When I was a young boy, our family vacation was always a two-week visit to my grandparents’ farm in northern Minnesota. What was it about them that has so captured my imagination, which I am sure is completely outsized, seeing them through my eyes of a child?

It’s hard to put my finger on any one thing, but what immediately comes to mind, is that my grandfather was convinced I was major-league baseball material. He would grab an old-timers catcher’s mitt and crouch down like he was behind home plate, and I would let fly with my best barnburner fastball. I can remember him wincing quite emphatically, taking off his glove and shaking his hand in the air to cool it off from the smack impact of the missile I had just fired off. To my eight-year-old mind, I was thrilled he believed I had special athletic talent.

Well, I did go on to play ball, first as a catcher, then switching to a pitcher in seventh grade in the sandlot league. I was good at throwing because Grandpa said I was good. It didn’t matter whether I won games or not (of course, I wanted to win), but because Grandpa said I was great, that is how I saw myself.

Well, I played into my high school years and even played on the state champion team in my junior year of high school. (Full disclosure: the team had two all-star pitchers ahead of me that were quite outstanding and I only played when a game was already in the bag!) But, in my grandfather’s eyes, I was “great—that’s all that mattered. My self-confidence came not from the outward comparison with others, but from my grandfather’s belief in me.

In a similar sense, I have come to realize that my confidence now in life, is so much rooted in the thought that others have believed in me; they had confidence in me. In fact, I have come to learn and believe that the Creator God of the universe believes in me—I didn’t understand that until I came to trust and believe in Him. He died for me because He thought I was worth saving. That’s how much He believed in me. So now my confidence in life is not rooted in personal accomplishments, awards, or trophies. My confidence is rooted in Jesus Christ. And that gives me confidence to take every opportunity to encourage others, find areas in their lives to build them up and express my confidence in them.

Now, I have a four-year-old grandson, who just got signed up for T-ball! And boy, does he ever have a good throwing arm. In fact, I think he is major-league material!