How to overcome insecurity. For those of you who know my story or maybe you're not familiar,
I used to struggle with insecurity in a very, very bad way. It crippled my ability to be used by God.
It crippled my ability to see myself as God saw me. It caused me to honestly have a very
negative view of myself thus rejecting God's view, opinion and what He spoke of me but in reality
it made me extremely obsessed with myself. This may sound bad but as an insecure person
I was extremely obsessed, not with God but with me. And so I want to share with you practically
seven practical steps I've learned that you can take today to beat insecurity. I am not in any
way going to say here today that I don't have insecurities or I don't struggle with that. In
fact I believe every level of influence God will entrust you with will require you to face new
insecurities, that you're going to have to trust God and work through and go through repentance,
renewing your mind and submitting yourself to the truth of God's word. Number one: Intimacy with God
cures insecurity. Intimacy is the cure for insecurity. The more you are aware of God
the less attention you give to self. The more you are aware of self the less attention you give to
God. Adam became aware of his nakedness and felt ashamed when the glory of God lifted after he
disobeyed God and did what God didn't call him to do. As you get closer to God one of the first
things that happens in the presence of God is you lose attention, affection, obsession for you. God
becomes more important and then you're no longer obsessed, you're no longer depressed and you're no
longer honestly conscious. It's not that you don't exist. You're just not conscious of you because
somebody greater occupies your mind. Number two: Read the Word of God until it feeds you. A lot
of Christians will read the Bible but if you want to see change in your emotions, in your mind. You
have to feed on the Bible. The Bible is the seed. The Bible is the sword. The Bible is the hammer.
The Bible is the oil. The Bible is the Lamb and the Bible is also spiritual food. "Men
shall not live on every bread but live on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." I'm
paraphrasing it Matthew 4:4 Jesus spoke to the devil. What happened with Adam and Eve is that
they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and because they ate of that tree they
disobeyed God and then they felt naked. And then what happened is that they started to hide from
God. They started to cover themselves with fig leaves. But the root cause was they ate something
they were not supposed to eat. Their eyes were opened and they saw not God. They didn't even
see the devil. They saw their nakedness. You know if you remember in the new testament,
disciples they ate after meeting Jesus, not knowing it was Jesus on the road from Jerusalem.
And when they ate the Bible says their eyes were open and they saw who Jesus truly was.
So Adam eats. His eyes are open. He sees his nakedness. Disciples eat. Their eyes are open
and they see Jesus. So let me ask you a question. What are you feeding yourself on? Because whatever
you're feeding yourself is creating the feelings of yourself and these feelings
now become the source of your focus. So to change the feeling you have to change the feeding. So
instead of reading God's Word, feed on God's Word. Meaning linger in God's Word. Take it personally,
memorize the scriptures, read the Bible with prayer not just with the highlighter, invite the
Holy Spirit, begin to meditate on the scriptures. Take the Bible seriously. Chew it like a cow that,
you know, chews the grass. That's how meditation works. Is you constantly think about it, instead
of constantly feeding yourself on social media, how you look in the mirror. Look at the mirror
of God's Word and let that becomes a reflection of who you are and Whose you are. Number three:
Don't compare yourself because you're already complete in Christ. Comparing yourself is the
thief of joy. The Bible says tenth commandment is thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife,
your neighbor's livestock. Pretty much, God wants us to be content with what he has given
us. God wants you to count your blessings, not covet someone else's blessings. The Bible says,
"Don't be fret when people succeed in their ways." Psalm 37:7. Don't let somebody's success
bring you stress. The best way to do that is to realize, in Jesus you're accepted, you are loved,
you are forgiven, you're righteous, your royal generation, chosen generation, royal priesthood,
His own special people. You are His and therefore you don't need to duplicate somebody else's life.
