A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Insecurity. It's out there in plague proportions. Ruined relationships.  Ruined lives. If you know someone who suffers from insecurity – what's the greatest gift that you can give them?
Over the last few days on A Different Perspective we have been looking at this whole issue of insecurity. We all have some insecurities, some areas in our lives, work or personal, or emotional that we are sensitive about. When someone treads on that spot it hurts and we withdraw or we come out punching.
Over the last twenty years or so I have worked in about 200 organisations across Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand right across a lot of cultures and I am here to tell you that insecurity is universal problem. I have enough stories and examples to write a book on the subject, a really thick book.
Over that time I have come to the conclusion that our failure to deal effectively lovingly, sensitively, kindly with insecurity, other peoples and our own, is one of the biggest sources of pain, conflict and disappointment on this planet. If there were just one thing that you and I could do to alleviate that, what would it be.
Insecurity is actually about fear. Often it is quite narrow and specialised in people's lives. And it's different for each one of us. Different people have insecurities in different parts of their lives. Some of them are worried about what people think, others feel insecure about how they look, or what they sound like. And insecurity features differently in terms of magnitude. Some people are really insecure. Others just have the odd little bit of insecurity here and there. But when we have fear, fear is real. My fear is real to me.
When I was in the army one of the things that we did in training was to repel out of helicopters. And you were flying along in the helicopter sitting on the floor. You got the signal to go out onto the skids, which meant you had to roll over on your stomach, dangle you legs out of the helicopter while it was still flying along. And then you had to stand on the skids.
But Berni's little legs were too short so I had to jump out onto the skids. And that was a scary thing and standing there on the skids and then going down into the position where you would repel out of the helicopter. I have to tell you it was kind of counter-intuitive to my understanding of heights.
And I was pretty scared each time that I had to do it. Not withstanding the fact that when I had done it, it was quite a buzz. And no matter how you dismiss my irrational fear of height, it's real. It forms a part of my reality.
You can talk to me about me, you can get me to the point of accepting that the fear is irrational, you can get me to agree that I need to something about it. But I tell you that the next time in that helicopter, the next time I get in to that situation again, the insecurity and the fear can be there. And when we experience fear, we have a natural instinct to protect ourselves. I believe that there is a gift that we can give to someone around us who suffers from insecurity. A gift worth more than gold. A gift that they will treasure for the rest of their lives.
The gift comes in two parts. Part one: is to understand their fear. I read a quote once, I can't remember who said this but they said something like this:
If we only knew and understood the hurts and the pains in the past in the lives of our enemies, it would be enough to disarm any intention of hostility in our hearts.
Think about that … as we are walking through life and relationships, and we run into someone's insecurity and they react and they blow up like a land mine, that we could never have seen or predicted, and these people explode in our faces. We have a choice to make, we can pull them apart, we can talk badly of them, we can cut them off, we can have enough with them. We can just stop and choose not to react.
We can choose to regroup, to investigate, to figure out, to understand, to discover what their insecurity is. When people are afraid, when people are feeling pain, no matter how irrational you and I think it might be, right. But when that person is feeling pain or feeling threatened, their natural instinct to protect themselves is going to come into play.
An instead of punishing them maybe we should understand them. Jesus said,
Love your enemy.
It not a platitude, it's not a rule, it's not some anachronistic thing written in a book 2,000 years ago. It's real. And I believe that a big part of loving your enemy is doing exactly that. When someone reacts badly to us and attacks us, or talks behind our backs, or does what ever it is they do. We can choose to punish them by cutting them off or doing exactly the same back to them.
Or we can say, "Hmmm, I wonder why they did that. I wonder what it is in their make up that caused them to do that." And we can take it as an opportunity to get to know them. So that we can understand what little insecurity in the recesses of their hearts and minds causes this sort of behaviour.
The second part of this gift of life, is now supporting them through that fear. If insecurity is about fear and reacting to irrational fears, maybe it is a bit like a car accident. You know when someone has a car accident, and they have to go through rehabilitation, sometimes, months just to learn to walk again, or to learn to use their arms again. They do exercise over and over and over again.
It's challenging, it's painful, they need people who's specialise in rehabilitation. And sometimes they feel defeated. Sometimes they need support. So often insecurities come from emotional car crashes. They come from bad things that have happened to people in the past. They come from ineffective behaviours they have learned from their parents or their teachers or their work colleagues.
