Today's post is going to be long, even by my standards :) However, I didn't write it. I just find it so profound that I have to share it. It can literally be life changing, especially for us women. It comes from Beth Moore's book "So Long, Insecurity: you've been a bad friend to us". It's a prayer. A life-changing, healing prayer....one like I've never really read before. She states that it's the first of it's type that she has put in her books, but felt it was Holy Spirit led. I agree. She recommends finding a time & place that you can be alone, comfortable, and STILL. Read it slowly, thoughtfully, and out loud as if it were rising from your own heart. Fill in the intentional blanks. Pray it with honesty from the depths of your heart and see where it leads you. I'm going to pray it and I ALREADY know it's going to change me because just READING it already has! No matter it's long length---hang on to the end and let it change you! Let it change all of us.
Dear God,
I come to You this moment because I need some things only You can give me. I need restoration, Lord. I need my dignity back. You alone know what insecurity has cost me, what trouble--even torment--it has caused me. You are intimately acquainted with every time it's made a fool of me. You know how hard I've fought to play the game, but You also know that in the aftermath I've been defeated. I'm sick of faking. I'm sick of sulking. I desperately need and want to be delivered from my chronic insecurity. I am ready to discover what it means to be truly secure. I am willing to do whatever it takes to be free and to allow You to do through me what I cannot do for myself. You are the all-powerful, all-knowing Maker of heaven and earth and the grand Weaver of every human soul. You alone know how we are made and who we're meant to be. I'm not asking for anything You're not willing to give me. You have not shortchanged. me. I have shortchanged myself and allowed my culture to sell me short.
You know the way I'm formed. You know what motivates me. You know what shuts me down. You know how driven I am by fear and how exhausted I am from surrendering to it. Lord, in the most hidden places, I am so afraid that...............(fill in the blank)...........................................
Deliver me, Lord. You have not given me a spirit of fear but of power, love, and a sound mind. That's what Scripture says. I claim each of those priceless traits as mine this day. Your desire is for me to be free of every unhealthy motivation. Reveal any places they reside uncontested in me, and supply the courage I need to refused to do their bidding. You have searched the deepest recesses of my heart and mind. I don't need to hide anything from You or act stronger or more together than I am. Help me to come before You with complete transparency, and grant me a supernatural confidence that I am safe with You and loved by You. I don't have to muster feelings I don't posess or hang my head in defeat and shame. Because of Your grace, I can come to You just as I am. This is the way I would describe myself to You right now:.....................................(fill in the blanks)............................
But Lord, You know better than I know myself. You know why I think like I do and why I feel like I do. You know my every thought. My every disappointment. You know every ugly or ridiculous thing I've ever said or done out of insecurity. You see every fissure in my soul, and You look beyond the point of my failure to the depth of my need. As you reveal Yourself to me, I ask that You also mercifully reveal myself to me. Grant me insight into patterns I've developed, and give me answers that bring healing. Make my wholly unafraid of anything that I might see in myself in the light You provide. Help me to trust that You only shed light where You're willing to heal.
God, You know the complexities of my soul and that most of the time I can't even figure myself out. You know how I swing like a dizzy pendulum between self-loathing and self-exaltation. As I begin this prayer of restoration, I ask You, Lord, to help me take responsibility for the insecurity that is my own doing. My own fault. My own sin. I am painfully aware that I've created some of my own misery. I have tried to make a god of myself too many times, and it hasn't worked. It will never work. In calling me to this time of confession, Your desire is my freedom, not my self-condemnation, so with confidence, I welcome the one and reject the other. With these things in mind, hear my confessions: ................(fill in the blanks)....................................
Please forgive me for my self-worship. For my relentless pursuit of control and for my futile attempts at doing Your job. Forgive me for my foolish pride. Forgive me for nursing my ego until it grows so fat that everything touching it bruises it. Forgive me for my miserable self-absorption. Forgive me for the jealousy and covetousness that feed my insecurity. Forgive me for turning too many things into competitions. For being so fixated on what I don't have that I leave the gifts You've given me undeveloped and much less effective than You intended them to be. Forgive me for thinking pitifully little of the person You've made me. Forgive me for committing the flagrant sin of despising myself and considering myself inferior to others. Forgive me equally for every time I've sighed with relief at the thought that I might be superior after all.
Forgive me for my unbelief. If I realized how valuable I am, my insatiable need for affirmation would be quieted. Forgive me for being such a perfectionist that I resist doing something good out of fear that it won't be great. Forgive me for inordinate self-protection that has only managed to imprison me. Forgive me also for..............(fill in the blanks).......................
This very moment I receive Your lavish forgiveness and Your complete cleansing and in Your name I release all the shame that has come from self-inflicted insecurity. From now on, Lord, and every day for the rest of my life, heighten my conviction until I'm instantly aware when insecurity is my own making. Help me to recognize any form of pride or unbelief and to refuse it immediately.
