Insecurity

If you have a copy of God’s Word, turn to the New Testament, the book of Ephesians—Ephesians 1. The Lord desires you to place your confidence in Him, to turn to Him at all times. He provokes through His providence to teach us to do this, and He counsels directly in His Word that this is the way we are to live, constantly with confidence in Him.

We have embarked on a topical study in recent times dealing with what I have broadly titled, Bible Answers for Inner Battles. We’re seeking to scripturally address some of the challenges that we don’t so much experience in the external. They have external repercussions and manifestations, but they’re things that we feel keenly within—they’re battles of the mind, of the soul. So we come to the fifth of these, which is insecurity, insecurity. When I say insecurity, it might have different connotations, but I’m dealing with it as it pertains to the idea of inferiority—a sense of inferiority, the insecurity of our souls in that respect.

We’re going to read from Ephesians 1 and take time to read from verse 1, which is a tremendous portion of God’s Word, full of theological instruction and direction. So give heed then to God’s Word:

Ephesians 1
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, said, “The saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace be to you, and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved; in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself, that, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ.” Amen.

This is the infallible and inerrant Word of the living God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we are not in want of the things that we need to be spiritually strong. And yet we find ourselves too often languishing and struggling because we will not believe, obey, and fully embrace in a trusting fashion what thou hast revealed. What torments of the mind and soul could be avoided if we would only believe Thy Word! Tonight we pray for grace to hear, for the mind to receive and retain, and for the hands and feet to take what we hear and learn and put it into practice. Give us victory over these inner battles. Thou knowest our frame—that we are but dust. And so we pray, Lord Jesus, command Thy Spirit to be upon the eternal Word, to quicken our hearts and lives, to strengthen each saint, and to awaken to salvation anyone who may be lost. Give much grace now in these moments; we pray in our Savior’s name. Amen.

You are not enough. Language like that is perhaps more common than we might care to admit—a feeling of inadequacy or inferiority. This kind of deceitful speech is one that haunts the rich and the poor, the wise and the simple, the young and old alike. And it may drive us to despair or, for others, drive them into an endless striving in which they’re always chasing but never finding any rest. This enemy, insecurity, is the acquaintance of the unloved child and keeps company with a successful man who fears he may be exposed someday as a fraud, or the approval-seeking woman who’s constantly looking for validation. It causes some to shrink into silence, others to mask the void driven by their pride by overcompensating.

And of course the world is aware of it, offers its cures, and has its ideas about the origins and how to treat it. The philosophers would encourage one to make a study of self. Psychologists would encourage us to exchange language of self-accusation for self-affirmation. Sociologists would say there needs to be change in policy that will alter society so that these pressures are not felt.

But there’s another way. The text I’ve chosen is found in Ephesians 1, verse 6. “He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” He hath made us accepted in the Beloved. He hath made us—there is sovereignty. He hath made us. This position that is given here by the apostle under inspiration is one in which we stand by sovereign grace. He hath made us. Sovereignty. There is also dignity. Accepted. He hath made us. How we are to view ourselves through the gospel—how we can view ourselves through the gospel—is with a sense of dignity, because, according to the gospel, because of the gospel, we are accepted. And there’s also unity in the Beloved. We don’t stand separate; we don’t stand isolated—we are found in union with or in the Beloved, the One who has redeemed us. One of whom it was declared at His baptism—the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Him for His public ministry: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Some of the modern translations will translate it, “with whom I am well pleased,” but it doesn’t go far enough. The fact that the Father is pleased with the Son is one thing, certainly true, but to be pleased in the Son is quite another. And according to the gospel, we are not just with Christ; we are in Christ—we are in the place where the Father looks and finds that which He can love and treasure, and that’s where you’re placed. Sovereignty, dignity, unity—that is what is revealed in Ephesians 1, verse 6.

And by addressing it from the viewpoint of recognizing the gospel does something for the child of God, it gives them a standing in which they can battle and fight and enjoy victory over these kinds of feelings and thoughts. The Lord of heaven has spoken. Why should earth’s voices overturn what He has pronounced is true? “He hath made you accepted in the Beloved.” So we will take the usual outline that we’ve been using over these weeks in this subject and think first then of the character of insecurity. What’s its character? How do we understand it? At least, how am I addressing it here this evening?

