What happened to my eyes? In this video, I want to share a little bit of my testimony
of how I overcame insecurity. If it's your first time watching,
my name is Vlad. I'm a pastor at HungryGen. I also have a ministry where we offer digital content,
free of charge. Consider subscribing so you won't miss content that we upload on YouTube.
So what happened with my eyes? Actually I was born this way. My mom told me later on
that she was experiencing difficulty during childbirth and then, most likely the doctor,
she says that he damaged an optical nerve in my head and because of that, I started to. Later on,
they saw that one of my eyes looked different than the other one, and it's really just the lip
over my eye that was weaker than the other. But, as I started to grow, they started to recognize
or realize that it's deeper than that because if I would look up, one eye actually looks up,
the other one does not. I still can see perfect or I can still see clearly. I don't wear glasses,
I don't know wear contacts, even though I'm the only one out of my four siblings and both parents,
who doesn't wear glasses or contacts. So I have a good vision. Praise God! But I grew up like this.
I was born like this. So it was not some kind of an injury that I acquired or got throughout my
life, but it was during my birth. I struggled with insecurity because of that. As you can imagine,
as a teenager growing up around other teenagers, this was difficult for me to accept myself and
to associate myself with other people. There were feelings of inferiority. I was bullied in school.
I was struggling with grades. I was struggling making friends and I had a very difficult time
believing that God had a purpose or a plan for my life. It all started, later on, about 11 to
12 years of age, when I started to become more aware of myself and where in school, I was being
compared and I started to compare myself to other students, to other guys, when I was being picked
on by other people, being called with names that had to do with my eyes and I would look in the
mirror and of course, I didn't like what I saw. And then when my family immigrated to the United
States, I was 13 years of age, we settled right here in Tri-Cities, I went to an English school
where I didn't speak any English. There was not a lot of immigrants in that school, so, it was very
difficult to be assimilated into American culture. And I struggled very very much to belong, to be
useful. I had bad grades. First year, partially was because I didn't understand anything,
that was being presented in school. It was around that time, that my uncle started the local church,
The Good News church and my family joined that church and I had a hard time connecting in the
church, that was full of of my relatives, full of my cousins. Partially was because,
things that I tried to do in that small church, I wasn't good at. You know, things like, being on
the music team or helping with the sound system. I just was not good at so they asked me to you
know step down from those things. And it just made things worse because you know, here I am you know
struggling with insecurity already because of my physical appearance. I am not doing good in school
and then, I am not feeling like I am valued and I have any worth to offer in the church. And so,
family loved me. My mom and dad have always been very supportive. But you know the enemy sows these
lies into your mind and I believed those lies. I fostered those lies and I walked with those
lies. I nurtured those lies for a while, until I believe they actually became a stronghold in
my mind. The stronghold of fear, the stronghold of insecurity and inferiority. It led to that point,
where things became hard for me, that I did not want to live. Never contemplated suicide or taking
my life. I was very afraid of where that could lead. But I definitely entertained the thoughts of
just hating my life and not wanting to live. The way I started to channel or what I started to do
with those feelings of self-hate really is I knew that if I keep on building that I will eventually,
you know, self-destruct and so I would go to God and I would start to, you know kind of like,
vomit or you know, really express everything that I felt to God in prayer and out of that moment,
that time I started to experience God personally and He started to touch me. He started to fill me
with His love. He started to give me a deeper understanding of His word. I've read His word
before but now I started to really feed myself with what the scripture said about myself and my
mind started to get renewed and this stronghold, layer by layer was being destroyed. The stronghold
of self-hate, the stronghold of self-rejection and I blamed it before on other people. I said,
Well if other people will accept me, you know then I wouldn't feel like that. If I would be
having good grades then, I wouldn't feel this about myself. In fact, I kind of even blamed
God. I thought that if He would have simply fixed my problem of my physical appearance,
then I would be so much better in, you know, the issue of Athletics. I would be so much better in
academics. I would be so much better with friends .I would be so much better in church. I could do
so much more if He could only fix my cosmetics. In fact ,I even prayed for God to fix my body,
to heal my skin to, you know, fix whatever is wrong with the optical nerve. I've had a lot of
people ever since then tried to offer a prayer for healing and nothing happened and not that, I don't
believe that God wants to heal those things. But I do believe that it's not a necessity. It's not
something that hurts me. It's not something that is going to fix my self-esteem or my self-image.
