Our culture encourages bold self-confidence. How often have we heard the phrase “you’ve got to sell yourself”? Commonly, this leads to vanity, bragging, one-upmanship, and quite frankly, crass narcissistic behavior.

At its best, boasting is a sign of confidence. Most of us wouldn’t dream of making any big, boastful claims unless we were sure they were true, we could back them up, we could deliver on them, and we had 100% confidence in them.

Most of the important stuff that happens in the world, and even in our own lives, is outside of our complete control and outside of our area of full expertise. So, while we may be able to ‘boast’ about our accomplishments, or our talents, or our performance, the scope of our boasting ought to remain exceedingly small.

Realizing this should lead us towards a natural sense of modesty and humility. There’s no shame in being modest and humble! In fact, people who are modest and humble are at the greatest advantage to listen and learn, change and grow, and develop care and compassion. Modesty and humility, it turns out, are also groundworks for a thriving life of faith.

The Scriptures praise humility and condemn pride EVERY time. Our natural and right relationship with God begins with humble obedience in the face of almighty power and unending grace and love.

So, if there is boasting to be done, we need to boast in something/someone who is more certain, powerful, reliable, and enduring than ourselves. The only boasting portrayed in a positive light in the Scriptures is the boasting faithful people do about God. “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (2 Corinthians 10:17). Indeed, it is by God’s grace alone, through Jesus, that we have been forgiven our brokenness, redeemed from a life without God, and offered new and full life with God. Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Romans:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”(Romans 5:1-5 NRSV)

Not only do we boast about who God is and what God has done for us in Christ, we boast every time we see the grace and love of God break through even in the most challenging times of our lives. These sufferings produce endurance (because we trust God to see us through). This endurance produces character (because we grow in faith and discipline each time we endure). And, this character produces hope (because again and again we see in our lives that God is true, certain, faithful, and delivers).

So, this week let’s boast boldly, not in ourselves, but in the God who is the creator, redeemer, and sustainer of all things.