When someone reacts badly because of an emotional car crash, is it any different. If low esteem is about dealing with fears and insecurities should we punish and reject people for that? Or should we suffer through it with them. Help them to get over it. Help them to get through … just accept them just as they are. And love them unconditionally. Love your enemy. What a gift, what a breath of life that would be!
Now, there is a warning here, don't try this at home. You need to be an expert … c'mon, there is a cost. Rehabilitation is a long haul thing. And along the way an insecure person is going to hurt people. An insecure person is going to lash out at people. An insecure person will have a go at us and try and hurt us and probably will hurt us.
But steadily day by day, week by week, what they get from us is love. Straight talking, faithfulness and love. How many times, how long? Seven times? No seventy-seven times! A hundred time, a hundred and seventy-seven times! It's hard, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of guts. But what a gift.
Insecurity is about fear, about reacting and protecting ourselves from harm. It can be irrational, it can be unbalanced, and it ruins lives and ruins relationships. What's the one thing, the only thing that can rehabilitate someone from that place. Love, faithfulness, unconditional acceptance day after day, so that deep in their soul, they learn for themselves that there is no reason to fear.
God's like that. He is slow to anger, full of compassion, and abounding in love. In our fast food culture, hanging in there with someone, accepting them, and helping them through their insecurities is grossly counter-intuitive. There are so many people, so many relationships, so much entertainment, so many things that we could be doing that instinctively the moment someone displays bad behaviour through insecurity we just cut them off.
And yet, Jesus said love your enemy. Hang in there with them. Be that source of perfect love for them that teaches them through life that they don't have to be afraid anymore.
If we search deep inside, if we really think about that … go on … tell me God's got it wrong.

Relationships – at home, at work, with friends – well they can be like walking through a mine field.  Everything's fine – and then you step on a mine…..
It's a funny thing, but a relationship can be going along just fine, work, home, friends, just ticking along. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, this person comes out punching.
Whoa! I didn't see that coming. Like a curve ball to the solar plexus, they just attack us or spit out some angry words or say something that just blows us out of the water.
And as we pick ourselves off the floor we are thinking, "I just didn't' see that coming. What was that about, I mean what did I do to deserve that?" And sometimes it's the other way around we just lash out at someone and afterwards we think, "Why did I do that?" you know what I mean.
I was visiting a radio station recently, an executive in a different country. And I had a morning meeting scheduled with him to talk about a few issues. And while I was on the way in, in the car, and he range me and he said, "Look, I still really want to meet with you but I have this problem, there is this really big human resources problem that has blown up in my face at work. Can we meet at a little bit later?" Well I had some flexibility that day, my plane had been delayed so we were able to meet later. Turns out that he was having some real conflict with one of the staff there. Something, it just exploded, and if I told you the issue you would fall of your chair, so I won't. It seemed so minor, so small, so insignificant and yet there was a huge conflict over the issue.
Do you enjoy conflict? Most of us don't. I certainly do not enjoy conflict. Yet so often it is a bit like that movie, "The Truman Show". You would be walking along on a sunny day, along the road and someone movie director somewhere presses a button, and without warning a bomb goes off right next to us!
Have you ever wondered why? Well there are a lot of reasons, but one, one happens time and time again. It is the issue of insecurity in peoples lives. This week on A Different Perspective I have called this little group of messages, "Getting over it!" we are looking at the subject of insecurity. Have you ever asked yourself, "What is it? What is insecurity? We need to stop and thing about that.
We bandied the word around, but what exactly, what is it? We all have as people a life preservation instinct. If we are driving along in a car and all of a sudden a car pulls out in front of us. We slam on the brakes and the adrenalin pumps through the veins. And we try and save ourselves. And the same is true emotionally. When something comes out of the blue that we find threatening, we either decide to fight it and come out punching or we've run away. We avoid it, we don't confront it. We just stew inside and it eats away at us.
There is something built into each one of us. Which is about self preservation. And that's ok, that's normal, but sometimes there are things inside us that create irrational fears. Fears that don't make any logical sense.
I don't so much as have a fear of heights, but I know that when I am standing on a balcony several floors up, if there is no roof above me and I look up at the sky, I find that really scary, unsettling thing. I feel as though I am about to fall off the balcony. It doesn't make sense, it is just there.
