Hate-I don't usually use this word because it is so powerful but I hate insecurity. I feel it is one of those tools the enemy uses to distract, isolate and destroy. But I am a child of God he can't destroy me! So how is it that when I'm at my closest to God, like a thief I get sideswiped by insecurity?
Insecurity can come in many forms; comparison, perfectionism, isolationism, business, etc. For me it's in isolation, or the appearance of. For me waves of insecurity come through the busyness of life. When my life gets crazy or the lives of my friends get overwhelming and busy I get slapped in the face with doubts like, "Are they avoiding me?" "Do they like me?" "What have I done wrong?" "I need to fix this." You can see how destructive these kinds of thoughts can be.
You see this way of thinking is no different then Peter when he stepped out of the boat and was the second human, out of two total, to ever walk on water. How cool is that!
For those who don't know the story. Matthew 14:22-33 tells us Jesus hadn't gone out on the boat with his disciples but stayed on the shore to pray, we can talk about that idea of prayer later. While the disciples were out in the boat a storm started. It was a bad storm because several of these disciples were seasoned fishermen who were out on the water all the time, and though we don't know which freaked out, many thought they were going to die. Then to add to the mayhem they saw someone walking toward them in the storm on the water. Talk about scary. It was Jesus but some of the disciples weren't sure though he had called to them to reassure them. They thought it was a ghost. Peter, the ambitious one, jumped up and said, "If it's you Lord, call me out to you on the water." (v.28) Jesus called him and he stepped out onto the water.
Now we could go into a different point of this story and talk about faith but I want to focus on what happened next. As Peter was walking on the water the wind, or a big wave, came up and Peter turned to look at the wave. When he did this he started to sink. Now he called out to Jesus and Jesus saved him.
I get Peter's position here. You are emotionally on a high. You are doing something with the Lord that is impossible for humans to do. God is using you and you are rocking the faith thing. It seems like nothing could go wrong...until it does. Life gets busy, we skip a little time with God to, "just relax" or just watch this show, or a quick check of Facebook. Maybe we find our time spent on things like, sick kids, dinner, clean up the house, helping others or even quality time with our families. All these things are wonderful, and Jesus did them too, but the time we get with our Lord is what we need to keep going. It is more important then water or air. He is LIFE.
Even when we spend all this time, which I am not saying has to be any substantial amount of time just time spent, we can not forget that as a child of the King we have an enemy that is determined to stop us in our tracks. He does not want God's message of freedom, healing, faith and truth to have anytime or light. The Word says the devil comes, to steal, kill and destroy. (Jn 10:10)
He wants to steal my peace and joy. He want to me to be the walking dead only thinking of what i've lost and what I'm missing instead of what God has given and what only he can restore. He ultimately wants me destroyed. Some wonder how Christians who have walked away from God could say that life is so much easier. Well let's think about it. Why would the enemy of God spend time on someone who is advancing HIS plan and isn't doing anything to advance God's?
So how does insecurity fit into all of this? Well insecurity is my wind and wave. It is the thing that the devil often uses against me to get my focus off of Christ and back into the sinking ocean of doubt and self-loathing.
That's all to familiar a pit for me. The, "everybody hates me, nobody likes me, guess I'll go eat worms." tune that my mind plays. It's the subtle negative voice that innocently sees friends gathering together over a holiday and pitifully says, "Why wasn't I invited? I guess they don't like me." or the inner voice that imagines a friends busyness of school, family and volunteer activities is because they secretly are angry with me and I have done something to wrong them but they won't tell me. Or worse of all thinking that someone who has experienced a great loss doesn't want to be your friend because they are withdrawn and grieving. You see all these as lies when looked at through the eyes of Christ and can see how silly they are and somewhat selfish. But when used as our enemy as a distraction from our Lord can be something that could have lasting consequences. I cannot tell you how much hurt I have experienced due to my insecurities rearing their ugly head. Lost friendships, opportunities and worse lost credibility and advancement for the gospel.
But insecurity does not have to win. I am human so I will, at times, look more at the distractions then Christ but my goal is to recognize them as soon as I can so I can minimize the time spent dwelling in the sinking pit and call out to Christ. Because the Bible tells at the end of our story. "Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him." Mth. 14:33a and he always will.