Insecurity, as we understand it, is often manifested as feelings of inferiority—and it’s this pervasive experience within humanity with psychological, social, and spiritual aspects. It has been defined as, quote, “a basic feeling of inadequacy and insecurity deriving from actual or imagined physical or psychological deficiency that may result in behavioral expression ranging from the withdrawal of a mobilizing timidity to the overcompensation of excessive competition and aggression.” Now again, when the modern psychologists address this subject, they’re likely to say that this stems from early life experiences, or aspects of innate personality, or learned patterns. Yet seldom is the spiritual dimension considered properly. And you can go back to some who coin phrases like the inferiority complex and how they identify this feeling within the soul or in the being of man, and how they will begin to look at—well, why does this happen? It begins in childhood when you’re small and you’re vulnerable and you’re in this position of inferiority and you begin that way.

And so then what comes out of our lives as adults, as we grow, is how we are treated in that position. It plays out with a healthy person who strives to overcome their inferiority through growth and achievement, whereas inferiority—and the inferiority complex—arises if someone becomes fixated on their perceived shortcomings. So childhood experience would be a key factor of their study. And I’m not going to deny that, by the way. Environment is a factor. You see it in Scripture. And there’s no denying it—the environment in which we grow up, how we’re treated, the words we hear, the way in which we’re encouraged or discouraged, has a huge impact upon us.

Now, it doesn’t have to define us, and it doesn’t have to have the last word. There’s much again by the gospel that can counter even the deficiencies of which we all have them from our childhood. Everyone has deficiencies from their childhood. No one has a perfect childhood. It doesn’t exist. You’re carrying something of a deficiency because of the deficiencies of your parents. And the obsession of our current day—in which we are trying to remove blame, blame shift by finding all the faults of our parents so that we can’t just look with responsibility at our own lives and say, “I’m responsible here”—is not helpful, but that’s a by the way.

But I do say this: as parents, we need to be conscious of the fact that the environment we create has repercussions. And so how we treat and deal with our children, the attentiveness we show, the love that we reflect, the words that we use, our ability to discipline where necessary and do so in love—and all the rest of it, all those things—are really key. And you need to be praying for wisdom. And where you are not sure, or where you think you need help, you should seek that help either through reading good material or by going to those that you feel, and have grounds to believe, have some insight into such things.

But this character of insecurity—there are three broad categories that I’ve placed this in—so you try to understand, how do we see it? Well, there’s the personal insecurity, right? This is the kind of, “I am not enough,” a feeling within yourself: I am not enough. So there’s this individual struggle for a sense of worth, or competence, or adequacy. The Bible doesn’t talk about being inadequate or using words like “insecure.” It doesn’t use language like that. But we see it. We see it in the opening pages of Scripture. Why is it that Adam and Eve flee from the presence of God? There are answers that can be given that may be varied there, but part of it is a sense of insecurity and inferiority, and a sense in which they cannot stand with confidence before God, and it causes them to run—they become aware of their nakedness. We see how sin separates man from God, producing a sense of unworthiness and a fear of rejection.

It’s not just there; you see it played out in various other personal experiences that are reflected in the Scriptures. You see it in Moses, for example, when God is calling him—“The time is now, Moses; you’re going, you’re going to lead my people Israel”—and he’s responding with a sense of his inferiority or insecurity: “Who am I that I should go on to Pharaoh?” Or as he says in chapter 4, “I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue.” It may have been true—these things may not have been imagined deficiencies, but they were not enough, and God was going to send him anyway. Gideon as well calls himself the weakest and sees himself as the least among his brethren.

So you see this in Scripture—a sense of personal insecurity. You have also social insecurity, where we’re more concerned about whether others accept us. “Do they accept me?” And we wrestle with this feeling in the context of society. Our concerns pertain to what others believe or think—feelings of belonging and acceptance, or fear of rejection. These are all things that may come to our minds. And so we struggle with this social inferiority, constantly questioning whether we’re accepted or valued, or so on.