Now, Lord, I ask you to pull up the roots of insecurity that were not of my own doing, and usher in healing and restoration. You know every single place where instability has touched my life. You remember details that were long erased from my memory but are still inflicting insecurity. You know what first frightened me into believing that no one and nothing could be trusted and that I'm on my own out here in a very unsafe world. You know the rational origin of every irrational fear. You know where I developed a belief system based on the frailties of man instead of the bedrock of You. You have been with me every moment, even when I felt there was no one to take care of me. I give You my whole heart. Touch every broken and wounded place with Your healing hand.
Lord, empower me to forgive those who have let me down, failed to protect me, or inflicted injury upon me. Help me to see them as needy, broken people in their own right, and Lord, where there is still life and opportunity, bring redemption to those relationships. Help me to understand the gravity of this juncture: that if I do not seek healing and wholeness, I will instead end up perpetuating the cycle of injury. Break the cycle with me, O Lord. Break the cycle with me.
Lord, come and treat my heart and soul where they have been shattered by loss. No one on earth can esteem the loss of something precious the way You can. You know the pain. You know the unbearable emptiness that can come with loss. You recognize my attempt to fill the void with things that never suffice. You know how my feelings frighten me and how the enemy of my soul would have me believe that I will never be okay. Make a liar out of him, Lord. Do not let him win. Do not let loss win. Be my gain , Lord. Flood my life with purpose and compassion. Be my strength in weakness.
Please do not let me confuse healing with betrayal. Help me to see any place in my life where I'm hanging on to my grief or anger in an attempt to hang on to what I've lost. Grant me the gift of healthy grief that does not fight the pain or the process of healing. Lord, please help me to see where I have suffered a substantial loss that I've never regarded. Where I lost innocence, grant me integrity. Where I lost a relationship, grant me true intimacy. Where I lost a home, grant me an internal, unshakable sense of belonging. Where I've held someone responsible for my loss, grant me the ability to forgive. Don't stop until You've made a miracle of me.
Lord, help me to learn how to hang on tight to You when life is rocked by dramatic change. Empower me to trust You and not to panic or fight for control. Help me to stop confusing a change in my circumstances with a change in my security status. You are my security, O God. You are the one sure thing. When everything around me shakes, You are unshakable. Nothing has the propensity to reveal false gods to me like a sudden change in my circumstances. Help me to see them and surrender them instantaneously. Use change to provoke what needs changing in me, Lord, and to increase my appreciation for the only One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Lord, I now ask You to single out everything You entrusted to me as part of my physical and psychological makeup: personal limitations, my appearance, and my God-given disposition. You knew what You were doing when You formed me in my mother's womb. Nothing is without purpose. Nothing has thrown off the plan. Every gift, challenge, and obstacle is meant to shape the specific destiny You ordained for me before time began. Your intent is to make a wonder out of me and show what You can do through me. You mean to increase the praise that comes to You because of my life. You want to defy the odds in order to make Yourself conspicuous in me. Please deliver me from self-pity and a life of excuses and rationalizations. And Lord, where I've otherwise lapsed into self-adoration and self-centeredness instead, help me to recognize my narcissism and no longer tolerate it. Of all things, please don't let it be said that I loved myself too much to fully love anybody else. Please don't let me gain the world but lose my soul.
Father, help me to see where I am overly sensitive and where I put too much pressure on relationships. Help me to see where I insist on making a situation all about me. I really want to change. Help me to quit saying, "This is the way I am, " and remind me that I am capable of tremendous transformation with You. Deliver me from insecurity in my relationships. Help me to cease being so easily wounded, but at the same time, keep me from growing hardened. Help me to resign my position as a game player and manipulator without resigning myself to a life of misuse. Help me to realize that it's pointless to demand that others love me more or love me better. Real affection cannot be coerced. I cannot put a human in charge of my security without setting him or her up for certain failure. Help me to stop using a person as my mirror and start seeing myself as You alone see me.
Lord, even in the midst of all these requests, I thank You with my whole heart for working so diligently in my life. Yes, there have been people who have hurt me and have done a very poor job of taking Your place, but there have also been people who have shown me glimpses of You. Not perfect people, but genuine people. In particular, I thank You for.................(fill in the blanks).....................
I thank You for all You have done to get me to this place and for the plan You have ahead for me. I come now, Lord, to the apex of my petition: please restore to my soul all that insecurity has stolen from me. Overturn every single thing the enemy meant for evil into something good. Perform a miracle on me, Lord. Cover me with Your trustworthy hand. Clothe me with strength and dignity. Transform what drives me. Quell what triggers me. Make me a courageous woman in this harrowing culture. One who refuses to be reduced and defined by the media. Help me to make conscious decisions about whether or not the cost of what they're selling is worth buying. Give me the discernment to call a lie a lie.
Make me the kind of woman a little girl could follow to dignity and security. I actively and deliberately receive---and vow to keep receiving---everything that I have requested in Your will this day. Let this statement reverberate into every corner of my life and invade the bone marrow of my belief system: Today on ..........(DATE)... I receive my dignity back. No one and nothing can take it from me because You are the One who gave it. Help me to recognize that I've lost my dignity only because I have surrendered it. Empower me to claim it back and hang on to it with all my might. Because of Your mercy, Lord , I am no fool. Only a wise woman shifts her trust to You.
In Jesus' saving and delivering name,
Amen
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