Celebrating My Insecurities

I've been sick all week, but didn't want to leave you without something to consider this week, so I am bringing back from October 2010 this little piece on self-value. Enjoy!

 

This young girl's heart is filled with pain and despair, feeling completely and utterly rejected by a whole world of people. She sees herself as useless, stupid, undeserving and unwanted. She has been deeply hurt by those who love and are supposed to protect her as well as those who openly hate and despise her. All she wants is for one person to love her – to think she is worth the space she takes up on this earth. This girl doesn’t know that God is there lamenting with her. “If only she would see me, hear me,” God is crying. “She would know my love and I would heal her brokenness and her pain. This girl’s insecurities are the root of her fear, her actions, her thoughts and sadness and it is her insecurities that lead her into many unhealthy relationships and deeper into depression over the next twenty years. This girl is me as a teenager.

A few years ago, I made an incredible discovery – Everyone has insecurities! I used to look at the people around me and think, “I’m the only one who is insignificant in the group. Everyone else adds something of value, but me, I have nothing worth offering.” Everyone else seemed so confident and competent when compared with the distorted image I had of myself. But now I know that everyone else is just as insecure and unsure as I am sometimes. Insecurity is a human trait and we can’t escape it surfacing in us from time to time.

However, here is the good news: Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? (1 Corinthians 1:26-28, The Message) No matter how insecure we are, how little we feel we have to offer, God loves us and wants to work out his plan in and through us. If you look in the Bible, you will find that God often used the insecure nobodies, people who felt that they didn’t have much to offer because they weren’t rich, intelligent, charismatic, "first born" celebrities. Saul, the first king of Israel, hid from Samuel who was sent to anoint him king. David was just a young cocky shepherd boy when God called him to one day replace Saul. Jeremiah the prophet was a child, Amos was just an uneducated shepherd and the apostles were just fishermen and a tax collector. God called Jacob instead of Esau in fulfilling his promise to Abraham and Joseph instead of Rueben to rescue God’s chosen during the famine. Moses stuttered terribly and Esther was a poor orphan girl. When I think of these people whom God has chosen to work miracles through, I find myself smiling – I’m in good company.

So what if I don't think I have much to offer. That's no reason not to offer it all to God anyway and then to watch what he can and will do with it. It's not what I offer that enables God to do miracles - it's God's power and love that enables my small offering to become a miraculous gift to those I serve in his Name.