And again, I think you see that in Scripture, even between Adam and Eve. As soon as sin comes into the world, not only is there estrangement from God, but it fractures the harmony between Adam and Eve. It causes an issue there in which you can see Adam casting blame on his wife, and so on. There’s a sense of insecurity within a soul—I know that Eve felt it in response to what her husband was saying.

Then there’s existential insecurity. This is where we struggle with a dread of meaninglessness. And for the world, this is different. I think the world will struggle with this in different ways. But I think even believers can struggle with a persistent sort of terror of the pointlessness of their lives. We may not ask the same questions—we know that we’re created in the image of God, we know that we are saved and belong to Him—but I still think there can be a sort of broad feeling of insecurity about whether or not we are really doing anything for God, comparing ourselves with others whom we perceive to be more spiritually successful, and having this sense of inferiority within our souls, questioning our worth and whether we are favored by God as much as others, and so on.

So that’s some of its character—those three main areas. I think you can sort of put your arms around the way it gets felt or how it’s reflected, depending on the person. But what are the causes? Why does this happen? What fuels it? Why does this take root within your heart and mine? I mean, why is this an issue? Why do we feel insecure? Why do we feel inferior?

Well, again, some of our context and our background may play a part, and what we have been heard and taught—or the circumstances of our childhood—definitely plays a part. It does. I’m not going to deny it. And I know we can come at it in a very objective way and just address the sin that undergirds it, and certainly we can do that. But there has to be an acknowledgement that environment plays a factor, personality plays a factor, and some of these things may not make any sense to us, but they’re true. I mean, you had a much more ideal home environment than this person did, and yet you struggle with this more than this person. Well, maybe it’s not so much the environment at play as it is a personality trait—something that goes on within their psyche and how they are framed.

But what is the real cause—the real root of the problem? Well, first, sin and the fall are the root cause of insecurity. If we had never fallen, if man had never disobeyed God, there would be no subject like this to be concerned about—no thoughts, no feelings, no sense of shame. None of that. We would be happily in fellowship with God, feeling our acceptance as in Ephesians 1, verse 6, being fully cognizant of the relationship we enjoy with God. But as soon as man rebels, as soon as he sins, he opens up a door to a world of hurt, one of which is this lack of being able to rightly consider oneself in the presence of God. Sin creates both objective guilt—the actual wrongdoing—and the subjective shame, that sense of disgrace, and so on. And so this is what we see in our first parents, and we feel it as well. We can’t avoid it. So sin and the fall are the root cause.

There’s also then a factor that we might describe as worldly comparisons—in which we look at the world around us and what we assess and what we perceive leads to things like self-doubt and discouragement. Again, Gideon is not saying what he’s saying in a vacuum; he’s saying it in relation to his brothers and others he may look at and say, “They’re better than me.” And so context plays into it—where we are in this world, relationships we have, and so on, certainly play a part. It’s not as clear, but as I was working through this and thinking about it, it may be that Paul dealt with some thoughts along these lines—a certain feeling of inferiority. He acknowledges his own worthiness, the least of the apostles and so on—the greatest of sinners—and there are different ways of understanding that. I’m not saying I can be emphatic, but there may have been within Paul a real sense in which even the drive of this man—the energy that he gave to things both before and after his conversion—certainly may indicate a certain sense in which he struggled. And people made comments about him, that his writings are weighty, but his presence not so much. And so he had to deal with, perhaps, even how the world perceived him and how he related to the world. Again, I can’t be dogmatic there.

But how we compare ourselves, how we live within this world plays into it as well—a fallen world in which we are surrounded. A sense of fearing rejection is also another factor. Again, because we don’t believe ourselves to be accepted before God, that permeates everything and trickles into not just a relationship with God where we’re rejected by Him, but we focus upon, again, a fear of rejection by others. We make an idol of others. There’s an interesting verse you find in John 7 when our Lord Jesus notes the reason why many of the religious of His day were not committing themselves to Him, were not believing in Him. And He says, “How can ye believe that receive honor one of another?” It’s often overlooked—a little statement that’s just thrown in there that you’d read past. Perhaps even as I’m quoting it too, you’re saying, “Is that in the Bible?” It’s there. How can you believe they receive honor one of another? And what our Lord is targeting there, what He’s highlighting, is that the elevation to be accepted among their peer group—to be received by them, the fight, to fight against feelings of rejection by society or by the community—was driving them into this place in which it was making it impossible for them to believe. If I could turn the phrase around: you can’t believe because you seek honor one of another. Your desire for man’s acclaim, your longing to be accepted and not rejected by man, is making it impossible for you to believe.

