what God has said.
I hear what you’re saying. But I believe God.
Our confidence comes from God’s word.
2. Our Confidence Comes from Our Conviction That God Is Good
In the second temptation, Satan tries a different angle. He quotes scripture back at Jesus. “If you’re going to trust the Word of God, here’s a verse for you — throw yourself down, and the angels will catch you.” You can almost hear the smirk.
But Jesus isn’t rattled. He quotes back: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
What Jesus is really saying is this: I don’t need to test God to prove that God is for me. His word is enough. My circumstances do not change who God is.
This is the subtler, deeper attack. It’s the same one Satan ran on Adam and Eve in the garden: “Did God really say? God is holding out on you. There’s more for you if you reject him.” You may have heard a version of that voice yourself. You’d be happier in a different role. This leadership is too hard. God just wants to take from you.
And here’s the challenge: this kind of trust is relational, not transactional. Thousands of people followed Jesus, watched him perform miracles, some were even sitting at a meal with him and Lazarus after the resurrection — and still walked away. Because if trust is transactional, you need another transaction to keep going. But if trust is relational, it is anchored in the character of God, not the circumstances of your life.
Job said it devastatingly: “Even though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”
My bad report doesn’t change who God is. My dark season doesn’t change who God is. Nothing changes who God is.
I am convinced that God is good. I am convinced he’s got more for me. I am convinced that the best is yet to come. I am convinced he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, and that life in all its fullness is found in Jesus Christ.
That conviction is not wishful thinking — it is an act of courageous faith. And it is one of the most powerful sources of confidence available to any leader.
Our confidence comes from our conviction that God is good.
3. Our Confidence Comes from Our Worship
The third temptation is the most naked. Satan drops the pretence: “Bow down and worship me, and all the kingdoms of the world are yours.”
Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, once said: “We don’t worship Satan. We worship ourselves.” Whether he knew it or not, he had articulated exactly what Satan was after — not just from Jesus, but from all of us.
Jesus’ answer is unequivocal: “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
The principle is this: where your confidence comes from determines where it will run out. If you worship yourself, your confidence will run to the edge of your ability and no further. If you worship your intellect, it will one day be found lacking. If you worship position or celebrity or wealth, it will never be enough. If you worship comfort, you will never be satisfied.
But when you worship the God who is infinite, all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful — that reservoir of confidence never runs dry. With God there is no shortage of vision, no shortage of wisdom, no shortage of purpose, no shortage of solutions. The ships of wisdom are still sailing.
Notice what Jesus says: worship the Lord your God, and serve him only. Worship is not primarily the songs you sing — it is the one you live for. And the focus of your worship will become the source of your confidence.
Someone once said they would die for Jesus. A friend replied: “Good news — he wants you to live for him first.”
Our confidence comes from our worship.
Don’t Throw It Away
The writer of Hebrews says it plainly: “Do not throw away your confidence.” That verb — throw away — implies an act of will. Confidence can be surrendered. It can be handed over, not just stolen.
The Enemy knows that. He knew it when he came to Jesus in the wilderness. He knows it when he comes to you.
You are better with confidence. You lead better, you love better, you give better, you see further. And you are needed — right now, in this moment, in the church and the world you’re trying to build.
So: go back to God’s word and let it speak. Choose, today, to be convinced that God is good regardless of the evidence to the contrary. And examine the focus of your worship — because whatever sits at the centre of your life will shape the level of your confidence.
The Enemy is after your confidence. But it is not his to take.
What’s your “but” today? What is the thing you need to believe God for in the face of discouragement? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Paul Benger 