Category Archives: Dealing With Insecurity

Four Steps for Dealing With Insecurity

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Abby| 8 Comments

By Abby King

1.       Remind yourself it’s not all about you!

As an insecure teenager I remember very clearly having this conversation with God in a ladies bathroom:

Me (wailing): but God, I don’t think my boss even likes me! She probably thinks I’m doing a terrible job!

God (firmly): Abby. She’s probably not thinking about you at all.

At its root, insecurity is selfish and prideful. It says the world is all about me, and by comparison, I come off worse than everyone else. I’m not as pretty or as clever; I’m a worse daughter, mother, sister, friend; I don’t keep my house as tidy, or cook as well; I’m the worst at my job and everyone is constantly thinking awful things about me.

Teri’s post reminded us that these things don’t define us anyway. And the truth is that other people have probably got much better things to be thinking about than me (or you!)

2.       Recognize unhelpful thoughts.

One of the biggest motivations to for me to face up to and deal with my insecurities was a time when I greatly offended someone by refusing their hospitality. I had been planned and prepared for as an honored guest and yet I chose to reject this and hang out with my friends instead. The root of such horrible behavior? A selfish, insecure thought – “I bet all my friends will have much more fun than me. What if something great happens and I miss it?”

At heart we can all be Eve in the garden, listening to the serpent whispering lies, believing that God is holding out on us, His best reserved for other people only.

What mostly goes through your mind? “Whatsoever is pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, praise worthy?” Or…  other stuff?

If you’re not sure about how you’re thinking negatively, look at your behavior. When you do something you don’t like, or aren’t proud of, ask yourself, literally, “what was I thinking?” “What thoughts caused this action?” If we can learn to recognize unhelpful thoughts and what they lead to, we can also learn to take action against them.

3.       Refuse wrong thinking straight away.

At a particularly intense point in my battle with insecurity, a friend showed me these verses from Psalm  118:

All the nations surrounded me,
but in the name of the LORD I cut them off. 
11 They surrounded me on every side,
but in the name of the LORD I cut them off. 
12 They swarmed around me like bees,
but they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns;
in the name of the LORD I cut them off. 

Do you see a pattern emerging?

It came as a striking revelation to me that I didn’t have to think every thought that came into my head – I could cut it off. For me sometimes that has required shouting “no!” out loud; other times, a simple recognition of “oh I’m just being insecure” has been enough to cut off a negative thought in its tracks.

Either way, we must be ruthless with our insecurities. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, and our only option is to cut off wrong thinking that comes against us.

4.       Replace lies with the truth

Faith pointed out that we need to build our lives on the Rock, not a sandy bed of wrong beliefs that will crumble as soon as a storm comes. Secure women are rooted into the Word. They know His words and choose to believe that what he says is true.

Jesus fought Satan’s attempts to undermine his security with the words of God: “It is written…” That strategy was powerful and effective for him, and will be for us too. We must dig into the bible to find out the truth so we are equipped with the sword of the Spirit to cut off the enemy’s attacks.

(For good tips on how to do this, see the youtube clip from Niki’s post this month)

*****

We deal with our insecurities by remembering to stay humble, recognizing and refusing wrong thinking, and replacing it with the truth. This is the nitty-gritty hard work of replacing our sandy foundations and becoming secure women, strongly founded on Christ, our Rock.

The wise woman builds her house,
but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. Proverbs 14:1

Each month, our Friday posts center around a particular issue. This month we are focusing on dealing with insecurity.

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Who I am in Christ: free resource!

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Abby| 1 Comment

This month we’ve been considering how to deal with insecurity by looking into God’s word to find out who we really are.

If you would like a reminder of what God’s words say about beautiful, accepted, precious YOU, then click to download our free Who I Am In Christ resource.

Maybe you can stick His mirror right next to yours to help you see yourself like He does…

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In Christ Alone

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Abby| 20 Comments

By Teri Wetzel

Insecurity is something we all deal with.

I think I can say this, as insecurity is really about self, right? And we all have one of those! No matter how long we’ve walked with Christ, none of us have completely conquered that foe…yet.

When I first got married, my husband was already in the Air Force, so I immediately moved over 1,200 miles from home to an Air Force base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. All of a sudden, I was thrown into a foreign world (the military and the southwest!) where nothing happened without my husband’s social security number, and I was known only as Mrs. Wetzel everywhere I went on base. It sounded so strange to me. “Mrs.” was for old ladies, right?! For friend’s mothers and teachers and …definitely not for twenty year old girls!

It was as if I didn’t have a first name of my own…an identity, really, except for the fact that I was married to Airman First Class Wetzel. It was as if the first twenty years of my life and all it’s experiences suddenly vanished. Nobody knew my maiden name; knew who I was; that I had a supportive family and some amazingly great, long-term friendships back in Minnesota. Nobody knew I was a sprinter, a hurdler, a volleyball player; that I was a decent student;  that I “walked beets” on the farm one summer, and de-tasseled corn another. These things suddenly didn’t matter. It was as if they didn’t exist.

It sounds sort of silly now, but at the time, it was unsettling.