There's nothing wrong with being inspired. There's nothing wrong with being encouraged
but it's totally different when you're seeking to fit in and when you're seeking to be a photocopy
of someone else. God called you to be you. God wants you to be the best version of you. But you
can't do that until you make a conscious decision not to sin by coveting and sin by constantly
comparing and looking at yourself and saying I am not good enough. How do you know that you're not
good enough? How do you know that your life sucks? A lot of times because we compare ourselves to
other people. The Bible says, to run the race with endurance looking not unto other runners but unto
Jesus. Each one of us have a different history, we have different gifting, we live in a different
area, we live under different circumstances. So to compare each other's success, appearance,
gifts without putting into account each other's callings, past history, where we grew up, is
foolish. It's wrong It's kind of like expecting a bicycle to compete with the airplane. They're just
wired differently. They're just made differently for different purposes. It'll be foolish if a
bicycle walks around crying because it can't take people into the air. Yes a bicycle is not an
airplane but you don't use an airplane to go pick up your mail or go for a fun ride in the park.
You use a bicycle for that. Please understand God created you for His pleasure and for His purpose
and it brings Him the most pleasure when you fulfill your purpose without trying to be
someone else God never made you to be. You know when you discover who you are in God. When you
discover whose you are because of Jesus. When you begin to live in God's Word you are free to
be you and this is what I found out. As you stop trying to be everybody else, you will still learn
from other people but you will lean on the Lord. You will find out soon so many people are gonna
try to be like you. I know it's crazy. They will be like, man I want to be like you're like no,
no, no, no. The secret of being like me is be who God called you to be. Don't compare
yourself with other people. You're complete in Christ. Don't covet someone's blessings, count
your own. Number four: Don't draw your value and validation from your visibility. So many people
are crippled by insecurity for this one reason, is because they think that being visible means
being valuable. Your value comes from Jesus, what he did on the cross, dwelling of the Holy Spirit,
the love that God has shed upon you. Your name written in the book of life. You're made in the
image and likeness of God. You are the one that God loves. You are the one that carries the the
nature of God in the sense His likelihood. You are made in His image and likeness. Your image-bearer
of God. It doesn't matter how you look okay. It doesn't matter how much you weigh. It doesn't
matter your age. It doesn't matter how much money you have in your account. These things they're
priceless. There's no price on these things. What makes it difficult to live in identity
as a Christian, is when you begin to equal value with visibility. When you begin to think that you
have to be on the stage to serve God, you have to be constantly promoted into a place of spotlight
because of your faithfulness. I have a heart right here. My heart has been faithful in the
past 34 years okay. It's been beating faithfully. When I sleep my heart doesn't take a break. In the
good times, in the bad times, my heart is always beating. I don't promote my heart out of its place
where God put it in, onto my forehead for its faithfulness of beating faithfully pumping blood
consistently. There are certain things they're meant to stay hidden and that's when they're
most useful. My heart doesn't aim to be visible. It does its function. As a member of the body of
Jesus as a person that probably God positioned you already to serve in your local church in
His kingdom. Please, please. I beseech you. Don't let your insecurity take you out of the
place of your effectiveness and gifting, into a place of spotlight where you were not fashioned,
gifted, anointed for. And you will be weird there, you will struggle with pressure, you will deal
with issues that you were never supposed to deal with. Why? Because your insecurity
took you to a place that you have no grace for. I've seen people lose it because of that. The
most amazing people in ministry are people who know who they are in Christ. They don't need to
be behind the camera ,on the spotlight or behind a microphone. But if the Lord calls them there,
they're comfortable there and they don't draw their identity from that and if something changes
and they're no longer in that place their whole world doesn't go down because they never attached
their validation to their visibility. Number five: Criticism and compliments are not your bread,
they are your gum. If you do something well or if you don't do something well, you will be a
recipient of compliments or criticism. In fact if you do something well you will be complimented but
you will also be criticized. There will be people who won't like you. In fact there are people who
will not like you no matter what. They didn't even like Jesus. It's not because of you. It's
just because of them. They're like mosquitoes. Mosquitoes live off of somebody else's blood.
