What Is Insecurity?
To put it simply, to be insecure is to feel like you are not secure. You are uncertain or anxious about where you stand with someone or with some circumstances. It is not just that you lack confidence but your response to lacking confidence makes you feel like you have to prove yourself. You work overtime trying to set the record straight so that people respect you.
When you are insecure you go about frantically searching for some form of security. Insecurity is the feeling that you are never enough but you have to prove yourself to others or even to yourself. In a state of insecurity, you will do anything necessary at times in order to prove yourself (even unethical and sinful things).
When you are insecure the smallest comments can set you off. People’s words feel more true than God’s Word. And even when people speak the truth it debilitates you in such a way that it is as if God’s good news is no longer true for you. This can lead to a lifestyle of either avoidance of others or obsession of others’ approval.
What Does Insecurity Look Like In Real Life?
Insecurity can be seen in different ways:
You will sacrifice some convictions in order to be embraced by a certain group of people. You won’t stand up for truth because you desire to be liked by your peers. Or, you will speak the truth without love and crush others because you just want to be seen as right.
You will give yourself to someone sexually in order to keep their admiration for you. Instead of an act of love for them within covenantal marriage it is actually an act of self-centeredness in trying to secure what you desire.
You will draw away from someone and forget about them because they do not value you the way you think you should be valued.
You will become overbearing to someone because they doubt you. You feel as if you must do anything to win them back so you will attempt to frequently catch their eyes through conversation or actions.
You will go to an extreme in what you wear, how you talk, what your job is, where you live, what you value, or who you befriend. This extreme can either be extremely conservative or extremely liberal. It can be very conforming or very rebelling.
You will find yourself driven by what critique you get from others. Bad criticism will crush you. This will either drive you to despair or drive you mad or drive you into an obsession to vindicate yourself. Good criticism will inflate your ego. This will drive you to self-righteousness, prejudice against others, paranoia of someone else being as good as you, or even blindness to your weaknesses.
You will fall into patterns of sin-hunting and criticizing others. You will seek to draw attention away from yourself and onto others’ sins and weaknesses. This can cause you to develop a victim-mindset or a sufferer-only mentality. If you have any sins it is only because of what others have done to you.
You will fail to confess your sins and be honest about who you really are. The tragedy here is that you will also fail experience the promise of Christ’s forgiveness and righteousness for you. In your self-obsession, you will stop resting in Christ’s righteousness and start trying to earn your own. This greatly hurts assurance of salvation.
How Can The Evil One Fan Insecurity Into A Flame?
The Evil One loves to prey on the insecure. They are like a wounded dog who sometimes will run anywhere for protection and yet also reject anyone who truly tries to help. Satan can lure an insecure person into sin and despair.
First, he will try to triumph over us in our insecure state by enticing us with sin. He will put the bait over the hook making sin look appetizing to us at the moment. We often see this with the temptation to sexual sin. Whether pornography or sexual acts, Satan loves to tempt us to think that if we just indulge in this area then we will feel loved, respected, and secure. Someone out there, whether actually or virtually, will embrace us and make us feel secure.
Second, he will try to triumph over us in our insecure state by causing us to despair. If we are not careful we can let our thought life turn chaotic. Satan loves to see us stirred up in an anxious state. He will try to cloud our vision of Christ and His promises for us. He will seek to keep us focused on ourselves and our inability. He will tempt us to be suspicious of everyone around us. In the end, he wants us to think that we are a unique case and have no one here to help us.
What Is At The Root Of Insecurity?
The insecure Christian is suffering from spiritual amnesia. They are forgetting who they are and whose they are (Gal. 2:20). When we are in a state of insecurity, we neglect our union with Christ. It is so interesting to see Paul writing about this in Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8. In Romans 5-6, Paul establishes the fact that we are united to the Christ who did what the first Adam could not do. We are so caught up in Christ that His death and resurrection are our death and resurrection. That doctrine is what led Paul in Galatians 2:20 to say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
But, we don’t always live according to our identity in Christ. This is where Paul goes in Romans 7. God’s Law is good! The problem is we still have remnants of our sinful nature within. We want to love God but we fall into patterns of loving ourselves more than God. We want to hate sin but we fall into seasons where we can desire it more than God. We struggle to do what we ought to do and we struggle to not do what we ought not to do.
Don’t you sense the insecurity here? This is what leads Paul to say in 7:24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Wouldn’t this be horrible if that were the end of the story? Wouldn’t the gospel be no gospel at all if God stopped His work in us the moment we struggled with sin?
