intimacy is the key to covering insecurity
Adam was in the glory of God and was naked Adam lost the glory of God he didn't become fat
not some kind of a big guy with six-pack showed up in the next garden and Adam immediately felt
ashamed there was no Instagram pictures to compare Adam's life to somebody else's
keeping up with Jonas's or Kardashians was not there there was nothing on the
outside that made Adam feel ashamed yet he was Adam felt so ashamed of his own body
that he started to hide even though he didn't gain weight even though there
was nobody else compare his body to somebody else how could a man who had a perfect body
and nobody to compare himself to feel disgusted and feel ashamed of the thing that God made him
he didn't have an infirmity his eye was not smaller like the other one like i have
his nose wasn't imperfect like you think your nose is not his lips were not too small like
some of you girls think your lips are and you need to do a surgery so you can blow them up and then
you feel ashamed for blowing them up because everybody realizes they're not your real lips
what is the cause how could you be ashamed if there's nobody around you
you know what happened when you lose the sight of God you become obsessed with the side of you
and you will always feel ashamed always even if you have a perfect body you will be ashamed
you will need leaves you will need surgeries you will need to work out you will need to have some
kind of a title to add why because all of that is so that we can cure an insecurity but you can't
cure it through fake leaves if fig leaves would have fixed Adam's shame he wouldn't be hiding
he wouldn't be hiding Adam felt ashamed i know this very well personally because i was like that
man because of the problem at the birth my parents had as as you noticed one of my eyes not the eyes
actually one of the lids but i have a deeper problem one of my eyes actually does not look up
if i look up one eye looks up the other one doesn't i had two eye surgeries to fix that
i struggled with chronic insecurity i grew up in a Christian household i'm the oldest of five
at the age of 13 my family immigrated to united states i was so chronically
scared of people ashamed of myself that at the ninth grade i was skipping a keyboarding class
in the hanford high school i thought that if i could get the acceptance of friends and none of
them gave me that my whole world will change i had no friends except one my cousin Ilya i had
a very difficult time communicating to other guys and to other girls in fact i started to stutter
sweaty and i would trip over my words and i would confuse my thoughts if i will talk to anybody whom
i deemed as beautiful successful or somebody that was good i would lose myself people would notice
it i've never felt welcomed at birthday parties i left every birthday party i ever got invited to
and i would close myself in and i blamed the world and i thought if the world would stop treating me
like i'm some kind of a handicapped person i will no longer feel how i feel on the inside
i tried to get involved in church at the age of 14 and the only place you could be
involved in the church at the time is being part of the worship team because
i didn't i didn't want to do secret because i thought that was for the ladies
and in american churches or english churches they don't even do that stuff and so we only had
one place where you could spiritually shine and that was the worship team there was just only one
problem they kicked me out of there because they said elephants stepped on my ear i'm like i've
never seen an elephant they said he did during the night came and stepped on your ear in other words
you can't keep a tune and there is a little boy whose school's in school i'm getting c's and f's
i can't connect to the society i literally have a broken self-esteem on the inside i'm disgusted
with what i see and there's one spark of hope and that is to find a place in the church where i can
finally feel welcome and that one place kicks me out and i'm only 13 and a half years of age
i became suicidal no i never planned to kill myself but i found a loophole i said God if
you cause an accident in which i will die in this in this way it's your fault and i get out
of this earth i was deeply convinced that the world would be a better place with me not in it
with me not in it my problem was wasn't my appearance my problem
was i was not aware of God therefore i was obsessively aware of myself i insecurity
is idolatry you worship at the image of your body your whole prayer the whole gym workout
got me don't get me wrong i'm all for getting going getting fit i'm all for whitening your
teeth and getting a nice haircut i'm all for keeping your skin clean that that has its place
dressing up clean and nice that does not have a that's not a problem but that's not a solution
if you are chronically insecure a gym is a fig leaf what you need to do is you need to take off
your eyes off of your body take off your eyes off of the mirror in the bathroom and begin to gaze at
the glory of God the Bible says Adam felt ashamed not because something was wrong with the body it
was because something was wrong with the focus when you begin to give yourself to insecurity
you are committing a spiritual idolatry with all due respect to the things you don't like about
your body with all due respect maybe somebody here today and you have certain deformity in your body
you have to take your eyes off of yourself and you have to fix your eyes on him the Bible says
in Jeremiah my people have committed two evils Jeremiah 2:13. it says they have forsaken me the
fountain of living waters and hewed themselves cisterns broken cisterns they cannot hold water
not only insecurity is idolatry insecurity leads to insanity not clinical insanity but practical
