Choosing Our Battles--insecurity

2 Chronicles 20:17

You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the LORD will be with you.

Have you ever felt like this cat--trying its best to scoot by its perceived enemies as quickly and unnoticeably as possible?

For me, this is a very familiar feeling . . . in fact one that I have struggled with all of my life. We, each of us, get tagged by the enemy right from the beginning of our lives with a battle plan custom-made just for us. For many of us, this battle has something to do with insecurity.

I can say with certainty that my enttire life has seemed like a struggle against a dark force or cloud that has simply hung over me . . once in a while spraying me with lies and circumstances that only bolster its right to hang over my head--because I have believed it. When I have attempted to disagree it, out of my own strength, well, my efforts have been about as effective as shooting arrows through a cloud . . just never made that much of a difference.

But God, in His Grace, has come to rescue me, to fight this battle for me, as I have allowed Him to do so. . . by ripping my own personal cloud apart at the seams and rooting its affects out of my heart and mind . . . It has been and continues to be a very slow and purposeful process--a one-step-at-a-time journey towards healing and freedom.

A journey that generally comes in the context of seasons . .. . at first I see bad fruit in my life, in my relationships, and then I begin to receive intense revelation over the subject . . . showing me why. Then, finally a breakthrough comes and I experience a wonderful new sense of freedom. For a while . . . until the whole cycle begins again . . .sometime later finding myself back in the same battle, only at a deeper level, and completely frustrated because it confirms that I am not totally free yet. And so once again I see the fruit, the revelation comes along with its why's, and then, finally. . . the next level of freedom.

Lately, I have found myself yet again in such a season. At first I was overwhelmed by its ugliness. God I don't want to be like this!!! And, I was hyper-aware of all of the things I was not succeeding in as a result. And, well, I was frustrated because it just didn't seem like 'the right time' to be dealing with this again. But then, when I settled into the truth that that is where God was taking me . . .He began to grace me with a whole new batch of insight . . .

So what exactly is this Insecurity? At some level or another we all know what it looks like . . . on others. But how does it work in and through us? Well, it's depending on others to define us, to approve of us, to give us in some way a sense of identity--ultimately giving others the power to determine our worth (and then we get mad at them for whatever their determination is, even though we were the ones to put them in that position in the first place!). Insecurity is also a performance mentality--saying if I just do this well enough, then they will like me, and I will be approved of! A way of thinking that bolsters us or demeans us determined by how we perceive how someone else perceives us. And, it is at one and the same time an intense lack of confidence in ourselves preventing us from ever really stepping out into the things God has called us to, as well as an intense level of pride that uses masks to show the world that we are strong enough and good enough--masks we mostly use to try and convince ourselves.

Insecurity is a battle that can never be won apart from God. I know, I have tried. Our 'solutions' never end up being solutions, at all. The masks never hold-up. Everyone knows the truth about how insecure we really are and we know that they know it. The praise of others never satisfies, it never gives us enough of what we need to say, 'there! now I am completely content with who I am!' And the criticism of others never fails to come with such well-timed accuracy and vehemence that it would seem both the devil and God are doing everything they can to hinder our attempts at creating our new brand of self-made security. . . the devil trying to convince us that we are as bad as we think we are so he can eventually kill us . . . and God trying to disrupt our every effort so that we will finally turn to Him, allow Him to hang our flesh on the cross where it belongs, and begin the process of transforming our minds to depend on Him and what He alone says about us.

As long as we refuse to turn to Him we will only descend deeper into the black hole that began as a black cloud hanging above our heads. Insecurity steals our peace, sending us on a roller coaster ride of ups and downs that knows no pause. It never provides us with a final word about who we are, and thus we are vulnerable to every whim and never grounded on anything safe or constant. And it robs us of our relationships--our unrighteous need for others sucks life from those who are closest to us. Our needs hang on them like leeches. And well, we find ourselves locked in a circle of distrust and judgement towards . . . everyone.

