Overcoming Insecurity.

I’m sure you agree, feeling insecure sucks! But how do you know if you’re insecure? Do you find it hard to feel confident around people? Are you overly hard and negative towards yourself? Are you painfully dependant on other people’s approval and acceptance? Do you emotionally spiral down after hearing people criticizing you? Do you go through life feeling worthless and insignificant? These are all signs of a root of insecurity and it’s a terrible thing to suffer through. But there is hope. God has the cure. God never intended for us to go through life feeling tormented by our insecurities. We are his children who he loves so much, and his way to overcome is better than anything the world has to offer.

You may have had a challenging upbringing which left you struggling with various insecurities now. Many people spend their whole adult life trying to overcome their childhood. Well regardless of whether you had a good or bad upbringing, there is a way in God to become secure and go through life with greater confidence, loving yourself in a healthy way, feeling valuable and important without needing people’s approval, being able to handle criticism, living with less anxiety and actually enjoying life more.

The root cause of insecurity.

Every human being is born with the need for acceptance, approval, love, and to know that they are valuable. If we don’t know we have all these things from God already, then we will try and get them from the world by looking to people, possessions, performance and pleasures in order to fill an emotional hole. People will go to extreme, and often destructive measures just to feel loved, accepted and important. From joining gangs, cults and fanatical religions who offer community, acceptance and importance even though they may do evil things. To sleeping around with many partners because it makes you feel wanted, loved and valuable for awhile even though its superficial and leaves you more empty. Some people join the army and go to war, not out of a sense of duty or patriotism but because of the praise they get from people they so desperately desire. Many get themselves into terrible debt through an obsession to buy materialistic things because it makes them feel good for awhile, or appear successful, or important, or valuable, or to buy people’s approval and love. Some people even become gay, not because they believe they’re gay, but because of the love and acceptance they receive from the gay community. I don’t judge people for doing these things because I understand why they are compelled to do them.

Where does true security come from?

True inner security comes from knowing that before you do anything, God loves you, accepts you and approves of you and has made you his child and has given you great value. When this truly gets into our hearts we will become secure. Inner security comes from a heart that understands, believes and receives God’s unconditional love, acceptance and approval of us regardless of our performance!

If we know that in Christ we have great value, we won’t go about trying to get value from the things we do or possess. If we know that we are approved and accepted by God already, we won’t enslave ourselves to other people’s approval and acceptance of us in order to feel good about ourselves. If we are secure in our identity as children of God we won’t feel insecure about our identity and driven to try and achieve one through destructive means. Instead we can just get on with our calling and purpose in life of being a child of God and doing the things his children do. Not to become, but because we are!

Good parenting helps us to be secure.

Before Jesus did anything for his Father, his Father loved him, was pleased with him and called him his son.

Matthew 3:16-17  “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

When the Father said, “This is my Son” he was giving Jesus  identity, value and importance. When he said, “Whom I love” he was giving him unconditional love. When he said, “With him I am well pleased” he was giving him acceptance, approval and taking pleasure in him.

Jesus didn’t have to earn his father’s love, acceptance or approval through his performance, he already had it from the beginning. He didn’t have to earn his sonship or prove it by doing the right things for God, he already had it. Knowing his father loved and approved of him as a son was the source of Jesus’ security and the springboard from which he served God.

Religion is a bad parent because it tells us we need to perform well in order to receive God’s love and acceptance as children, or worse, in order to become or stay his children. No wonder I meet so many insecure Christians who are afraid of God and don’t even know if they are saved. They are trying to perform for God to earn his love and earn their salvation. But God’s grace is the unmerited favour of God that makes us His children and reveals His love, acceptance and approval of us regardless of our performance! This is the source of our security, and the springboard from which we also serve God.

Galatians 3:26  “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.”

John 1:12 “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

There is no performance in this, when we believe in Christ we become in that instant, children of God, whom God loves, approves of and takes great pleasure in! This is what our security is rooted in, it’s where it’s anchored from, immovable and unchanging!

Look at how wonderfully Ephesians chapter 1:3-6 puts it.

Verse 3: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

• This means God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing not because of our performance but simple because we are in Christ!

Verse 4: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”

• This shows that before we even came into existence God’s grace had already chosen to make us holy and blameless in his sight!

Verse 5: “In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—”

• This means it was God’s love and good pleasure towards us that chose us to be adopted as his children, not through our performance but through Jesus Christ! This is what we have in Christ before we do anything!

Verse 6: “to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”

• This means that all of this is not to the praise our performance, but the glorious grace of God that he has freely given us in Christ.

Anyone who truly understands and knows this ought to be so secure on the inside. We’re not living to try and get people’s approval in order to feel important and good about ourselves. We already have God’s absolute love and approval and his good pleasure towards us.

What happens when we are secure?

The more secure you are the lower you can go, and the higher God can raise you up. The more insecure you are the higher you will strive, and the lower you will go.

John 13:3-5 “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet.”

Jesus knew how powerful his father was and how much power his father had given him. He didn’t have to prove his power or worth. He knew where he came from and where he was going. He didn’t have to strive to attain some level. He already had it! And because he knew it and was secure in it he was able to humble himself and become a servant. Servants are treated bad yet don’t demand rights, privileges or prestige. They are not serving their own purposes but someone else’s. Jesus wasn’t serving his own purposes but the purposes of the Father here on earth. While doing it he was treated badly, persecuted, rejected and crucified. If he was after his own ambition he would never have fulfilled his God given calling and purpose on earth. If he was insecure and felt the need to achieve identity, sonship, love, acceptance and value he would have sought those things through trying to exalt himself. It would have cost him his calling.

Look at what Jesus said to his disciples after he had washed their feet:

John 13:14-15 “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Jesus was teaching his disciples what true greatness really is. It wasn’t trying to exalt yourself and striving to be the greatest in the Kingdom, which they were all doing. It wasn’t to have the biggest following, the most likes, the praises of everyone, fame and glory, great possessions and power. It was instead to be a humble servant, secure in who they are, and whose they are, and where they are from. Not self seeking, not driven for approval or to impress people. Not demanding your rights, privileges or prestige. Not complaining or being bitter when life and people don’t treat you well or you’re not achieving what you had planned to achieve. People who know who they are as God’s children, that he loves them and accepts them and they are valuable already, don’t need to strive to get all these things in life. Instead they can walk as children and servants of God. They don’t need to be at the top of everything in order to be important or loved. They can go low. It is these that God can use. These who God will raise up and exalt to the highest places. Who he can trust with promotion.

Philippians 2:3-11 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

If you will meditate on this simple truth of the source of your security, insecurity will begin to evaporate from your life and God’s grace-based security beginning to emanate from deep within you.

True security comes from one place and one place alone. It comes from knowing that God loves you, accepts you and approves of you not because of what you do or have, but simply because you are His beloved child in Christ.

Many blessings

Ryan Rufus.

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Other resources you may find helpful:

Overcoming pornography.
Breaking the spirit of discouragement.
If people could see my thoughts. (Keeping a healthy psychology.)
How to steward every paycheck to get out of debt and into abundance.
Think, don’t worry about money.
Slay the monster of materialism and your financial situation will change.
5 reasons why frustration is a good thing.
How to build spiritual momentum.

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