Last week, I mentioned that insecurities are often the cause of why I don’t see things from God’s perspective. For me, the most difficult obstacle to overcome in seeing a situation from God’s perspective is getting “me” out of the way. Most of us struggle with realizing how our own insecurities cause us to miss what is real.
God did fearfully and wonderfully create us. We are complicated beyond measure. Our innate characteristics, feelings, and patterns of thoughts have been scripted and sculpted in our minds through a lifetime of experiences. These are difficult to be aware of, let alone, know how to manage them. So we struggle to know how our insecurities are influencing the way we view life around us.
Let me suggest one reason for this is because insecurities are often the result of false beliefs or perspectives. It is interesting to think of insecurities from this perspective. All insecurities, come from things that we feel, think, or believe that are not true. In other words, they don’t reflect reality. Wow, that is a pretty important concept! If that is true, then dealing with our insecurities is a matter of helping us come to see reality as God sees it. It means dealing with our false beliefs.
For instance, several weeks ago Mary Kay suggested she wanted to spend more time alone in the morning rather than with the two of us together. My perspective was first to feel that she didn’t want to spend time with me. That is not true! But a false belief I hold deep down is that if someone chooses not to spend time with me that means something is wrong with me. As I type these words, I fully know that is not true. But my immediate feelings belie this deep down belief. As I prayed, thought, journaled, and reflected on this situation (processed it from God’s perspective), I came to see the false belief upon which it was founded.
As I have written before this is how I use journaling, but others may need a walk in the woods, listening to music, reading a passage, praying, running or a myriad of other ways they are able to look inward and seek to understand what the belief is underlying their thoughts, feelings, or behavior.
I am not talking only of cognitively seeing reality. I mean coming to integrate reality into our whole being, cognitively, emotionally, psychologically, physically, socially, and behaviorally. Let me suggest that processing situations may start with cognitively thinking through a situation, but it must go much deeper. This is what journaling has helped me do, to integrate reality into my whole self. It isn’t just a cognitive writing about reality, I am fully invested in this experience. So helping someone deal with their insecurities is a process of helping them experience the true reality from God’s perspective and not from their own false perceived perspective.
By “processing” I mean coming to see a situation as it is or in relation to how God intends it to be truly experienced. I have come to see insecurities in my life coming from a false sense of reality or in relation to how I have experienced reality.
One more example might help. About five months ago, I got a new car. I love new cars and I wash and wax them regularly. This past Sunday I was backing out of the Airbnb where we are staying, and I “kissed” a pole with the front bumper on my car (See picture below). As I got out and looked at my car, my heart sank. We drove straight to a church we had planned on visiting.
I didn’t listen to the pastor much because my mind kept thinking back to how I could have avoided it, how could I fix it, and on and on. Finally, I began to pray and ask God for his perspective on it. I was reminded that it was just plastic and metal. I remembered of all the scratches and dents I have put on cars throughout my life. I also came to see that my sense of worth was in some way emboldened by that new car. As I reflected and prayed about it, I realized that I was the same person after this incident as I was before. It could be fixed, and life would go on. I truly had a peace on this issue as I walked out of that church service.
This doesn’t mean I was pleased with what happened, but I wasn’t anxious about it. There is a difference. I quoted Philippians 4.6 & 7 last week, and the end of this verse tells us that when we truly give a situation to God, we will experience peace. Sometimes it takes talking to someone else to help us get there, sometimes it’s praying, sometimes journaling, sometimes a walk, or sometimes worship music.
Too often my insecurities rob me of experiencing the life that God has for me. I am still working on seeing life from God’s perspective.
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