Some people have an irrational fear of spiders or sharks. We all know that there are far more chances of being run over by the proverbial bus than there is by being killed by a spider or a shark or a snake. Some people are petrified about flying in planes. None of those fears are rational. But they are very real. And these irrational fears can go into our emotional dimension as well. We can be unduly concerned about what people think of us. What they say of us. We can be really touchy about people stepping on our turf. Maybe we are bucking for a promotion. Maybe we are worried about job security. Maybe we are a bit touchy about being overweight. The list goes on an on.
Whatever it is outside when people look at us they don't always know what things we are precious about. Where in our lives we are insecure. Either that or they know and they think it is stupid, I mean, they just dismiss it. "Ah she's just worried about what the boss will think."
Insecurities in other people well they are like a minefield. We can be walking along through this field, through a relationship, everything is ok. BANG! And there is no sign to say, "Don't put your foot here, there is a mine under this bit of dirt." So what can we do about it. The minefield picture is a useful framework to have in our hearts and our minds. One of the things that we can do is to watch people, to observe them, to get to know them, to start to figure out where their insecurities are.
I was doing some consulting work as I used to do over many, many years, with a government department. And the man that I was working with was a really cool, balanced, intelligent man. But as I saw him in meetings and working with other people in the organisation, there are a couple of things that he reacted really badly to. I thought, "That's really interesting" I mean on the surface he is so competent, he is so intelligent, he is so well collected and has himself sorted out. He has been around this organisation for a long time. He knows the people, he knows the terrain, he knows the issues. Why did he react so badly to those issues in those meetings? As I got to know him and had coffee with him and worked with him, one day it came out. The organisation had just had a restructure, and as a result of that restructure the one job that gave him a promotion after all these years in the organisation, had been restructure right out of the organisation. So his career path was gone. After 25 years, his hopes, his dreams for promotion were gone.
Well would you be cheesed off at that, I would. That would get me going I think. And so I just found a land mine. And once I knew where it was not only could I avoid stepping on it, but I could also behave and act and help through that little bit of insecurity.
Because it's not always possible is it? Sometimes you are just walking along and … BANG! This person blows up in your face. And then we go, "Alright, now I am threatened." I remember once having a client yelling down the mobile phone, yelling abuse down the mobile phone at me. Well what do we do? We can either, run and hide, or we can go BANG right back. There is actually a third option. We can not react at all. We can just let them go, take it on board and resist the urge to rip their heads off their shoulders.
The apostle Paul in a letter that he wrote to the church in Corinth, almost 2,000 years ago. It's a verse that is really well-known, often quoted at weddings, he wrote this:
Love is patient and kind, it is not rude, it is not self interested. It is not easily angered. And it doesn't keep a list of wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)
Elsewhere throughout the bible in fact throughout the whole of the Old Testament, 8 times it says that God is slow to anger. And each of those 8 times it finishes the sentence with this, "and He is abounding in love and faithfulness." God is slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness.
The flip side of that is being quick to anger. And when we get angry quickly at people who have reacted badly to something we don't understand we are doing the opposite of abounding in love and faithfulness.
I wonder if the next time someone blows up in our faces, I wonder if we remembered, "Hmm maybe something or someone has just trodden on some insecurity that I can't see. How about I just let it wash by me. And then try and understand it a little bit later."
I wonder if we responded that way if we were slow to anger when someone goes off in our face like a cracker. I wonder how much better life would be.

Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me. Not much.  In fact the things people say can leave lifelong scars. People say – just get over it?  But can we?
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me." So the saying goes. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. When people call us names. When they hurt us. Or reject us. Or abuse us. Or talk behind our backs. Those things can really hurt us. And for many people, they carry those old injuries around with them. Often not really knowing it. And it robs them of the life that God always intended.
If your Dad didn't encourage you, chances are you'll have low self esteem. If you were abused as a child, chances are you'll feel like a victim for much of your life. So is it possible to be set free from the hurts of the past?
There's something really important that we need to know about the past. It's past. It's gone. There are lots of things out of our control. The past is one of the biggest ones of all. Doesn't matter what we do. How much we wish we could change it. How much we try. What's done is done. We can't change the past. We can only change from hereon forward.