Now there’s a truth that’s real to that context—because you can’t align with those who are rejecting Christ and accept Him and be in that position. He creates a division wherever He goes. But there’s a general principle there as well: where we elevate the desire to be accepted among men, it in many respects makes it impossible to prioritize our acceptance before God. You cannot serve two masters.

So fear of rejection—this feeling causes us to enter this turmoil, trying to fight this inferiority. I think, fourthly, legalism and self-reliance can also create an inferiority or an insecurity as well. You’re trying so hard to be accepted, so hard to find the security—and what are you doing? You’re going about to establish your own righteousness, and you’re not submitting yourself unto the righteousness of God, which is by faith in Jesus Christ. So here you are, running, trying, with all this effort to please and meet an impossible standard. The Pharisees, constantly striving over every particular detail, endeavoring to find some measure of acceptance. Of course, one could pride oneself. You think of the parable our Lord tells in Luke 18, where you have the Pharisee and the publican—and he’s trying so hard. But he’s so focused on himself, because it’s about what he can do even when he prays. He can’t pray because he’s made an idol of himself; he’s trying to find security in himself. And so when our Lord tells the parable, he prayed thus with himself. He’s so focused on himself, trying to find security and acceptance and so on through his religious obedience.

I think we see this even within the church sometimes manifest—people being excessively focused upon certain things. And really it’s just this legalistic spirit and a sense of acceptance that they’re striving for. They have not just fallen back onto Christ and from there seek to live out a holy life, but they’re doing so from a position of already being accepted. The gospel is key, beloved. The gospel is key. You get away from the gospel, and it’s going to lead you into all sorts of weird behavior and thought patterns.

So these are some of the causes. I think you could add in even the judgment—there’s a sort of sense of something looming after, and that can create insecurity within man, wondering what’s going to happen, what happens after I’m gone. All of that can breed an insecurity as well—the fear of death. I mean, it’s dealt with in Hebrews 2, where Christ comes to deal with those who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. And so we’re living in this insecurity and this bondage of it.

But what’s the cure? What is the cure for this? How do we address this? You read Ephesians 1, verse 6, when He has made us accepted in the Beloved. And bottom line, that’s it. I mean, letting that truth get into our soul and believing it. If that’s true—and if the truth of it is by faith alone and Christ alone, not by my effort, not by my performance—it just is by faith in Jesus Christ. You don’t live doubting. Those of you born in this country don’t live doubting whether you’re American. You’re American, right? You’re born here, you have the paperwork to prove it. You’re not living every day of your life wondering, “Am I really American? What happens if, are they gonna turf me out of the country because I’m not really American?” I know what that’s like, but you don’t know—you don’t have those thoughts. I wasn’t thinking about it until just now, but there was a certain insecurity that we felt the entire time—just wandering, working through some of the paperwork and particular aspects about it, and just the season of not knowing. Because we don’t, we don’t have the rights—we don’t have the rights. But you live every day while your pastor’s wrestling with this and thinking about this behind the scenes, and you don’t know anything about it. You’re never worried about that; you’re just drifting through your life, just—I have no thought that one day I might not be welcome in this country. I mean, you just know it.

Why then ought we to live and not consider that it’s far more secure what we have in Jesus Christ? Yet we live in this turmoil at times. He hath sovereignty. You didn’t bend His arm. You didn’t force the cause. You didn’t make Him do it. It wasn’t first beginning with you and then you think to yourself, “Well, I convinced Him yesterday, but He might change His mind today.” He sovereignly, eternally chose; He made it so—accepted in the Beloved.

So what’s the cure? Think about this and the different ways in which it is expressed. So I put it this way—I think there’s five of these here, trying to cure the various expressions of insecurity or inferiority. And let me just say, it’s really important that you do this, that you take to heart where it applies, and you start preaching these truths to you. Why? Why is it important? Because even in the body of Christ, some of the tension and struggles within the body of Christ are produced by the consequences of not believing and living out the gospel in the way that we should.