God in His infinite wisdom and grace was giving me a chance very early in my Christian life to realize that my accomplishments, my history, my experiences, my relationships, even my name, really mean very little in the grand scheme of things. Yes, they are a part of making me who I am, and important in that way, but they are all subject to change and based on me, therefore not the stuff worth building upon, or drawing security from.

I realized I needed something solid, something outside of myself, something unchangeable. I needed Jesus. I really was happy to carry the name of my new husband, but above that,  I realized I carried HIS name. Christ, my Savior. And that is where I needed to draw my real identity from. He calls me His child. He sets the boundaries for me. He defines me by setting His affection on me, and that transcends time and space. It will never change based on where I live, who I’m friends with, or anything I’ve done, or haven’t done.

Does that mean I never struggle with the nagging, annoying effects of insecurity. Of course not!

Circumstances of life change a lot in 27-plus years. Jobs come and go. Income fluctuates. Church affiliations are altered. Roles are modified.  People move away. Even cherished relationships undergo transformation.

These “shifts” of life can be uncomfortable, scary, and quite painful. But in each change I have the  opportunity to do a security check. When I’m shaken, unnerved, unsettled, feel like hiding, or just plain freaking out, it’s a good indicator that somewhere along the way, I’ve allowed my identity, or source of security to be determined by something, or someone other than Christ!

Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh (or titles, roles, positions, relationships, abilities, appearance, or possessions) his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD…. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.” Jeremiah 17:5, 7

The very next verses reveal a big part of the problem… “The heart is deceitful  (or fraudulent, and sly) above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (We often do not know when we are making flesh our strength! But) I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10

I’m sorry to say, it really seems to happen so easily. I put trust in other things, even when I know better! I guess it’s a function of my sneaky, fickle, deceitful heart, always wanting to assert itself, be noticed, or take credit.

But the Lord faithfully “searches my heart and tests my mind.” He removes, or radically alters relationships, and areas of comfort, and helps me clearly see if the source I am drawing from is actually myself, or any other earthly thing.   This isn’t mean, or vindictive of God. He doesn’t enjoy watching me squirm. It’s His kindness to me, as he gives me yet another opportunity to readjust–and remember that I must draw all my security, all my stability from Him—Him alone.

It really is NOT about me. At all! (I constantly need that reminder! Funny, but I am most satisfied when He is the center of my world, anyway, not me, not any other created thing.)

And He loves me completely, even when my sly self has taken hold of things again. His love and my security are not based on me! Oh, what grace.

Truly He is the stability of all my times! (Isaiah 33:6)

Each month, our Friday posts center around a particular issue. This month we are focusing on dealing with insecurity.

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The Truth Will Set You Free

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Abby| 19 Comments

By Faith Rawley

I guess you could say that I was a pretty typical teenager.  I wanted to fit into the crowd not stick out; I wanted to be popular and liked; and my appearance was important to me.  I was teased, as most people are, for any little difference I displayed.  I gradually grew out of some of that teenage lack of confidence.  But as I reached my later teen years and early twenties it became clear that underneath the surface layer of uncertainty about my value I had some deep rooted insecurities that produced unhealthy fruit in my life.

At the age of 16 my family experienced some major changes, and through the process I put on some weight, which left me dissatisfied with my body shape. So, I started to cut out excessive amounts of fatty and sugary foods and began exercising more.  This is a normal response to unhealthy eating and there was nothing wrong with it in and of itself.  But once I had maintained my original weight evidence of the deeper problem started to come out.

Progressively the diet developed from something necessary into an obsession with eating ‘healthily’ and exercise.  Eventually I was doing some form of physical exercise nearly every day of the week and was dissatisfied if I missed a day in the regime I had set for myself.  I gradually cut out more and more foods and even rationalized the need to stop eating things that are good for us, like bananas, bread, cheese, and lots more.  I went through a number of cycles of losing weight, then stabilizing, then becoming dissatisfied again which led to a greater push to go further and be more drastic than I’d been before.  Each time more foods were cut out and the goals I set for myself became more and more ridiculous.  I never felt like what I was doing was good enough and even when I got to one goal there was always another to be achieved.  Fortunately I never got to the point of not eating at all but if there hadn’t been intervention when it came that may have been where it would have progressed.

I always felt cold and didn’t have a lot of energy even though I was exercising frequently.  I eventually became ill, with a nonthreatening condition, but it took me a lot longer to recover than it should have done.  Looking back now I can see that the enemy was definitely out to steal, kill and destroy my life.

I’m so grateful to God because at this point my amazing parents and some faithful friends intervened and insisted that I get some help.  Through some extensive prayer ministry I was completely set free from the influences that had held me in this life threatening state of thinking.  Since then I haven’t been ‘controlled’ by insecurity in this area and am more able to make proper choices without fearing what the outcome will be.  I’m happy with my body shape and actually think I’m beautiful.  I got married a year ago and at that time I was the heaviest I’ve ever weighed but I felt better about myself than I ever have done.