Well why is this so important? I mean it's blindingly, glimpsingly obvious. Yet so many people live in the past. They live today constrained by the hurts of yesterday. "I didn't have a happy childhood. I was abused. I was hurt. The kids at school weren't nice to me. The teacher …"
I mean, recently I was overseas with my wife. We were in Canada and we were talking with our daughter who was staying with a friend for the couple of weeks while we were gone. Our daughter Melissa is 14. And there was one particular teacher who said something really hurtful to her. And so, of course, I rang the principal and I talked to the principal and dealt with it. But just one harsh word from an adult when we're growing up as teenagers, just one, can leave a mental scar.
It can happen from parents. It happened to me when I was growing up. It's just the way I am. And we look back and we lament. We wish it was different but it's not. And we turn it over and over in our mind. Like a cow chewing its cud.
Here's this crazy idea that I have. When Jesus died on the cross for me, He purchased for me a new future. If anyone believes in Him, they are a new creation. Everything old is passed away. Have a look. Everything else is new. And Jesus said,
If I set you free then you are actually free. (John 8:36)
You listen to the apostle Paul:
We are more than conquerors if we believe in Jesus.
I can do anything through Christ Jesus who strengthens me.
Okay, so there are some words on a page in a book called The Bible, that tell us some things but what do they really mean for life? Well, here's the crunch. And if you are someone who is struggling with the hurts of the past you may not like what I have to say. But I have to say it to you anyway.
Here is the crunch. You can live your life with the hurts of the past and believe that you can't change it. Or you can decide to believe what God says about you. You've got a choice.
I often joke. I mean I would not make a good counsellor, you know. It's not my gift to sit with people. One of the people who helps me on this program, Max Harding, who is a great guy and as well as being a fantastic producer, he also works in a counselling ministry. And he has a wonderful job at that but that is not what I do. And I often joke that my form of counselling is to listen to people for 30 seconds then say, 'that is great, just get over it'.
In a sense that doesn't help. And of course when we have issues and hurts and problems from the past we do have to bring them out and talk about them and deal with them. But some people talk about them and talk about them and talk about them and talk about them for the rest of their lives.
They whinge and complain about some bad things that happened to them when they were children. Even people, let me say, who have said, "look I've seen what God did for me through Jesus Christ. I believe in Him." And yet somehow, these same people still want to live in the hurts of the past.
The past is past. It's over. It's gone. Can't change it. Can't undo it. Can only come to grips with it and leave it behind. If it's past, shouldn't we leave it behind?
Do you have some hurts? Let me ask you really kindly but yet very directly, are you still wallowing in those hurts? If that's you, I have a word from God for you today. And that word is this: get over it! It is time to move on. I don't say that lightly, I don't say that with a smile on my face. It is time to move on. Let it go.
Jesus bought you and me an eternal future. And it doesn't matter where you go in the Old Testament or the New Testament, what you see is a God who wants to bless us. Now, a lot of Christians in the New Testament went through a whole bunch of persecution, and you could say that they were victims in a sense. But when you look at Paul, locked up in jail, singing and praising God, writing letters of encouragement to his friends in Philippi, you think, I don't think Paul was really a victim here.
Would he have preferred to be doing something else? Probably, Paul would probably have rather not been in jail. But there was no way that the Apostle Paul was living his life as a victim. He'd come to grips with what was happening to him very, very quickly. And quickly he got over it.
When we have hurts from the past sometimes it's time to take the garbage out and let it go. If the past is past maybe we need to get over it! If Jesus bought us a future.
Of course the devil, well he's happy for us to live wallowing in the pains of the past. He's only come to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus said
I have come that you would have an abundantly blessed life. (John 10:10)
So which one will it be? Will we continue to wallow in the pain and the hurts of the past or will we decide to believe what God says about us and get over it? But hang on Berni, you don't understand my past. You don't understand how much it hurts, you just don't understand. Well maybe I don't, but here are the things that I do understand.
You are an incredibly beautiful person in God's eyes. And when he sent Jesus to die, he had you in mind. He had me in mind. He had his love focused on us. And maybe some tough things have happened in our lives, but listen, show me just one person, just one person, who's had a perfect life. Without any hurts, without any disappointments, without anything to look back on and regret. I don't know anyone like that do you?