This has been my greatest revelation of late. Through reading an incredibly insightful book called, 'How to Stop the Pain' by Dr. James B. Richards, I realized how we trap ourselves in our own traps of insecurity through making judgements. By judgement, I am referring to the way we assign meaning to what is being said and done by others. As insecure people, we are looking to others, addictedly, to provide us with some sense of self. And so we assume what their actions and their words really mean, and we assume (in our self-centeredness) that it always has something to do with us, ie. that it says something about us.

Forgetting or even ignoring the reality that other people just aren't thinking about us nearly as much as we think they are .. . we not only assume ourselves into their world, but we assume we have the ability to actually see into their hearts to find their 'real' motivations. Only God can see into the heart. But because we are so desperate to get something from others, we tred on sacred ground and make up a 'why' for all that they say and do . . .

Recently, I had a rather humorous and profound lesson that showed me how this works in my own life. Quite untinentionally, some weeks ago, I dyed my hair blond .. . thinking it would just get a little lighter, well, it transformed into a disconcerting combination of white-blond and orange. It was on a Saturday, and not being able to get to the hairdresser that day to have it at least, toned down, well, I was forced to face the intimidating world of church. Talk about embarrassing.

Well, while there, it happened somehow just as I had expected. I was standing up front getting read to sing with our worship band when I noticed a woman who is, well, typically very real with her opinions, hiding her mouth behind her hand and laughing hysterically . . looking directly at me! I must have turned five shades of red, thinking, 'my goodness, can't she have a little mercy?' Caught up in my own judgment, I literally tried to avoid her several times that morning as she seemed to want to approach me . . I assuming she would make things worse with some comment. Finally, though, I couldn't ignore her anymore. And you know what she had to say? 'hey, I am so sorry, I just wanted you to know that I wasn't laughing at you at all . . . you were facing the other direction when we walked in and my husband had just asked me who the new person in the band was when you turned around-- and it was you! So, we just had to laugh at his mistake . . .'

Hmm . . I was so close, and yet so far, in my true understanding of why she had been laughing. The truth was, I had no clue. I had just made a judgement--against her--one that ultimately fed my own expectations of how I thought I would be perceived. And in the end, my own judgement only fed my insecurity.

Seeing this truth, though, was like finding a priceless treasure somehow... . becaue hey, if there's no way I can ever really know what someone else is thinking and why they say and do the things they do . .. unless, of course, they tell me . .then why do I need to waste my time, energy, and sense of self-worth on something I will never be able to know?! Why should I give unrightous power to well . .. in the end, not others, but my own vain imaginations about others?

Like the picture above where the cat is oh so gingerly creeping away from dogs who are clearly not trying to attack her, how often do we do the same? How often to we expend all of our energy expecting and avoiding and assuming that there's a battle that really is no battle at all--even sometimes causing one because of the offense we create by judging others--instead of focusing on the true source of our issues . . . us! Yes, people hurt us and yes, circumstances hurt us, and yes, we have a very real enemy who is seeking to steal, kill, and destroy. But way more than that we have a God on our side who sent His son to die so we can become new creations, so we can be given a new identity that says I am more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus, I am accepted and approved, I am a son or daughter of the living God, and He who is in me is greater than he that is in the world!

When we can become securely grounded and founded, at last, in God's truth about who we are, then we will finally become the men and women God has created us to be . .. and we will finally be at peace. Below is a quote from Rick Joyner's book, The Call that describes how things can be-- how things were meant to be-- when we decide to allow God to fight on our behalf against this enemy called insecurity . . when we learn to live and operate out of the truth of His Kingdom rather than the fallness of this world . . .

'Then I looked at the people in the city. They seemed familiar, but at the same time I knew that I had never met anyone like them. There were like I imagined Adam to be before the fall. The eyes of each shone with what seemed to be almost total comprehension, an intellectual depth far beyond even the most brillian person I had ever known. I knew this to be the result of an order an dpreace that was completely free of confusion or doubt, or maybe the confusion of doubt. There was no ambition because each one was so confident and had so much joy in who they were and what they were doing. Because everyone here was free, they were also completely open.'

Lord, free us from ourselves and the lies of this world so we can experience the security that comes from knowing who we are in You! Plant us like rightous trees, firmly rooted in the truth, so we can experience freedom and victory over this battle, at last.