The Mindset Shift of Confidence Over Insecurity

[00:00:19] Hey there. This is Shana Strange Williams and you are listening to Grace and Brit Mindset podcast. [00:00:27] And I am so happy that you joined me today because I want to talk to you about something that I think a lot of you can relate to, whether you want to admit it or not, and that is insecurity. [00:00:47] Yeah. So this episode is. Is called the Mindset Shift of insecurity. Nope. Let me back up. The mindset shift of confidence over insecurity. [00:01:00] I think I should have like a, I don't know, a doctorate in this maybe. And I just want to tell you, all of these mindset shifts that I am going over with you are first of all, part of my coaching program that if you work with me one on one, we go through each of these and we work on them every week so that you can overcome some of this stuff because it's so connected to your lack of results in your life. Like the things that are driving you crazy. You're. You're not where you think you should be in your life. Or maybe you're tired of feeling depressed, you're tired of feeling anxious, you're tired of being overwhelmed all the time. [00:01:43] That's, that's the kind of stuff that we address in my program. But I'm bringing you these kind of bite sized nuggets in the podcast episodes to help you, because it gets old after a while, right? Like, it gets old being stuck in a rut, being stuck in this place of whatever it might be for you. You know, I get tired of it. I feel like I'm in bondage almost. Does that make sense? Like I'm in bondage to this mindset that keeps dragging me down. And I know that God has these things for me to do, but it feels like I can't ever do it because I'm constantly bombarded with negative thought patterns. So I suspect if you're listening to this, that might be you as well. [00:02:32] And so I wanted to make this one, this episode about how to shift your mindset from a place of insecurity to a place of confidence. And I will tell you, I think that takes time. [00:02:49] That is not like you could wake up tomorrow and say, okay, from now on, I will not be insecure because insecurity is rooted. Often, I would say, like all the time is rooted in not knowing your identity, not knowing who you are, not knowing who God is. [00:03:10] So much of what we struggle with are identity issues. Like, if we really knew who we were in Him, a lot of this stuff would fix itself. But here's the thing, we don't know how to fix it because it's become a blind spot. We've allowed it to almost shape our personality, and now we don't even know what the heck we. Why the heck we are doing the things we're doing. And so you really have to get to a place where you evaluate your belief system. [00:03:37] And if you don't like the way your life is right now, if you don't like the constant emotional roller coaster that you find yourself on, then you have to address your faulty belief system. And you've got to figure out, and sometimes you can't do this by yourself. [00:03:53] You've got to figure out what these lies are that are part of the belief system. [00:04:00] Oftentimes they're rooted in trauma. [00:04:02] Something happened to you when you were a kid, Something happened when you were a teenager. Something maybe happened, I don't know, in your marriage even. You know, I mean, it doesn't have to be a childhood trauma. It can be a trauma that just happened that can cause you to start thinking a certain way that's not true. And anything that's not founded on the truth of God's word means that it's a lie. And lies always produce destruction. That is their intent. [00:04:33] The truth brings life, right? [00:04:37] It brings life to us. Freedom, success, it brings joy. [00:04:46] It brings all these amazing things from the kingdom of God. But when we believe lies, guess what door we've opened now? We've opened the door to a different kingdom, to a kingdom of darkness. And that's where the enemy dwells. And he wants you to believe lies so that he can basically destroy your destiny. [00:05:07] That's the easiest way for him to do it, is just to tell you lies and for you to believe them. And oftentimes these lies come in the form of childhood trauma. [00:05:17] Or maybe someone in your life saying things to you when you are very impressionable. [00:05:24] And you took that as truth, and you basically pulled that into who you are. You implemented it in your identity, and now you're living in a false identity and you're not understanding why. You constantly have overwhelming fear, debilitating depression, anxiety. That's off the charts. [00:05:48] Maybe you can't get out of bed because you just get so overwhelmed or you're so depressed. I totally can relate to all of the things I'm saying. [00:05:56] So as I'm saying this, I'm not saying this to be a person who is judgmental. I'm saying this as a person who has been exactly where you are, and I know exactly how you feel. [00:06:09] And, and the truth is, and the good news, because there is good news, is that you can get out of this. These cycles of negative thought patterns. And God wants you to get out of these cycles because on the other side of overcoming this stuff are the blessings are the promises that God has for you. But oftentimes he can't give those to us because we can't handle it. [00:06:36] We can't handle the promised land until we deal with the giants, until we deal with the. And I see giants