Now look at this Jesus on the cross. The price that he paid to purchase a future for you and me, and tell me that there is something to be gained by hanging on to the past that he dealt with on the cross for us.
Today I believe you and I are together for one reason, Jesus has an invitation for you to live this abundant life. We all have decisions to make, and today I challenge you to make a decision. Either choose to wallow in the past and let it rob you of your future, or choose to accept once and for all the abundant blessed life that He came to give us.
The decision is yours. Which one will it be? And if you're tempted to hang on to those past hurts, if they're hard to let go, give me just one good reason for you to hang on to them. I believe we've each been made to live an incredible life. Maybe today you can take that simple step of faith, and say that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Ever compared yourself to other people and come to the conclusion – you just don't stack up? We all have.  And when you're carrying that around inside – it's so hard to have strong relationships.
So many diseases seem to be on the rise in our society – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia. The list goes on. But deep inside many, many people is a quiet killer. An emotional disease that's robbing so many people of the life that God intended for them.
Yesterday, on A Different Perspective, we began looking at the whole issue of insecurity. The symptoms are clear. People who are insecure are touchy you have to walk on eggshells. They have a deep sense of inadequacy, a string of broken relationships often. They can't give credit to other people. They can't enjoy other people's successes. It's a debilitating, lonely disease.
But so many people have lived with this disease for so long, they can't see it let alone admit it. But before an alcoholic can receive help. First they have to take that big step of admitting they're an alcoholic. Turns out that the same is true in dealing with insecurity and low self-esteem.
Do you know anyone with low self-esteem? Someone who's suffering from insecurity? It used to be me. I couldn't enjoy my life. I couldn't laugh at myself. I couldn't lose at a card game. I couldn't experience the rich pleasure of delighting in someone else's success.
The great author and playwright Gore Vadal said, "Every time a friend of mine succeeds, a small part of me dies." Well I know exactly what he was talking about. I needed to be in the limelight. I needed to be the best. I needed to be recognised. I needed to be the centre of attention.
And when I didn't get those things. When those things weren't there to feed my deep, inner emptiness and insecurity, it hurt, it really hurt. It was so real. Outwardly I was a very confident, articulate, apparently smart person. But inwardly I was like a drug addict who needed a fix. And when you're in that state, when you're a heroin addict, when you're an addict of recognition (which is what insecurity is all about) you can't collaborate. You can't love. You can't enjoy.
And I thought it was only the sharpest observers who knew what was going on. But actually, I was driving people nuts.
When you're insecure it's like not having enough food. If you know ten other people who need food and you don't even have enough for yourself, even though you may be good enough to share that food, they'll still all be hungry. It's not until you have enough food and you can share with them out of your abundance and your overflow that you can all have enough food to go around.
And insecurity is like that. We just have to keep feeding it. It's never satisfied. It goes on and on and on and on. And because we're never satisfied, there's no overflow of our satisfaction of our joy, of our peace, of our excitement at living a great life that can bless the people that are around us.
Today I don't really like the limelight. In fact radio suits me just fine because people can't see who I am. I love it when other people succeed. I'm not touchy anymore. I'm not bothered by people talking behind my back. In fact, to tell you the truth, by and large, I don't really care what people think about me.
I don't mean that in an arrogant way. I don't mean it in a wrong way. When I have criticism come towards me, (which I do sometimes) I listen to it, I evaluate it, I think, 'Hmm, they've got a point. I've got to change something here.' But it doesn't worry me. It doesn't eat away at me. There is this deep, deep sense of security in my heart. And when I look in the mirror, I'm happy with who I am. With a deep contentment with my strengths and my limitations. I just don't need to impress anyone. Nothing to prove.
Are there things that I'd like to improve in my life? Absolutely. So what happened?
When Jesus was crucified there were two criminals crucified with him. And they were hurling insults at Jesus and taunting Him. And then one of those criminals, something got to him. He must have looked in Jesus eyes and he said, "Lord, Lord remember me."
And Jesus looked at him. Remember this criminal could do nothing for Jesus. This criminal couldn't even pray a prayer. And Jesus looked at him when no-one else would have given him a prayer and said:
Before the day is out you'll be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43)
Jesus accepted this nobody, who could do nothing for Him. Without an eloquent prayer. Without a life of doing good. Without any benefit that he could have given Jesus at that point in time. Jesus accepted this criminal just as he was.