In thinking this through I was reminded of a story that Jesus told (Matthew 7:24-27).  Jesus likened trusting in his words to a man who built his house on a rock.  When rain, wind and storms came the house stood strong.  In contrast, Jesus said that ignoring his words was like building a house on sand.  The house will be unstable and will collapse when storms come.   I began to appreciate again that building something solid that is designed to last, on a foundation that moves and changes, is not a good idea.  But building on something firm and unmoving is a much better option.

Through my journey I have discovered that insecurity can come as a result of building our lives on sand – things that change, things that aren’t sure foundations.  I had so many wrong beliefs in my life.  I believed things like: ‘cheese, bread and a whole host of other foods weren’t good for someone trying to lose weight’; ‘I need to exercise most days of the week to be healthy’ – there is some truth in these statements but only partial truth.  Deeper down I realized that I also believed that God had made a mistake when he designed me.  He hadn’t quite got the proportions right and I was faulty.  Also I believed that the only way I could be sure that I would never put on lots of weight was if I controlled my own weight – I couldn’t trust God with this!

My story may be more extreme than most of the ways we deal with insecurity on a daily basis but the root issues are still the same.  Underneath the fear and the need to hide and control are shaky beliefs and foundations which need to be dealt with.

I had to learn how to dig out the sand and put in concrete foundations so that my life could stand.  I learnt to identify the faulty beliefs and change them with what God says is the truth.  This was a daily and even hourly process some of the time, of rejecting the lies and replacing them with the truth.  Now I know my life is based on the truth and I won’t be shaken.  I know that I am wonderfully made!  I know that God doesn’t make mistakes and I know that I can trust him with every area of my life and he will always come through.

If you are aware of insecurities you may have or God has highlighted some as you’ve been reading this post, let me invite you to take a moment and listen to this song.  As you do ask God to speak his truth about how he sees you into your heart.  Then write it down and remind yourself of it daily!

Each month, our Friday posts center around a particular issue. This month we are focusing on dealing with insecurity.

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This Thorn

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Abby| 16 Comments

By Niki Deutsch

This month of May, on each Friday, the Completely Devoted Blog will be turning our attention to a very common thorn in the flesh that many, if not most of us, suffer from.

This particular thorn, if it is not immediately brought to the Lord in search of “The Grace that is sufficient for you”, can so easily cause moments of anguish.  Sometimes, depending on the depth of thorn and the resolve of the Believer, it can cause hours, even days of despair.

It is a shape-shifter, seemingly changing its way of showing up.  Just when you think you’re “over it” – it makes a surprise appearance in a new outfit and haircut, just to see you…like a long-lost – well… enemy.

It is so sneaky that to do battle with it often means mumbling something like  “Next time I’ll…”  But truly – you don’t mumble anything until after you’ve first awakened to realize you’ve just had your butt kicked – again.  It is the hardest thing I have yet to conquer, and the thing I least like to see in me.  It is…

Insecurity.

Insecurity in all shapes and sizes can make us otherwise steady and Christ-exalting women tremble in our boots with an unreasonable fear of man.  It can even, if combined with shame, bring a woman (such as me) into such gut wrenching emotional pain from the thoughts circling around in her mind, that she closes herself off.  I do not want to go to church today…I just don’t want to face all the people who might not like me.

Insecurity withholds.  When I struggle with insecurity I withhold love. I’ll stop myself from reaching out to an acquaintance or stranger, fearing my words will be misunderstood.  In church, I’ll see a visitor or new member standing alone and only give a wave of “hello” while dodging past – all the while hearing the whisper of “Talk to them!”  Once upon a time, I was a person who’d talk to anyone, unafraid – but insecurity and fear of not pleasing people has crept in and grown into this nasty, thorny weed, often crowding out the desire to be bold.  Fear often trips up any desire to do the things that show My Heavenly Father I love Him.  What if I fail or accidentally offend someone with my good intentions?

In the last few years the Lord has gently been revealing how deep my insecurities lie and how it is truly a wretched sin.  Sometimes in quiet moments, I’d see pictures revealed – small moments, really, of myself seeking attention or longing to be thought well of by those around me – drinking in the praise of others like sugar-water.  And, oh, my list of insecurities goes on!

I have seen it in how I interact with family, how I respond as a worship leader, and how for years God has put a group of people on my mind to minister to, but insecurity has put up road blocks in every direction.  (How many more dreams of this ministry must He give me before I am bold enough to be obedient?)

But I will not be dismayed. He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it in me.  One day very soon, I will overcome.  I can sense it like a change in the weather as from winter to spring.  It is a hopeful feeling.  It is the sensation of the lifting of the head, chin set like flint that says: I am ready to wage a war.  And, as John Piper often encourages: I am ready to take on a war-time mentality toward this sin.  If it hinders me from obeying and loving God with my whole heart or loving others, I must wage war against it.

Oh, how I love to hear, and how I’m longing to hear My Savior in the written voices of my fellow bloggers as we consider this subject.  I know they will bring exhortations with Truth, Wisdom and Compassion – they who along with you and I are also working to overcome insecurity, whatever form it takes.

And, we will overcome…


Each month, our Friday posts center around a particular issue. This month we are focusing on dealing with insecurity.

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Posted in Dealing With Insecurity, Focus Fridays, Niki Deutsch

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