Because my problem was, the root problem that I had, had nothing to do with my skin,
the way it was stretched over my skeleton. The problem I had is idolatry. I built my self-image,
my self-worth on sinking sand. And I was quickly punished or if I could say, penalized by that
idolatry. It pretty much, backfired right in my face. I did not know at that time. But the
problem was not with my appearance. All of this simply exposed, that my foundation was flawed
and I was trying to build it on my physical appearance, on my academic achievements,
on my relationships and on how many people loved and enjoyed my company. All of those things are
not bad in themselves, they're just really bad as a foundation of your identity or foundation
of who you are. And so it was later on, as I started to understand, what the Scripture teaches,
that the righteous man, he builds his house or the wise man, he builds his house on the rock,
that the foolish man, he builds his house on the sand and I started to understand that, that's what
I was trying to do is, I was trying to have God, make my sand, you know physical appearance, what
people think of me, achievements, accomplishments, my gifts and talents. I wanted God to make that,
my foundation and God wouldn't do that. I'm not against you know, praying for healing for cosmetic
things. Even though, God's healing is really promised for the issues of infirmity, pain,
that's not an issue, that I have thankfully and so I let that go. I put it in God's hands, concerning
the whole issue of healing. I know that one day, I will have a glorified body but until that time,
I'm going to do the best that I can, with the body that God has given me. As my mind started to get
renewed, as I started to experience His love and His presence, my heart started to get filled and I
no longer became needy for these external things, to satisfy an internal need. And then later on,
it's interesting that these external things, that I was really seeking and hoping for,
they started to kind of find their way into my life. You know, the Bible says if, 'You seek the
kingdom of God first, everything else shall be added.' I actually started to experience that,
you know, I started to actually, I became part of the same worship team, that kind of kicked me out.
I became the worship leader. I started to speak and I started to become comfortable speaking. I
wasn't afraid of my classmates in my high school. My grades went through the roof, I started to get
straight A's in very difficult topics, that was very difficult for me to comprehend because of a
language barrier. I started to get open doors to minister in small little like Bible clubs,
in school and I didn't promote myself. Nobody knew that I was a preacher. And then just one thing led
to another, God started to use me, as my identity in Him became more secure and more anchored.
One of the biggest fears, that I had is that I'll never get married. And you know that was
solved too. Eventually, I got married and God blessed me with a very beautiful girl, that I
am married with, for the last 12 years already and happily married. God started to give me,
you know blessings and influence and all of that. Today, of course, there's a danger of allowing
those things to blur or to replace my foundation, which is you know what God says about me and what
God thinks about me. Maybe you're watching this video, right now and maybe you're struggling with
identity, insecurity, knowing who you are. In fact, Dr Maxwell Maltz says that,
at least 95 percent of all people in their lives have been blinded by the feelings of inferiority
to some extent. And to millions, this same feeling of inferiority is a serious handicap to success
and happiness. See, if you are insecure, if you have low self-esteem or inferiority complex,
it will produce few things. It will produce insecurity. It will give you a sense of
worthlessness and hopelessness. It can produce jealousy, where you will doubt your own worth
and you'll be jealous of those, who appear to be better off than you. It can produce anger,
where you compare yourself with others and you become angry and resentful. It can produce fear,
where you will have hidden fears, that others will discover who you really are and you feel like,
you're just putting on a face but the real you is just inferior and insecure. It can produce
selfishness because if you think about it, a lack of self-esteem produces total absorption
in meeting our own needs or it can produce guilt because you begin to focus on your failure instead
of forgiveness and you walk in defeat and in guilt. See, as a Christian, you cannot think
wrongfully and live rightly. We cannot believe in an error and practice truth. A lot of people think
that, humility is really being self-belittling and self-condemning and that is God's way of
humility. But humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking less about yourself.
Humility is agreeing with God's word. And if I look back at my life, I would say, these two
things, that really have changed my self-esteem. I don't like to use the word self-esteem because the
word self in it, kind of cancels the whole esteem part. But knowing who you are in Christ. You get
my drift. The first one, if you're dealing with insecurity, if you're dealing with inferiority,
low self-esteem. The first thing that I would encourage you is to begin to develop your intimacy
with the Holy Spirit. I believe, that's the cure for insecurity. Who you are as a Christian comes
from Whose you are. See, you can't build your self-esteem or your identity on your appearance,
on your academics, on your accomplishments, on what people say about you. It has to be grounded
on Jesus. And Jesus is someone you can know. You can actually get to know Jesus, today. You can get
to know the Holy Spirit, who lives inside of you. As you begin to focus more on the Holy Spirit,
you lose focus on yourself. As you begin to become more aware of Him, you become less aware of you.
