littlebylittlemore

In the place we left off in our story of Sarah, Hagar had been giving her a hard time about being able to get pregnant after sleeping with Abraham just once. Sarah of course didn’t like that, and the Bible tells us that Sarah dealt harshly with Hagar- I’m sure!

You can catch up on Battling Insecurity part 1 here: Battling Insecurity (part 1)                              and part 2 here: Battling Insecurity (part 2)

I’m going to just dive right back in. Here we go!

Insecurity can also be caused by:
3. Harboring unforgiven hurts and disappointments:

Sarah had some unforgiven hurts towards Hagar, clearly. I would even guess she had been enduring people’s hurtful comments regarding her infertility for so long that she finally let that hurt make her very bitter. She also was obviously struggling with some major disappointments. God had promised, but he hadn’t acted yet. She was feeling so insecure, and she unleashed it on Hagar. And we find that Hagar had no other option but to run away. Pick up in Genesis 16:7-16.

“7 The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” 9 The angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” 11 And the angel of the LORD said to her,“Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son.You shall call his name Ishmael,because the LORD has listened to your affliction. 12 He shall be a wild donkey of a man,his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him,and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”
13 So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,”4 for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”5 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi;6 it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
15 And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.”

Hagar must have also had her own set of insecurities being a servant to Sarah. After she got pregnant from Abraham, she probably felt a sense of entitlement wondering what made Sarah worth so much more attention. She had probably felt hurt and disappointed with her station in life, and then when she did find out she was pregnant, she was dealt harshly with instead of blessed for having an heir of Abraham in her womb.

Both women had great hurt and both had their share of disappointments. Both women were insecure.

As Hagar was running away, it says that an angel of the LORD found her by an oasis in the desert. I don’t think it is any coincidence that she had found a spring of water in the desert, or that the Lord happened to find her there. Oh no! I think God was seeking her out with great purpose. He told her to return home to her mistress, Sarah, and to submit to her. (Remember that.) Then the angel told her that he would multiply her children, but that they would be wild and divisive (not quite the promise most women probably want to hear about their offspring) But then… get this: God named her son Ishmael. Do you know what that name means? Ishmael means “Yahweh has been attentive to your humiliation.” Isn’t that amazing? Yahweh was attentive to her hurts, her disappointments. In other words, God wanted to heal her broken heart and to be attentive to her and her son even when no one else would.
Then, Hagar does something that is unprecedented. She gave God a name. No one else in the Old Testament ever did this. Just her. She wasn’t even raised as one of God’s people, but she knew Him enough to name Him. She names him Beer-laha-roi which means “The living God who sees me.” She says, “ Truly I have seen the One who looks after me.”

Friends, I want you to know that God sees you. He sees your hurts. He sees your disappointments. He knows how messed up things can get here in this world. He sees how insecure we all feel. He has a solution. He has sent His Son Jesus to be our Savior. Jesus came to heal the hurt, to restore the lost, to give a fresh start to us. If only we would let Him.
1John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins [our hurts, our bitterness, our struggles with insecurity], He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I want to also urge you to seek to forgive those who have hurt you. We have been forgiven so much by our generous and loving Savior, and He asks us to forgive others as He has forgiven us. Consider Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” That is a BIG verse to think about. It doesn’t mean you have to forget or that you have to accept what they did. It also doesn’t mean that you have to be that person’s best friend. I am just asking that you seriously consider what the New Testament has to say about forgiveness and that you pray about how unforgiveness towards someone may be causing you to feel great insecurity.

Remember that to beat our insecurity, we must confess it to the Lord. Sometimes, that may mean confessing moment by moment to the Lord, “Help me! I am really struggling with this hurt, with this feeling of worthlessness, with the bitterness I feel towards this person or situation… for my insecurity…”
But you know what? He is always listening and always waiting to help us. That’s what 1 John means when it says God is faithful. Also, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in time of trouble.” Ps 46:1

Insecurity is most certainly caused by:                                                                                                    4. Clinging to our Self-Consciousness and Pride
A great book that I read that helped me get past some of my crippling insecurity was a book by Beth Moore called “So Long Insecurity”. It is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it to any of you who know that insecurity is something you really struggle with. God really inspired her to write a great book to help us all combat our various insecurities. In her book, she writes about the role that self-consciousness and pride play in making us all insecure. She says,“All it takes to be chronically self-conscious is to be chronically conscious of self…” Isn’t that a profound thought! Chronically self-conscious people are chronically conscious to self. In other words, we chronically struggle with our pride, whether wounded or puffed up.
She then goes on to say, “Don’t be deceived, some of the most insecure women may try to blend in with the wall or to the room with their plainness but to the opposite effect, some women dress to perfection and will stand in the spotlight. An insecure and self-conscious woman is ordinarily more aware of herself than she tends to be of any other person in the room.Whether she feels inferior or superior, she takes frequent inventory.” I really used to struggle with this most of my teen and early twenties.

You see, both the inferior and the superior feeling women struggle with pride. For the woman who feels inferior or wounded, she may find that she confuses her insecurity with humility, thinking she doesn’t deserve to be known or noticed. She fails to acknowledge or see the value that she has as God’s child and the role she can play in His kingdom if she would only just speak up.

The superior woman or puffed up woman often finds that she fears another woman in the room being more beautiful, more charming, more funny, more intelligent.. in other words, more perfect. You see, perfectionism is just a cover for insecurity, too. I heard once, that the trouble with aiming for perfection is that you’ll find it’s always a moving target, and you’ll miss it every time.

Our culture here in America but also in our churches have a great misconceptions that all beautiful people are secure or that all plain women are humble and not self-centered. Sarah was one of the most beautiful women ever, yet she was plagued with insecurity. She may not have worried about whether she was beautiful to the world around her, but she did struggle will self-consciousness in other ways. Hagar was an egyptian servant and most likely didn’t gain as much attention in a room as Sarah, but she struggled with insecurity all the same.

I want to encourage all of us to be aware of the judgements we place on one another. Often the person you may think who has it “all together” is struggling just as much as you are, if not more. We need to help each other out with our insecurities instead of making it worse!

Peter tells us as believers in Christ, “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. [And don’t we want to be blessed and the women around us to be blessed?!] For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is agains those who do evil.”

Oh please let us seek to bring this verse to life in our churches and amongst other women! Satan wants to break the encouraging bond we can all have as women apart by making us feel insecure around each other. Fight hard to remember that none of us are perfect! But if we’ll let Him, God is working to make us more and more like Him with each passing day to His great glory.

Still have 2 more points to consider in this battle of undoing our insecurities.

Blessings! Remember, you are not alone in this fight!