Here is where Romans 8 comes in. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ” (8:1). The sin struggle in Romans 7 does not change the identity we have in Christ in Romans 6. Romans 8 is all about how God secures us in our salvation despite our sin and suffering.
So, What?
Coming back full circle, what is at the heart of insecurity? Forgetting that God is always at work in us through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. The insecure Christian is one who is functionally taking their faith away from God’s Word and onto Man’s words. They see themselves only and they forget Christ.
Of course this will lead to despair! Seeing self is only half of the Christian’s identity! We actually do not understand ourselves rightly nor fully if we forget Christ. That is how united to Christ Christians are.
In insecurity, we forget that God does not need our good works. We do good works for our neighbor rather than for God. Nevertheless, our good works never replace Christ’s work nor adds to Christ’s work. Our entire standing and identity is in the active and passive obedience of Christ. Jesus’ entire life, atoning death, and triumphant resurrection & ascension are our identity. The Christian life is the life that grows to live more consistently with this identity. The Christian does not live for identity in Christ but from identity in Christ.
What Is The Way Forward?
The Word does not merely describe your reality but determines your reality. See this quote below from Martin Luther:
“We must make a great difference between God’s Word and the word of man.
A man’s word is a little sound, that flies into the air, and soon vanishes;
but the Word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, greater that death and hell, for it forms part of the power of God, and endures everlastingly.”
Martin Luther
Man’s word includes the conversations we have within our own head. This is where Satan seeks to attack us. Like when he tempted Jesus, he seeks to plant evil and untrue thoughts in our minds. The subtly of his tactics is that he might sandwich these thoughts between two truths or he might tell only part of the truth but not the whole truth.
How should we respond?
Take your thoughts captive (2 Cor. 2:5; Phil. 4:8). Distinguish what is truly true from what is only partly true. God’s Word must set the tone in our consciences. Don’t let your insecure thoughts run wild. Speak back to yourself what is true.
Seek God’s Word for you through others. One of the hardest things for the Christian is to believe that what is true of us is actually true of us. This is why God has given us community. For strange reasons that are certainly tied to The Fall, it is often most difficult to believe ourselves when we remember God’s truth. We need others to speak it to us. Find trusted people who know how to discern your thoughts, how to explain the gospel, and how to apply the gospel to you.
Go on a grace-hunt with yourself and others. Grace presupposes and implies that there is sin. Grace-hunting does not ignore sin or water it down. But, it does not let sin be the only story nor the predominant story. Going on a grace-hunt means searching for ways where God has been and is at work. Write them down. Count them out. You would be so surprised to see how much more God is at work to redeem you than sin is at work to destroy you.
Go to church! Luther used to tell counselees that he could no them no help if they failed to go to worship. Was this legalistic? No! This is common sense. Worship changes us. God has established corporate worship so that we might be transformed through His means of grace. Staying away from corporate worship is exactly what Satan wants us to do because worship is where God meets us and draws us to Him.
Kill insecure thoughts the moment they rise up. John Owen says, “There is no way of deliverance from the state and condition of being in the flesh, but by the Spirit of Christ.” You cannot kill your sin of insecurity by your own efforts. You must depend on the Holy Spirit. This happens through immersing yourself in the means of grace (Word, Prayer, and the Sacraments) in the midst of community. He transforms you in these ways. And when you are out in the world He is bringing up God’s Word to your mind, giving you words to say from God’s Word, gripping your conscience, helping you fight sin, reminding you of your identity, and so much more! Rely on Him to finish the work that He has begun.
Welcome necessary criticism from trusted people. Do not be offended just because they are right. But, this criticism does not mean that you are only what they say at that moment. Criticism should only be seen as a portion of what is true. If the criticism is true then heed it.
Don’t listen to everyone or all criticism. For one, you do not and should not seek out criticism all the time. This will only crush you. Even God Himself does not show you all of your sin at once. Plus, if you are only wanting to know everything people think then this is just a form of self-obsession. You need a break from criticism. Some people should not have your ear at all because they cannot be trusted or they have the wrong view of things or because they are simply out to hurt rather than to help. Yes, there might be some truth in what they say but it is much better to hear that same thing from trusted friends and family.
Pray about it! It is horribly wrong whenever we think praying about something is “over-spiritualizing”. It is equally wrong whenever we say, “All you can do now is pray about it.” Yes, people can give trite and cheap advice that way. But, don’t change the content of the advice. Prayer matters! Prayer works! Pray for patience, long-suffering, steadfast love for others, mercy towards offenders, assurance of who you are in Christ, trust in God’s future providence, and reliance on God’s promises for you through Christ. Make time to pray about these things.