A Gift for Life // It's Time to Get Over It, Part 5

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.