CONFIDENCE IN OUR GIFTEDNESS ALONE by Rory Noland

I was challenged by these words by Rory Noland in his chapter "Servanthood Versus Stardom" on his book The Heart of the Artist (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999) (p. 57):

"The third barrier to true servanthood occurs when we ut all our confidence in our giftedness, our natural talent. In Philippians 3:3 Paul says that he puts "no confidence in the flesh." Yet we stand onstage sometimes and perform with a man-made confidence instead of a God-dependent confidence. One of the things that prevents us from experiencing God's fullest blessing on our lives is our self-sufficiency. If we think we can make it on our own because we're smart enough or talented enough, we're sadly mistaken. Sometimes a vocalist will stand onstage and not be quite one hundred percent, because he or she feels a cold coming on. At times like these our confidence is not in our talent but in the power of God to use us in our weakness. When artists have more confidence in their giftedness than in the Lord, they leave the stage more worried about how they looked or sounded than about whether God used them. They're more concerned with technique than with substance."