And when I got my mind around that story, it was as though some steel bands around my heart were burst open. I was set free.
Something happens when we get our hearts around Jesus dying for us. It's so deep and profound because it is an unconditional acceptance and forgiveness. No matter what we've done. No matter who we are. And when I look in the mirror and I see some black spots and I think, "Something has to happen with that. I have to deal with that issue. That problem. That sin in my life." I can do it from a sense of, "I'm accepted by God. I don't have to scrub this sin off my skin myself. I don't have to get it out myself."
The reason I see it so clearly is because I'm safe and secure in a relationship with Jesus. And this Jesus who sends His Holy Spirit to live in anyone who'll accept Him, who'll believe in Him, who'll put their trust in Him. Jesus is the guy that points this stuff out to me. He's the one that helps me to deal with it and scrubs me clean.
We are adopted as children into His family when we believe in Him. We become co-heirs with Jesus Himself. And when that sunk in I realised something. If God accepts me as I am maybe it's time for me to accept me as I am. In one sense, when we realise that, there's an instant release. And in another, as we live in it, day after day, week after week, we live in that love and acceptance. Over months and years, it changes us.
All that time in my life I tried every self-improvement program and I never succeeded because any self-improvement program can never really deal with that sense of insecurity. It was Jesus. His acceptance and His love that set me free from the insecurity of my limitations. Free to let Him change me by His love.
That's what happened and it's still happening, on and on and on and on. It's a deep work. It's a work that God sticks with. When He begins something good in us He sees it through. He never leaves us half way along. He never pulls back and says, "You are just hopeless. I've had enough of you. I can't help you anymore."
No, no. Not when He sent His Son. This Jesus who created all that there is – the whole universe. He's the King of kings. He's the Lord of lords. He became a man. To His friends He became a guy.
Someone wrote in recently after a program where I referred to Jesus as a guy and said, "You can't refer to Jesus like that. He's the King of kings and the Lord of lords." He is. But He was also a man. He was also a mate – a friend to those 12 disciples who travelled around with Him. He was human. He cried for people. He laughed. He loved. He made wine at the wedding. He healed. He gave people security when no one else would.
Maybe it's time for you today. To admit that there is a deep insecurity that we can't do anything about on our own. And accept the solution. The solution of a deep love. And to live in that love and let Him change us.
If God is God, He made us the way we are. And He's come to set us free.
Love your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:31)
That love that Jesus was talking about there was unconditional love.
What do you think?

Insecurity is a social disease running at plague proportions.  And like every other plague – it has dire consequences.  Hmmm.  What if you have the disease? Is there a cure?
Probably one of the things that we'd all like to do is to grow as people. Hopefully today, we're a bit more mature and balanced than we were, say 5 years ago. And in 5 years time, we'd hope that we've learned a bit more. That the years have brought some wisdom and some insight compared to who we are and how we behave today.
That's what we'd like to think. But it's not always the case. The reality is that there are some things in us, sometimes, that hold us back. That constrain us from being all that we can be. They stop us from living life to the full.
One of the things that many of us struggle with and I certainly have in my life, is a deep sense of inadequacy and insecurity. So is it possible to deal with this personal and social disability?
Other people around us, well they seem so confident of themselves and their own abilities. Have you noticed? Especially young people these days. Look at them. They're so talented. They're so confident. While everybody else is busy putting their best foot forward, sometimes we're dying a quiet death inside. "Somehow, I don't feel as good. I'm not as articulate. I'm not as talented. I'm not as bright. I'm not as good-looking. I'm not as fit. I'm not as significant as they are. I don't make as much difference in the world as they do."
We can often have that sort of a view of ourselves. And the worst bit about it is you can't easily admit that to someone. You look at a photo of yourself and you think, "I look ugly". Or maybe you see yourself on a video and you think, "surely I don't look like that." Or you hear your voice recorded and you think, "I don't sound like that. That can't be me can it?"
It's a quiet, lonely hell. Is this something you might relate to? Over 50% of all women in western society chronically suffer from low self-esteem. And it happens to men too. But in a sense it's almost worse for men because the whole macho image thing, well you can't admit that to someone.