And so, you have—maybe if you’re the one, if you take the two extremes, and you have the inferiority side in which you withdraw— that insecurity causes you to withdraw. What happens to someone like that? They come into a church, they’re part of a church for a while, but then they have this sense of withdrawing; they’re always fighting with it, this withdrawing spirit. And then they wonder, “Do people… am I accepted? Am I accepted in that group? Do they receive me? Do I fit? Do I belong?” You have all these thoughts, but you’re actually self-fulfilling because you’re making it difficult for people—because you’re withdrawing, and they can feel the body language. They can read the manner; they sense the difficulty, and it takes great effort and unique character to overcome the challenge that you present because in this inferiority and in this insecurity you naturally withdraw from people. And it makes it really hard for others. And then you say, “Well, I don’t think they’re very loving.” But you’re multiplying the problem. If there’s already an issue between man to have deep, meaningful relationships, you multiplied it by the way in which you went on.

So this is why I’m saying to you: you have to get the gospel into your soul and live it and believe it. The other side is true—overcompensating. You come into a body that is to be marked by humility, and you’re so desperate for acceptance and for recognition that you destabilize the marked humility of the people of God because you’re constantly clamoring after attention, longing to be recognized, desiring to be seen, looking for validation within the body. The pride is driving it because you just want that validation because you’re not satisfied in Christ. And it destabilizes because the body—the body’s impulses—we are marked by humility. We step up when we’re asked. We’re willing to serve, certainly, but we’re not foisting ourselves; we’re not pushing ourselves; we’re not being marked by people. We’re always thinking that they can take the lead in things. So you see the effect. You say, “What’s the problem?” Well, the problem is sin. But what’s the cure? It’s the gospel. It doesn’t have to stay there. No one has to remain there. There is a tonic. There is a balm in Gilead. There is an answer.

So, I begin with the existential insecurity: overcoming existential insecurity with the doctrine of the image of God and man. You start to wonder about your worth; you struggle with yourself, your meaning, your identity, your significance. You have to go back—you have to go back to the dignity of man. God made man in His own image; He made man. And so our value is not based on achievements, it’s not based on status, it’s not based on approval, but on the fact that we bear God’s image. This is true of all humanity—regardless of knowledge, regardless of maturity, regardless of ability. So someone who’s born into the world and has a certain disability—think of Moses again: “I am not eloquent of speech.” God argues with him, presents him—“Who hath made man’s mouth? Who hath made the blind and the seeing, and so on?” And God does not diminish the worth of the individual because of some perceived disability or real disability. So you struggle with meaning, significance, and the thought, “I’m not like other people.” Or, “Is there any meaning to this life at all?” But there is meaning. God ordained it. In Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). When you ask questions, “Do I matter?” of course you matter—you’re made in the image of God. Objectively true for all in the human race—made in the image of God. There is your inherent worth. Every thought you have with regard to significance and meaning—come back and say, “I’m made in the image of God,” and He sovereignly made me as I am.

Remember again John 9, the man blind from birth, and the Lord leaves the contention of what had happened—and John 8, leaving, walking out of the temple. There’s a man there and the disciples see him. “Who did sin? This man or his parents?” He’s blind from birth. Sin—this is the result of sin. Now, is that entirely wrong? No, because sin—all of the pain and suffering of this world—goes back to man’s disobedience. But even in that, even though that may be true, yet it does not undermine or should not undermine the sovereignty of God in the particular details of each person’s life. The Lord owns it. It’s not about the sin of His parents or His own, but He is this way for the glory of God. God made us in His image, and all the particulars of our lives—in terms of gifting or lack thereof, ability or disability—is all under His perfect governing, according to His perfect wisdom. We come back and say, just rest in that—made in the image of God. So we overcome existential insecurity with the doctrine of the image of God and man.

There’s some overlap here, but I’m trying to focus in various ways that I trust will be helpful. Secondly, overcoming spiritual insecurity with the doctrine of justification. Spiritual insecurity—the sense of our spiritual position, wrestling with the need to achieve more religiously, or abandoning all hope whatsoever with regard to our spiritual frame. “How can I know that I have peace with God? How can I be delivered from the fear of God, this God who is a consuming fire? How can I avoid the sense of shame because of my sin? What can be done?” I know my history; there’s no way that I can ever not be ashamed of my past. And every day is marked by the feelings of guilt and condemnation. It is the doctrine of justification you need, my friend—the doctrine of justification. How a sinner is justified in the sight of God, forensically justified, legally justified. He is made to be in a position in which there is no—listen, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. It is gone.