Some people will live off of your success and so they live off of attacking, criticizing
you. Otherwise they have nothing else to do. They don't create anything. They simply just criticize
anything that somebody creates. It's normal. It's the way of life. When you're insecure
you will take criticisms personally but this is why criticism hurts is because compliments heal.
I've learned this from the younger age I wish I would say I mastered this. I didn't master it.
I still struggle with it but I know at least how it works. If I don't want criticism to hurt me I
have to stop letting compliments from healing me. Meaning I have to treat compliments like a gum.
I chew it. I take the fun ingredients out and I spit it out. I don't let it go inside of me. If
I do that with compliments and when people give that to me and I say thank you but deep on inside
I have a conversation with God already. I said, Lord it's been your grace, it's been your mercy,
it has nothing to do with me. I am thankful for this privilege to be used of you like that. Then
I take it not personally. It doesn't go into my head. Then when somebody criticizes me.
When somebody makes a video about me or somebody comes and says, you know oh we don't like you,
you're a false teacher or somebody who comes at me completely not even knowing who I am. I don't take
it personally. Well I won't take it personally. Why? Because if I didn't take the compliment
personally I won't take a criticism personally. Now will it still sting me? A little bit probably.
But will it destroy me? Not really. Why? Because a criticism can't go into my heart if a compliment
didn't go into my head. Number six: You must understand that your parents love is your
appetizer not your main course. So many people, their source of insecurity is lack of validation
and affirmation from your mom or your dad. Please hear me out. I am not in any way downplaying the
tragedy that we have in our generation through fatherlessness and through abusive relationships.
But your parents probably did the best they knew how. Don't expect too much out of them
and too little out of God. Raise your expectation off of God and lower your expectation out of your
parents. Bible says to honor your father and your mother. There's not a lot of verses that say that
expect out of them to be your God. In fact parents cannot be a God for you, they were supposed to be
an appetizer. God is supposed to be the main meal, the main course. An appetizer prepares
you for the main course. If your parents did not come at all. See it like this how many times you
went to a restaurant and you ordered a main meal and you never had an appetizer. I did many times.
Did you leave hungry? No my friend. You can still be whole if you make God to be the Father of the
fatherless. If you raise your expectation of your Father, receive the affirmation from His Word,
receive the affection by His precious Holy Spirit. You can still walk in wholeness even if you came
from a very broken family. You don't have to let that insecurity spill into your relationships
where you go give your body into sex trying to find love or you're trying to sleep with
anything that moves trying to find validation or you're trying to big, big muscles and
drive expensive cars, wear expensive clothes. Just so you can show off so you can get that
attention because you're craving affection. You're settling for attention because you're craving
for this affirmation. Go to God. I'm not saying that you don't need to deal with that with the
counsellor, therapist, small group leader or your mentor. But one of the best ways to deal with
that is in your relationship with God. And number seven: Learn to receive correction without feeling
like you're being attacked. It's about retraining your mind. When you walk in identity, that when
somebody corrects you they are realigning you. They're helping you to grow. They're not trying
to kill you, they're trying to trim your ego, your pride and you have to pay a price of letting go of
your pride if you want to grow. Insecure people never grow because they can never be corrected.
They can never receive feedback. They can never receive any positive feedback because they're
so clinching that somebody is disapproving of them, somebody is attacking them. When in reality
somebody's just correcting their act, their work, their behavior, their craft. Not their heart. So
disconnect this whole thing that if somebody's giving you correction they're killing you. They're
not they're growing you and be more committed to growth than you are to your insecurity and
you will be able to take every correction in a godly way. I hope this was a blessing to you.
I hope this brought encouragement to you. If you don't mind would you hit thumbs up for this video.
Drop in the comment below of what you learned from this video. How did you overcome insecurity
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