So what are the symptoms? What does somebody look like who's suffering from insecurity? Well the first thing is they're really, really touchy. When you're around them it's like walking on eggshells. You have to be careful where you tread. Because you don't know when they're going to go off like a cracker. Someone who's insecure worries about what other people think about me. What will they think when they know this? What are they saying behind my back? What are they doing to me? How does this impact on me?
Somebody who's really insecure sees themselves at the centre of the universe. And they're really hard people to be around. But what if that someone is you or me?
As we sit here talking about deep insecurity, I wonder how many people would love to be healed? To be set free. This week on A Different Perspective, I've called this little series of five programs – Time to Get Over It. Because I'd like to look at this subject of insecurity from a different perspective. Dealing with hurts from the past. Getting a right and balanced attitude towards ourselves.
Let me tell you something. I have a crazy notion. I have this crazy notion that Jesus died on the cross for me and for you, to set us free. And Jesus said:
If I set you free, you'll be free indeed. You'll be really free
Well … let me ask you a question. Do you like yourself? I mean, you strip off your clothes and you stand naked in front of the mirror and you look at yourself. And you think, "do I fundamentally like this person?" And there's an emotional equivalent too. You strip off all the pretence and all the faces we put on when we go out in front of other people. And we look at ourselves as a package. Me inc or you inc. This package of physical; his package of emotional; this package of spiritual; of talents and strengths and weaknesses and limitations. You look at this package and let me ask you to give yourself an honest answer. Do you really like you? Are you happy with you?
Sadly, the answer for a lot of people is "no". Sadly, the answer for me used to be "no". Now I'm not asking any of us to have a swelled head. But Jesus said, "Love your neighbour as yourself."
Now that's great. We always focus on that first bit, of loving your neighbour. And there's probably none of us that would say that's a bad idea. I mean, to love, to be good to the people around us. Friends, family, work colleagues, people at church, people at the club, whatever we're involved in. To love our neighbour seems to be a really good thing to do.
But just let's think about this because it's a two-part sentence. "Love your neighbour as yourself."
Love yourself – now that's an interesting thing. We don't expect Jesus to say that. We think it's all about loving your neighbour. But He's saying:
Love your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:31)
Question: what if we don't have a right attitude towards ourselves? What if we don't like ourselves? What if we don't love ourselves? Well in this two-part sentence Jesus is saying, "Well if you can't love yourself properly, you probably won't be able to love other people properly."
Look around. Look at insecure people. They're always feeding their insecurity. They're never content with who they are. They're never content with their lot in life. Me, I used to hate when other people succeeded. Others were in the lime light. When you're in that space, how can you love other people? How can you be good to other people when the only thing that you really can deal with is this deep, nagging, painful, insecurity thing?
And then one day God switched a light on in my heart. I came to the understanding that this Jesus whom He sent, His Son, who died on the cross, died for me while I was still all those rotten things I knew I was. Just as I am, naked in front of that mirror, complete package – good and bad, beautiful and ugly, with all that rotten stuff in me. The naturally consequences of which are shame and insecurity.
Jesus said, "Give me all that bad stuff. All that stuff about you that you don't like. Give me that black box full of all that rubbish. And I will take it and I will take it on me."
We see that Jesus became sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He took all that rubbish that makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed and paid for it. Full payment. No more payment required. No more need for justice. He paid for it. So I became white, pure. A slate wiped clean. And it doesn't matter where we are in our walk in life.
You may have been walking with Jesus for 40 years. You may never have accepted Jesus as yours and put your trust in Him. But let's just contemplate that deeply. Just for a long time, try and wrap our hearts and our minds around that. And my prayer for you is, that as you do and as I do still in my life too, as we live our lives trying to come to grips with His grace, that it changes us. That it takes away our need to feel insecure.
I can honestly say today that I don't have insecurity in my life. And it used to be such a cancer. I remember visiting a school friend just a few years after we had left school. And she was telling me how Bill, a friend of ours, was doing really well in his business and they were going well and it was like something inside me died. I couldn't cope with someone else doing better than I was doing.
That's gone. God's healed that. And the whole source, the whole root of the healing is right there on that rough wooden cross on that hill, just outside Jerusalem, called Calvary. Where Jesus made a statement to you and me. Where He said, "I love you this much." And if anyone loves me that much, if God loves me that much, it's not a glib, trite thing. It's not a "oh well, God loves you." This is a profound statement meant to strike at the heart of my insecurity and yours.