When Insecurity Dies and Love Lives

Around 9 months ago, I was sitting in my room listening to music and pouring my heart out to God. After two years of ministry school, I had a big decision to make about what I would do for my third year internship. Being prone to introspect and incredibly hard on myself, I thought over all the areas I still needed to grow in, all areas of struggle and weakness and other various components of why I didn't feel qualified for many of the options available to me. Around 20 minutes into my self-evaluation, Jesus decided to save me from myself and interrupted my thoughts. He said, "Heather, You rob others when you devalue what I’ve placed inside of you; because I want to use you to change their lives and you don’t believe you have anything to offer" I was like, oohh...burn. Over the last 9 months God has not let me get away from the lesson he began teaching me that night. What happens when I am not continually choosing to view myself the way God does? What happens when I only see with my natural eyes but don't ask for heaven's perspective? Sometimes we get so caught up in our own emotions that we become really self-centered. A sense of false humility can form when we allow our thoughts to become more focused on our weaknesses, inability and lack rather than Gods power, strength and faithfulness. It is not only painful for me when I think this way, but it hurts and robs those around me. When I am choosing to live in a place of insecurity rather than my true identity, it prevents me from loving people the way I was created to. I don't realize the value of my thoughts, words and actions and this can cost others a great deal. Insecurity is placing your identity in what you feel and what others think rather than what is true. True humility is having the right view of God and how he sees you, and living from that place. We cannot love others from a place of insecurity, because we will always attach a need to the love we are pouring out. We need that person to value or affirm who we are, and if they don't, we can grow bitter or resentful...which is the exact opposite of our original intention; to love. God told me, "Love with a need attached to it will not produce the results your heart desires." Love has the power to heal and transform people. We were all created to do something that no other person on the planet could ever accomplish. But when I don't know who God says I am and recognize what he's placed in me, I will always want to be someone else. When I live my life in insecurity because I am not somebody else, I cannot offer others the very thing inside me that could change their lives. We were created to love and to transform the world through that love. It's time we learn to love God and let Him love us and show us who we are so we can love ourselves and then love others. It's time for insecurity to die so that we can become who God created us to be.