Remember when I was putting myself down in order to not be “proud?” Well, during that time, I started looking around and comparing myself to other people. Eventually, I became insecure and began to feel terrible about myself. Through my insecurity, God led me to realize that I needed to surrender an area to Him. After I surrendered, God gave me freedom and joy in the place of my self-consciousness as well as a glimpse of just how big He really is.
Insecurity is the opposite of over-confidence yet it stems from the same sin—trusting in yourself. When we are insecure, we are fearful because we personally do not have control over everything. As a result, we take the burden upon ourselves to make everything work.
When we try to take things into our own hands, we put God in a box. We tell Him that we don’t trust Him enough to direct our life. We squeeze God down to something smaller than us and, in a sense, place ourselves before Him. Because we trust in our own strength, we become discouraged. According to Oswald Chambers, “Discouragement is disenchanted self-love.”
When we are insecure or self-conscious, our relationship with God suffers. We end up fighting God because we alternate between trusting Him and trusting ourselves. Our times of introspection and insecurity show us what is most important to us–what we’re afraid of losing most.
When we hit times of insecurity, God is often trying to tell us that we need to give something up and surrender it to Him. Oswald Chambers says,
“Self-consciousness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of the life in God, and self-consciousness continually produces wrestling…Anything that disturbs rest in Him must be cured at once, and it is not cured be being ignored but by coming to Jesus Christ. If we come to Him and ask Him to produce Christ-consciousness, He will always do it until we learn to abide in Him.”
It’s during these times that God pries our fingers off of what we think is ours and says ‘give it to me’. And we can choose continue to wrestle or to give it to him and rest in peace that He has it under control.
Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. ~1 Peter 5:7
Rebekah Diaddigo 