One of the coveted positions of entering eighth grade at my middle school was finally getting a kindergarten buddy. Each kindergartener was paired with one of us, and each month we would do some kind of activity together. At the end of the year, each of the kindergarteners drew a picture of what they thought their eighth-grade buddy would be when they grew up. 

I was relatively surprised when my sweet buddy Samantha drew me in pink slippers with a bun on my head. The description read, “Ballerina,” complete with a backward “R.” That wasn’t exactly what I had pictured for myself, but I wasn’t mad about it. 

While I don’t know what you want to be when you grow up, I’m pretty sure that none of us would ever write, “When I grow up, I want to be insecure.” That’s just not something any of us aim for. It’s more like the opposite—I want to be confident and secure and whole. Yet many of us find ourselves carrying insecurities around like souvenirs. 

The most confident women and friends I know can admit that they have insecure moments where they feel like they aren’t good enough or have to prove their worth. These same women who admit this are simultaneously the strongest women I know because instead of sitting in the uncomfortable tension, they put one foot in front of the other and keep walking towards the truth. 

But what happens when insecurity lingers, and what began as an individual moment of self-doubt lingers for hours and days? What happens when we just can’t seem to shake it?

Before we can understand how to be freed from the insecurities within and walk in security, confidence, and pure love (because there is no fear in true love), we must understand what we’re dealing with.

By definition, insecurity is “uncertainty or anxiety about oneself; lack of confidence.” The second definition hits home for me, though: “the state of being open to danger or threat; lack of confidence.” 

When we are insecure—or open to danger or threats—we are susceptible to a mountain of lies that have no business taking root in our minds. And when we are more vulnerable to believe those lies, we can easily get confused about who we are and who the world is telling us we need to be. 

Insecurity is so tricky to tackle because it doesn’t like to formally introduce itself. It will never knock on our front door, greet us with a warm smile, and hand over a homemade housewarming gift. Rather, it will sneak in through the back window when we aren’t looking. Without a keen sense of what thoughts, beliefs, and ideas are running through our minds, insecurities will spread like wildfire and try to poison everything good we’ve got going on. 

That’s the nature of the enemy. Jesus calls Satan the father of lies (John 8:44), and tells us that his only mission is to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The voice in the back of your mind that tries to tell you that you aren’t doing enough, that you’re not good enough, and that you’re never going to make it is not coming from your faithful Father. Insecurity festers in the most incognito ways, and it’s perilous because no one really wants to call it out or admit that they’re insecure. But think back to the brave women who call it out—that is who I want to be. And that is where this battle begins. 

COMBATING INSECURITY ONCE AND FOR ALL (every hour, every day)

01: Identify it. 

One of the trickiest parts about feeling a few steps behind, feeling pressure to be skinnier, feeling like our social life doesn’t measure up to the people next to us, feeling like we aren’t enough is that those aren’t easy things to identify. They’re usually buried a few layers beneath circumstances or situations that start in good nature or even involve the people we love most. 

But that’s why it’s so dangerous—the enemy is in the business of taking the good things in our lives and using them to implant insecurities, lies, and comparison. While it’s not fun to realize, “Oh, yeah, I’m trying to cover up my authentic self to fit in,” the faster we can identify these strands of lies, the faster we can rip them out of the woodwork. 

When I’m feeling extra sensitive around my friends or things seem to be landing in a more hurtful way, that’s usually my first tell-tale sign that I’m harboring insecurity. I can also identify lurking insecurities when I feel a heightened pressure to prove myself in conversations—telling people about the good things I’m doing, how hard I’ve worked, or how many friends I have. Those pressures are usually attempting to cover up my insecurities of not feeling good enough, not feeling seen, or feeling like people think I don’t have friends. If I’m surrounded by people I love and still find myself frantically looking around trying to figure out where I belong, I know insecurity is probably at hand. I can identify it when I feel my chest starts to get tight and I feel as if everyone’s looking at me and noticing or judging the things I’m doing or not doing. Not only is feeling insecure emotionally uncomfortable, but it can be physically uncomfortable, too. 

