Focus Shift

The retreat this weekend started off as wonderful as I had hoped, with time in community and worship, as well as blissfully solitary time in prayer and God's word.  Then a flip switched and my old enemy insecurity took over.  I know what caused it, but that really doesn't matter.  It's like when you have a fight with your spouse and months later you remember the fight, but not what started it, because, in the end, what started it doesn't really matter.  It's not what caused my insecurity that matters.  What matters is my heart condition that could lead me to feeling insecure.

Part of my heart condition is due to what I wrote about in my last post, about having cheated my quality time with God in the last six months.  I am certain that is what left me vulnerable to attack, even as I began (or maybe even because I began) to reestablish time with God this weekend.  It makes sense that my identity in Him would be weak when I haven't spent much time in His word.

As a believer who struggles with insecurity, my goal is always to refuse to let my insecurity govern my decisions.  If I feel insecure in a certain situation into which I feel called, I always aim to walk with God's grace into the situation, rather than avoiding it.  That in itself is not easy, but I believe it is walking in faith.  For example, last fall I made a rather large error in judgement that several people knew about.  That very same night I had a meeting attended by some of those people who knew about my mistake and who were affected by it.  I really didn't want to go.  I felt extremely insecure and exposed walking in and having to face and apologize to those who had seen me fail.  But I made myself do it because I believe that to do otherwise would be to deny my identity and unconditional acceptance in Christ.  If I truly believe that I am fully loved and fully accepted by the God of the universe, then my mistakes do not have to paralyze me.

So, upon this line of thinking, I refused to let my insecurity keep me from engaging in the activities and interactions of the retreat. I also went to God's word and reminded myself of some passages that help me root my identity in Him alone.  I prayed, asking God to remove the feeling of insecurity and to help me be renewed in His love and grace.  But the feeling did not go away.  close to the end of the day, a friend asked me how I was doing.  Sometimes that is a dangerous thing to do!  So, of course, being very incapable of hiding my emotions, I unloaded upon her my tearful confession of the insecurity I was feeling.  She gave me words of grace and the act of confession itself helped lift my burden quite a bit.  But even as I came home from the retreat, I could feel the insecurity creeping back.

As it did, and as I stewed again on the cause and the feelings, I began to think these thoughts: Oh, how I despise that feeling of insecurity.  I am shamed by it.  I feel that as a follower of Christ, one privileged to serve the God of glory, I should not feel that way.  I feel weak and lame.  I begin to doubt that I am even worthy of serving God in any capacity, much less for such an amazing church and among such an amazing staff as I do.  How can I serve and teach tomorrow if I am still feeling this way?  I want to feel confident and full of God's amazing love.  I want to have His peace that will never leave me.  I want to feel and be so many things.  I want. I want.  I. I. I. I....

I spoke those thoughts in my mind all the way home in the car.  Until I sat down to write at my computer, thinking maybe writing about it would help bring me to clarity, as it so often does.  And sure enough, it did again tonight.  It was the "I. I. I. I." in my thinking that did it.  As I pulled up the pages of scripture I have compiled to help me through various areas of personal weakness, I was drawn to the one entitled "Praises."  Here is what I wrote at the top of the page:

"When my mind is filled with unhelpful thoughts of others (their opinion of me or how they are failing me) and of myself (my insecurities, my shortcomings, and my mistakes), these verses help me shift my focus to the One who truly deserves it."

And whabam, I am faced with the realization that giving in to insecure thought patterns, even in the form of crying out to God in prayer, is really the same as denying my identity in Him.  Even worse, it is really the same as idol worship.  And with the I. I. I. I. in my thought pattern, it's not too hard to see who is the object of my idolatry.  Good ole me, robbing God of His glory again by obsessing over myself!  Funny how even my insecurity is a form of self absorption and pride (and helps to explain how I can be at once over-confident and insecure...they are so related because they are both so full of SELF).

Thus, this is where I humble myself before the Lord my God and confess my self-absorption.  I confess that I have been more concerned with how I feel than in serving God and glorifying Him.  And I remind myself of Moses: not awesome, glow-faced, ten-commandments Moses, but wimpy, insecure burning-bush Moses.  In Exodus chapters three and four, God tells Moses to go lead His people out of Egypt, and Moses comes up with five I-centered, self-absorbed excuses why He shouldn't be the one (3:11, 3:13, 4:1, 4:10, 4:13).  After the fifth excuse, "please send by the hand of whomever else You may send," (excuse translated: anyone else would be better than me!), God finally just gets flat-out angry at Moses.  It's as if God is saying, "Moses/Megan stop being so self-absorbed and just obey and glorify Me."  Once you realize that, the only faithful response can be, "Yes Lord!"

So before I go another minute, or serve another day in teaching and ministering to the needs of others, I will spend my focus on the only One who truly deserves it.  Here are the passages of scripture I have compiled to help me focus on the worthiness of God to be glorified by my thoughts as well as my actions:

• Praise for God's plan and how He loves us: Psalm 8
• Praise for God's goodness: Psalm 103
• Praise for God's wonder: Psalm 145
• Praise for God's wisdom: Daniel 2:20-23
• Praise for God's power: Ephesians 3:20-21
• Praise for Christ's final victory: Hebrews 7:26-27
• Praise for God's good gifts and constancy: James 1:17
• Praise for God's glory: Revelation 4:8-11
• Praise for Christ's glory: Revelation 22: 16-17

And even as I simply begin the journey of re-focusing my eyes on the God who is so worthy of my praise, my insecurity melts away.  It is not about me.  I am about Him.  He is so worthy.