And when we struggle with our spiritual standing and the feeling of separation from God, and questions about His love—wondering whether or not we can ever be reconciled or ever know that we have peace with God—the doctrine you need to study is the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And you go to passages—I quote—Romans 8 already, Romans 5: “Therefore being justified by faith, not by works, not by church attendance, not by sincere Christian living, not by Bible reading and praying; justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And you immerse yourself in that doctrine, and you fight every terror that relates to your spiritual standing with that doctrine. Justified freely, justified freely, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, the provision of the cross, the sufficiency of the sacrifice, the merit of the Son of God, the value of His shed blood. It is enough. We come back and we rest, justified freely in His sight. Our text has that in mind: “He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” That acceptance is grounded upon our justification—the position that we have. This is dignity. We say we’re accepted before God because of the work of Jesus Christ that is received by faith alone and puts us in this position of being justified. It’s a powerful thing. Think about all the insecurity—about what men may know about us. A man who lives his life striving and striving and striving—trying so hard, whether it be in society or as we’re considering here in the spiritual realm, just trying so hard, striving so hard. Sometimes things are said when Christians are compared to some of the cults, and they use it to the shame of the church. Now, I’m not saying there isn’t a certain application. He said, “Look at those Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are out like clockwork, and you can see them. And they’re filling in their time cards, making sure they’re doing what is required of them—the minimum time necessary each week, across the month, submitting it in there.” And the church looks on, and they say, “Look, if only the church was like that.” Do you not realize? This is insecurity that is driving them. They’re driven, with this motivation, aspiring to find acceptance through their own labor and their own merit. I am not arguing for a lazy church, no, but I am saying that to motivate the same way they’re motivated would remove the gospel—and to drive people along by a message of fear and condemnation. No justification. Just justification. There’s rest there.

So we overcome existential insecurity with the doctrine of the image of God and man; we overcome spiritual insecurity with the doctrine of justification; and we overcome personal insecurity with the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Personal insecurity—where we look at ourselves, we assess ourselves, and we make comparisons, and so on—we ask ourselves, you know, the idea of Moses again, feeling like he’s not sufficient, and Gideon, and those individuals. And we so desire to feel like we can do things. “I want to feel like I can do it.” And don’t get me wrong, there’s an element of proficiency—you can’t deny it. It’s one of the things when you ever read Spurgeon’s lectures to his students. He talked about those who come desiring, so longing, aspiring—to be pastors and preachers of the Word. And he gives illustration after illustration, anecdote after anecdote, of these young men who came so desirous, so longing, aspiring. He takes one look at them, or sees some particular thing, and says, “No, God has not called you. You have such a blatant deficiency.” And maybe it was a speech impediment that was severe enough. If God has really called you, go and seek Him to remove that impediment. If He does that, then you can come back. This kind of thing—certain aspects—does not mean that they can’t do something else. There are many other things they can do. There is just a certain proficiency within certain tasks. You know this. Look at your own skill set, and you know there are people who cannot do, and could not do, what you do. So we recognize that. However, we are not to take that to extremes or misplace the emphasis. Paul says, thinking about this whole idea of sufficiency—not that we are sufficient of ourselves. Our sufficiency is from God (2 Corinthians 3). Our sufficiency is from God. And there’s an aspect—even if we look at proficiency—the sufficiency is of God. Yes, a preacher needs to be able to articulate truth, know it, and express it. But he does not lean back on his own strength for the work. And the same is true of being a mother. You might have been maternally minded for years and always thinking that way, and you just want to be a mother—reading and studying and preparing yourself—but God doesn’t want you to depend upon your knowledge and equipment. He wants you to depend on Him. You might have given your life from your teens to a particular skill set and form of employment and diligently pursued it, but God never wants you to say, “I got myself here. I can do this myself.” And this then opens the door for us to relax—to say, “No, no, I don’t need to. I don’t need to do this myself.” I rest in His sovereignty. In that sense, what I mean by sovereignty is: He has equipped me; He has placed me; and I, by the grace of God—to use again Paul’s language—by the grace of God I am what I am. And you accept the sovereignty.

