Do I seem confident? I tell you, it’s not always been that way!
Hi, I'm Joni Eareckson Tada and, oh, if you only knew the times I’ve felt like disappearing in a crowded room, or the times, let’s say, on a panel discussion when I hope the audience calls on someone else more experienced, or more knowledgeable. In fact, I remember a time one woman once asked me, “Joni, you seem so confident. Have you always been that way?” Inwardly I smiled. She didn’t know anything about the knots I feel in my stomach before I speak to a crowd, or the times I’m scared stiff to sit in front of a blank canvas with a paintbrush… boy, that really scares me.
It is called insecurity… feeling insecure for me started early on in my childhood scramble to keep up with three older, more athletic sisters. As a four-year-old, I would cling to the saddle horn, sitting atop a sixteen-hands-high Appaloosa mare galloping behind the faster horses of my sisters. I didn’t dare tell them how scared I was! My life journey has been to put aside insecurities. Now, my wheelchair I should say has helped. At first, when I became paralyzed it made me feel more insecure, but over the years God has used my wheelchair to force me to sit still, quit competing, and be quiet before Him. Listen, if my insecurities showed as a kid, they really showed when I became a quadriplegic. I didn’t know which way to turn – and so I turned in the only direction I had, lying face up in a hospital bed, was to look up to the Lord. It was all I needed! People are only as secure as the source of their security; if we are secure in Christ, then we have every reason to be confident.
Christian psychologists say that good mental health springs from two things: security and significance -- Security in who we are and significance in what we do. We long to know who we are in this world, and what we’re supposed to be doing. Since Christ is the source of peace, joy, strength, and rest, and in Him we live and move and have our very being, we only feel secure when we place our trust in Him. And that gives whatever we do in His name, great significance. Alan Redpath once wrote, “There is no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose.” Friend, the circumstances you find yourself in today should give shape to your significance in Christ’s kingdom – God wouldn’t allow them in your life did they not come with a great purpose. After all, Acts 17 assures us that God has specified the times and the places He’s designed for each of us. Yes, it’s a design. Then Acts 17 goes on to say, “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’”
And friend, I can’t begin to describe the freedom and joy that’s found when you’re secure in Christ… it makes everything you do, significant. And I want to help you in your journey toward security and significance, and I want to do it with a wonderful little gift book called “Who I am in Christ.” I’ve got this booklet in front of me, and I'm looking at what it says: who are we in Christ? We’re forgiven and rescued; we are redeemed; we are accepted and chosen, free. It goes on to recount verses from God's Word that guide you into a secure relationship with Him, and you can get your free copy today just by visiting our radio page at joniandfriends.org. Remember, that you move and have your very being in Him… and that makes everything you do today pretty significant.
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