And a lot of times, that's all that is needed is become less aware of ourselves. See,
the presence of God doesn't necessarily make you more beautiful, it's just His beauty becomes so
captivating, that everything else doesn't matter. It's not that it doesn't matter, that you no
longer take care of yourself. But it just ceases to become your foundation. It ceases to matter to
you and no longer becomes your distraction. Your appearance no longer becomes your idol. You know,
sometimes I look at people who are super good looking, and that's something what I've noticed.
Later on, as I started to get to know people, that are talented, people that are muscular, people
that are even educated, people that are rich, people that are good looking and quite few of
them. As I started to get to know a lot of them, I realized they're actually as insecure as I was.
Because their foundation is flawed. They constantly compare themselves to other people
and they are as miserable as I was. A sense of confidence, sense of appreciation, healthy
appreciation of self, is not found in reaching certain goals, getting particular body type.
It's found in the peaceful relationship that you have with Jesus Christ, that you have with
the Holy Spirit and that is your foundation. If you develop that my friend, you will no
longer be obsessed or depressed concerning you. Because your life will be obsessed with Him.
I know, it's simple but it's life-changing. It changed my life. The second thing is feed on God's
Word. You may say, Well, Vlad I got the Bible ,you know listen to podcasts. It's more than that.
You have to let the Truth set you free. See, all that insecurity is rooted is in facts. Facts,
they change you know, it's a fact that I was born like that. But the truth is
God wanted me on this earth. It's a fact that I had two eye surgeries but they didn't solve
the problem and these surgeries, I had before I even turned 13. Actually one was in Ukraine and
one was in the United States and so, it's a fact, I had them, they didn't solve the problem. But the
truth is that Jesus died on a cross for me. It's a fact that I had a very difficult time, connecting
with people. But the truth is Jesus Christ loved me so much, that He died for me. It's a fact that
I can't play music really well. Well actually, I can't play music at all or sing, keep a tune. But
the truth is that I'm fearful and wonderfully made and God loves to hear, when I worship.
So as long as I am focused on facts, I will be bound. As long as I build my life on the Truth,
I will be set free. It's not the presence of the Truth, it's knowing the Truth. You know, I had
access to the Truth, all my life. But it was until I started to know, I started to feed myself with
that Truth, that I started to experience Freedom. You have to understand, God created you. He loves
you. He planned your birth. He gifted you. Jesus Christ died for you. The Holy Spirit indwells
in you. Your body is valuable. Your past, forget about it. You're present, thank God for it. Your
potential, discover it. Your performance, affirm it, because you can do all things
through Christ. Your possessions, share them with other people. Live your life, where Jesus
is the most important in your life, where He's the most beautiful, where He's the most amazing,
where He is your pearl of great price, where He is your great and exceedingly reward, where
His presence is your treasure, where His glory is your pursuit, where you pant, you long, you
chase after Him and you will see that, you will lose you. And when you lose you, you find you.
And guess which kind of you, do you find. The one that's empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The one that brings glory to God. That's what happened to me and I pray that, that's exactly
what's going to happen to you. If you're a young girl or you're a young man, watching this video,
I want to encourage you to get lost in Jesus. Get lost in His presence.
Get lost in His love for you. And as you lose yourself, you will find yourself.
If you're trying to find yourself, discover yourself, my friend, you will lose yourself.
I found 'new me; in losing me to Jesus, in losing me, in a pursuit after His heart. He changed
me. He gave me a new sense of identity. His word became my foundation and His presence, my pursuit
and my reward. Today, He has blessed me with more than I can imagine and for that, I am grateful.
But if all those blessings will dissipate and leave my life. My life will still have Jesus
and He is the most important being. And I'm not just saying these words because that's what Pastor
should say. But I live by that, this is not to show off as like, oh he's like super spiritual.
I'm not like that. I'm a simple person just like you and I, who have come to the great need to need
Jesus. Because my life forced me to go there. And maybe today, these insecurities are pushing you.
Let them push you to Jesus. May you find Him as the great reward, as One worthy of pursuit.
May God's word become alive and may the Holy Spirit become your closest friend, in Jesus Name.
Hey, thank you for watching this video. I hope that this testimony was an encouragement and it
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