Now, this is really important about looking at yourself and assessing yourself in that way. God was sovereign in the way He made you. God was sovereign in the child you had. There’s no point in looking and saying, “You know, if only I had a better childhood, I would have been encouraged to study, or if my parents had really made me play piano, I could have been more proficient at it,” or whatever. You know, however, where does that take you? What is the purpose in that? But you can see God’s hand—if you just rest in it—He’s been sovereign in this. He’s been sovereign in a secure, stable home environment or not. He’s been sovereign and accepted Jesus Christ as a child and believed on Him or not. He’s been sovereign in all those details—from the opening of your eyes to the first time you ever heard the gospel, to the skill set you have, to the abilities you possess, all of that—He is sovereign. And instead of focusing upon yourself in such a way that creates this insecurity, you fall back and say, “He is sovereign.” And indeed, He has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty.

So we say He’s in control of these things. Again, I may not feel like I’m equipped; I may be like Jeremiah and feel I am a child. But He is sovereign. And it’s actually a wonderful thing to rest in. You know, the stable, secure believer can really rest in this. You think of David as a positive example—a young man at rest with who he is and where he is in the world. He is neither shying away from responsibility nor is he clamoring after, overcompensating, driven by pride. So there he is—a young man. Samuel comes, goes through all the sons of Jesse. Is there another one? Yeah, but he’s just a young guy—bring him in—and he’s anointed. Now, I’m quite sure there were things in which David would have struggled with regard to that. But he accepted God’s sovereign hand. He didn’t clamor after it either. And so when Saul became king, and even when Saul turns against him, seeks his life, and when David had the opportunity to end Saul’s life—and he might have justified it in his own thinking by saying, “Well, he was pursuing me and God intends me to be king, and He’s put him right here in this cave; I can take his life and lay claim to the throne that God has promised to me”—he doesn’t. David falls back on the sovereignty of God at every turn. He’s resting there. “No, when God says, ‘Okay, He’s intended me to be king, I get it,’ then I’m not going to force it. I’m not going to make it happen. I’ll sit back, and when the door opens, it opens. But I am not going to be the one to force the hand.” Just resting. God, in His sovereign time, will bring it to pass. When you know you’re standing in Christ, when you are secure in the knowledge that God is sovereign, it brings great rest.

So at every stage—whether you think about aspiring to be married, desiring a certain job, looking for ministry opportunity, whatever—God is sovereign, and you come back and you rest there.

Four, overcoming fear of rejection with the doctrine of adoption. The fear of rejection—being rejected, whether again romantically or socially in some other context—looking back, assessing your past, raised by a single parent, maybe not raised by either of your biological parents—you grow up in that context in which you might assign a sense of rejection. You have all these thoughts in your mind. And God’s answer for it is the gospel and the doctrine of adoption. Because you start—you’re meant to come back and say, spiritually speaking, our Lord Jesus says, “Hear, O ye, children of the Father!” (Ephesians 2:). We’re children of wrath, even as others. And we think of the family to which we belong. Okay, biologically that’s a part of you—it’s an aspect of you—but spiritually you’re in the throes of the wicked one. You’re in his hands, under his dominion, his control. And then you see God setting His love upon you, putting you into Christ. Not just justifying you—it’s not just Him standing afar off as a judge and giving you a blanket pardon at arm’s length, saying, “You’re pardoned, have a nice day.” Yes, He pardons, but then He takes you home. It’s not just a judge there in a courtroom pronouncing a truth and saying, “You’re pardoned; go free.” The judge then turns and says, “You’re coming home with me. You’re in my family now.” And the legal transaction is not then one of just pardon; it’s a legal transaction of adoption. He takes us to belong to Him. We become His. We are known by His name. So whatever family we come from—whatever background, good or ill—we come back and we find this truth to uphold us. God has given me the spirit of adoption whereby I cry, “Abba, Father.”