02: Know who you’re fighting. Hint: It’s not yourself.

Insecurity is not of God. It’s not a character trait He gave you, and it’s not a part of His nature. He didn’t create you to feel like you’re constantly coming up short, but there’s someone we’ve discussed who wouldn’t mind if you did. 

Battling insecurity does not mean fighting yourself or getting mad that you’re in this place. Ephesians 6:12 tells us that “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” While this sounds terrifying and even more daunting spelled out—this is actually the best news ever. God has already overcome the depths of the darkness. He’s already secured our victory in this battle—and every other battle, for that matter. So raise a hallelujah, girlfriend! “It is finished,” in the powerful words of Jesus (John 19:30). 

03: Choose to fight this battle.

We can’t fight something we can’t name, and we can’t do anything about it unless we choose it for ourselves. It’s going to take some courage (a whole lot of it, probably), but nothing good comes easy. Including the really good stuff—our relationship with God, freedom, walking in the Spirit, fullness of joy. That stuff takes hard work. But it is always worth it. We have to want it. We have to be willing to make some different choices and do the hard work of identifying and uprooting the insecurities that are hindering the potential God planted in us. 

Actively choosing to wade through our insecurities, even when it’s messy and uncomfortable and hard, gives us ownership over our lives. We have some skin in the game when we stand before God and say, “Lord, I’m willing to uproot these lies I’ve been carrying for far too long. I want to remove them so that you can use me and your light may shine through me on the top of the hill.” We are no longer passive audience members in our lives; we are active owners and participants. No one else can do this for us—we must decide to walk this road for ourselves. 

04: Get truth pumping through your veins. 

Once we decide we want to walk this road, we have to drench our minds in the truths of God.  Beth Moore says, “Renewing your mind is more like getting a brain transplant than an attitude adjustment.” Woah… yeah. Renewing our minds to the thoughts of God requires a whole other way of thinking and living. I don’t know much, and I’m so far from having this process figured out, but I have learned that the world is not going to hand me the truth of who God says I am on a silver platter. Instead, I have to hunt it down and hold onto it for myself. But when I know where to look, the search is cut in half. 

When we’re spiritually dehydrated, it’s time to get an IV hooked up and flooding our veins with the truth. There’s simply no other way to find security or comfort without it. Trust me—I’ve tried. 

Here are some of the ways that have proven helpful and life-giving as I saturate myself in the truth:

• Reading my Bible. Keeping it close at all times—taking it to the study room when I have online classes so I can get a few verses in between meetings. Cracking it open first thing in the morning, and falling asleep with it open on my bed—I want Him to be speaking to me and revealing Himself to me round the clock. Even when opening my Bible feels like a chore or boring, I know it is good for me. 

• Listening to worship music, podcasts, and sermons. What we allow into our ears has a direct impact on what we think and believe. I’m not saying you have to give up secular music or become the world’s #1 fan of organ hymns, but the biggest if you want to get serious about uprooting these insecurities, it requires making some changes. Some of my favorites are Whoa That’s Good, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and Becoming Something. 

• Physically go to places where you will be pointed to the truth. Set aside your homework for the evening and go to the weekly worship night. Intentionally put yourself in the presence of people and messages that will point you to the truth and reveal more to you about God than you walked in understanding. Again—this takes effort, but faithfully walking as children of God is not a walk in the park. It’s more like a marathon with a sporadic weather forecast.  

We don’t do these things to become better Christians. These things are gifts from God to help us protect and fight to keep our relationship with God at the center of lives—that His love and light might spill out of us and bless those who cross our paths. Nothing about Christianity is about trying to look good or become “better Christians.” It’s all about love. It’s about chasing after our relationship with God with all our might. It’s about running to the One who will never, ever, ever tell us we aren’t good enough or that we’re losers. We get to mirror His love as we “love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). It’s all about love. 

And it’s time we stopped holding back His love from ourselves. You are worthy of sitting in the fullness of His love, no matter what the voices of insecurity might try to say to you today. Your Father thinks otherwise, and He’s got good news for you today: you are His, and He loves you dearly, no matter what you think of yourself.