Confidence: Your Birthright as a Child of God is a joyful affirmation of the divine truth that human beings are the spiritual children of God. Before any other, this truth is the key to grounded and durable self-assurance. In the age of picture-perfect Instagram posts and hyper-competition, it’s easy to feel self-doubt. Instead of pressing forward with confidence and hope, we might pull back, unconvinced of our potential.

This book explores a broad set of Christian truths that argue for the opposite mentality. We are meant to feel confident. It’s our birthright as children of God! The book opens with a parable about an unusual zoo on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Kathy Clayton lived with her husband for several years on assignment from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The zoo was like none other she had seen.

At the Lujan Zoo, animal keepers invited visitors into the enclosures of the enormous lions to pet the docile beasts. Fascinated by the unnatural, timid behavior of those wild animals, Kathy asked the keepers why the powerful felines allowed random visitors to approach and pet them. She learned that those lions had lived with small, yappy dogs in their enclosures with them since they had been tiny kittens. As is the disposition of dogs to tyrannize cats, those scrappy dogs had nipped at the heels of the lion cubs and constantly chased them into the corners of their pens. The lions had become accustomed to responding with fear and timidity to the harassment of the merciless dogs.

Without the benefit of mirrors in the pens to enable them to appreciate their actual stature, those lions continued to cower in the corners of their pens even as they grew to full-sized felines. They continued to allow the pesky dogs to control and tyrannize them long after they needed to be subject to the humiliating domination. Because of an inaccurate awareness of who they really were, the lions were unable to rise to the full level of their birthright identity as the kings of beasts.

Tragically, too many of us, likewise, neglect to rise to the full level of our potential because we simply don’t realize and remember who and whose we really are. This book is a deep-dive into the implications of the one identity we all share - that of children of God.

It explores with optimistic breadth themes relevant to that universal identity, such as:

• How to check perfectionism by taking the long view
• The value of seeing others as fundamentally and forever children of God
• The importance of running our own customized races - the only races that we can all finish victorious in every way that matters
• The fact that negativity and other biases can cause us to jettison the essential things we know for sure for the sake of things of which we are not yet certain
• The invitation to recognize that when we choose to see opposition as opportunity, failure can be a tutor rather than a tragedy
• The assurance that remembering that who we are eternally helps us become more one with ourselves, more one with each other, and more one with deity. Forgetting leads to discord, confusion, and a lack of the confidence to which we are entitled.