And finally, overcoming social insecurity with the doctrine of union with Christ. Social insecurity—with the doctrine of union with Christ. The gospel, in a sense, eliminates the significance of certain distinctions between men. It doesn’t change that there are fathers and mothers and superiors and inferiors, and so on. But, Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” There is a union. And so as we assess our social status, we are not to look at it and make deductions and define our worth by that. In fact, the gospel does wonderful things. Think of James, what he writes in James 1:9: “‘Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted.’” You see the language even of Paul to Philemon and Onesimus, to consider him as a brother. Don’t just look at him as a slave and a servant—he’s a brother. They’re lifting up the lowly and the leveling of the proud. Colossians 2:10: “Ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power.” Ye, all, complete in Him. Union with Him, in Him. And so you start reading the Scriptures. You start assessing and underlining and noting: “We are in Him, in whom…” and so on. And we see, what is the gospel saying about me? Where am I? I am in Christ, in union with Christ, and all believers are in union with Christ. And there’s an equality there—a pardon for all and a standing in Christ in which we are not to boast or brag about our distinctions, but we’re to see that there we are—all of us, sinners saved by grace, in union with Christ. And so you look at a brother or sister and you start assessing by gifting and so on. You say, “We’re all one in Christ.” You look at each other and see our distinctions and differences and so on, and you say, “We’re all one in Christ.” And we drive this into our hearts; we put this into our souls; we really begin to believe it. And there are massive implications. Again, James—you don’t get to say, “Be warm and filled and then pass on.” No, that responsibility is to help. Great professions of loving God, whom you cannot see—John tells us, “Thou canst not love thy brother, whom thou seest.” How dwelleth the love of God in you? You’re not seeing this union that we have, this joining together in Christ. And we can actually say, “Yes, you’re a member of the body of Christ and the sovereign, the Head, has given you gifts He hasn’t given to me.” God bless you, brother. I pray for you that God will use your gifts. We’re not clamoring, not striving, and we’re not butting heads; we’re finding this sense of harmony because we’re one in Christ. It’s an awful thing to feel this insecurity and then fight against others, as if we’re fighting for position, vying for attention. It’s wicked pride. Sin needs to be squashed in your heart by the gospel. Just to keep the doors in the house of God is a privilege. The lowest place in God’s heaven is better than any place in God’s hell. We see what He has done for us.

These great truths, these doctrines—we come back. I don’t need to go on with this constant feeling of, “I’m not worthy, or I’m not enough, or am I accepted, or am I received into this body,” and so on. We find peace and contentment in the objective truths of God’s precious Word. And we rest there. But if you’re not saved, if you’re not in Christ, you will never have the security that the gospel promises. You might project security, and you might convince the world that you’re secure in your own skin and in your own state, but you’re not convincing God. And for the most part, you will not convince yourself because you will battle over and over and over again, and because you cannot take your weary soul to the gospel of Jesus Christ and say, “That truth is mine,” you will be constantly in a state of variableness and uncertainty, wavering from day to day.

I appeal to you—come to Christ. Stop living in this uncertainty, whether it be personal, social, or existential. Get yourself into Christ, and there’s the foundation. From there you build a life of meaning and significance—however long or short it may be, however gifted or ill-equipped you may feel yourself to be—it can matter. But you need to be in Christ.

Let’s bow together in prayer and seek the Lord. Is God speaking? Whatever He may be saying to you, do you know how to respond? Do you know what you must do? Then do it now. Seek the Lord now in these moments. If you need counsel or help, I’d be glad to sit with you, open God’s Word, and pray with you. Seek the Lord now.

God bless Thy Word. I pray that our hearts would be helped by the Spirit of God to turn on to these truths—to turn on to Jesus Christ. If there be a child of God here struggling with any expression of insecurity, I pray that thou wilt graciously shepherd them through Thy truth, and by and by that they may gain victory and enjoy the freedom of being and knowing that they are accepted in the Beloved. To those without Christ, let it haunt their conscience, prick them, give them no rest, no peace—provoke their conscience more and more to feel their insecurity, until finally they flee to the cross of Jesus Christ. Help them even tonight.

We bless Thee for what we have. We thank Thee for our standing in Christ. We rejoice in our position. Help us then to live this week in the joy of the Lord, which is our strength. Now, on to Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.