insanity insecure people are a little bit crazy they always think everybody thinks about them
and talks about them they're overly sensitive you have to walk on eggshells around them God forbid
you take a title away from them it's like taking a heart out of their chest insecure people can
never volunteer because if they volunteer it's only to serve their ego not to serve the church
they're completely chronically to live with if you get married to one how God have mercy on you
insecure people are like King Saul suspicious all the time either thinking about me
i must have done something wrong they're probably talking about me and because insecurity creates a
little bit of insanity there's only one cure it's intimacy intimacy is this is into me see it's you
see into God and it's not that your body is fixed your focus changes and then your feelings follow
i still have the same body today okay slightly better looking slightly the beard my wife
the teeth are a little bit more straightened probably but this is the same i have the same
still english with an accent but on the inside i'm a total different man no no
i'm not better please understand i'm different why until this day the moment i take my eyes
off of his glory i become reminded of the ugliness of my nakedness i become aware that i don't
measure up to this pastor to that minister i don't have this and i don't have that and
the moment these feelings begin to come upon me i understand i lost my side of the glorious one God
never told Adam to chop away the tree of knowledge of good and evil he just told him not to eat of it
when i was going through this process i felt the Holy Spirit challenged me and he said this
i will never remove the reason for your insecurity i will give you the power not to eat of it
your reason is still there the body the i'm giving you a spiritual application
the tree of knowledge of good and evil in my life that's my physical appearance that's my
physical limitations that's the tree God never says to chop it out
and go fix it God never says go take surgeries so you can take care of that God says i want you to
look at it don't eat of it i want you to eat of the tree of knowledge that the
tree of life eat of my word eat my presence some of you in this room your food poisoned
you poisoned your inner soul by the things
you feed yourself with oh no no no you read the Bible but you don't feed on the Bible
you feed and what you see on your Instagram you feed and what you see in the bathroom mirror
you feed by the comparison of culture that is your food the Bible you read it for the sake of
cleaning your consciousness and for the sake of that's what christians do but if you would stop
eating from the tree that God says don't eat of it and start eating not just reading but feeding
and focusing this is what God says about me he is my father he is my creator my body was made by him
it's a dwelling of the Holy Spirit Jesus purchased my body by his blood spirit of God dwells in my
body one day God will resurrect my body one day God will reward for what is done in my body my
body is to glorify him my body is not to glorify and draw attention to myself something begins
to happen your feelings will begin to change because whatever you focus on that's what you
feed yourself with and whatever you feed yourself with that's the feelings that you will have
the shame the disgust i don't like my nose i don't like the way my ears are i don't like
my height i don't like my weight i don't like this and i don't like that all of that my friend
please forgive me for getting it straight to you it's an idolatry it's our obsession to be a sugar
of the earth instead of salt of the earth you know what one thing about sugar when you eat it
you want more of sugar insecure people want to be a sugar of the earth so when you eat me you
want more of me secure people are okay being salt meaning you taste me you'll want God i remember
pastor when one time God convicted me and i saw messages people messaging they're like oh my gosh
Vlad i love your messages i bench watch on your messages it fed my ego i went to prayers like
oh God thank you for using me and God says you're dead wrong he says if they love you you're sugar
and you're creating spiritual diabetes not spiritual development
he says if they watch your message and they turn off your message and they go to me
you're sold insecure people want to be the sugar
insecure people today they're insecure give them power they'll struggle not in with inferiority
they'll struggle with superiority give insecure person power you just saw a development of a
monster King Saul was so insecure even though he was physically handsome taller than anybody else
came from a wealthy family so insecure that on the day of his inauguration he was hiding behind bags
now at first it looks like oh he was so humble no no no that's false humility
that's his security and you would think oh he's going to be such a great King
give insecure person a position in church and you will see a devil in the flesh
because they'll go from inferiority to superiority they will domain they will control they will
demand that's what happened with Saul he became a monster in flesh because insecure people do not
handle power they do not handle titles they do not handle wealth they do not handle praise they do
not handle that well because you can only handle that if you are anchored in identity in Christ
but identity in Christ is always anchored in your intimacy with God let me say that again identity
in Christ is anchored in our intimacy with God identity is not just anchored and you're telling
yourself constantly i'm good i'm handsome God loves me that that's fine that's good but you
have to be anchored in your intimacy and when you are anchored in your intimacy you will live
out of your identity instead of living out of your insecurity or out of inflated self-esteem