sometimes as strongholds, mental strongholds that we struggle with, that we don't overcome. [00:06:49] But we can't. We can't effectively be in our promised land and take care of it and all the blessings that it entails if we aren't first mentally ready, spiritually ready, emotionally ready. Right? Because it's a whole. It's a whole other thing. See, listen, God doesn't always want us to live in survival mode. That is not his best for us. [00:07:12] We are going somewhere. [00:07:14] He has us on a journey. He's taking us to something better. And I know this because Scripture says it time and time again. The stories of the patriarchs, the stories of the people in the Bible, God was always setting them up for something better. [00:07:28] And that's just who he is. He's always redeeming things. He's always making things beautiful in their time. [00:07:34] He definitely has something better for us. [00:07:38] But in order for us to walk into it, we have got to let go of some of these faulty mindsets. Right? [00:07:46] So that's my intro. [00:07:49] So today I want to talk about how in the world do you shift that mindset of being an insecure person to being a confident person? Because God wants you to be confident. [00:08:02] So I think the first thing you have to do is you have got to really, really know in your heart who you are. [00:08:10] And I don't mean like you have scripture memorized, but you don't believe it. I mean, you actually believe it. [00:08:18] Like you actually believe that you are a child of God and you actually believe that he loves you and gave himself as a sacrifice for you and that he wants. He has your best interest in mind. He wants time to bless you. See, I think a lot of us are stuck in. I don't know if he really wants to bless me. Like, I've done some horrible things. I've done this, I've done that. I don't, I don't deserve it. It was never about what you and I deserve. If we got what we deserve, we'd be in hell, right? All of Us, every last one of us. It's never been about what we deserve. It's about who he is and his goodness toward us. If you ever question whether or not he loves you, just look at the cross. He said everything when he was on the cross. By doing that, he revealed his heart toward us. [00:09:11] And I want to settle also within you, hopefully something that maybe you can think about and research this for yourself. I'm not going to go into a lot of verses about this, but I want you to just think about this for a minute. When Jesus is here for the 33 years or so that he was here and he was ministering and he was always teaching his disciples and he was teaching everybody that wanted to hear. [00:09:38] He often referred to God as the. As the Father, as His Father, and as our Father. [00:09:45] He. He brought something out that really up until that point, you don't see a lot of. You don't see a lot of referencing God as Father in the Old Testament. I'm trying to think of some places it probably is there. But honestly, what we see are, you know, the different names of God, whether it be Yahweh, whether it be Adonai, whether it be Jehovah, Nissi, Jehovah, Jireh, Jehovah, Shalom. All the names that he has, there's just tons of them, right? [00:10:18] But I don't know that they really knew him as Father Father because they didn't have that kind of familial love relationship that we have because the cross hadn't happened. Jesus hadn't revealed the Father's heart was to love us, to love all of us, not. Not just the Jews, but he wanted to love the entire world. So when Jesus comes, he'll say things like, you know, my Father this, My Father that. He's constantly referencing him as Father. [00:10:47] And I think he wanted to reveal himself that way to us because we didn't. We didn't have that. [00:10:55] And so much of the time, the reason that you might be walking in insecurity is because you don't really view him as your father. [00:11:07] Because if you know he's your father, man, it's a whole different ball game because. Because, you know, like, if you're a parent, is there anything you wouldn't do for your child? [00:11:18] Don't you always have your. Their best interest in mind? Don't you constantly sacrifice giving of yourself to make their life better? [00:11:27] Don't you always put them before yourself? Well, how much more would God do that with us? We are his children. [00:11:35] So if you want to Start walking in some confidence. Now, number one, you have to establish the fact that you are a child of God, and you have to believe it. [00:11:45] And that may take you some time to uncover, why don't I really believe this? Or it may be that you've got to backtrack into it and say, well, I don't feel loved. Okay, why don't I feel loved? And then you just keep going down further and further until you can really pinpoint, well, maybe it was because I don't feel like. I don't know, maybe. Maybe you had an absentee father, you know, and that's a huge deal when you look at statistics, which I don't have them on me right now. But when you look at fatherlessness and what happens as a result of our lack of fathers in America, it's huge. You know, a lot of the children end up in just criminal activity, right? They end up in jail, they end up doing drugs. They end up being super promiscuous or just rebellious or just destroying their life because they didn't have a father there. [00:12:41] And so I think spiritually it's the same way. [00:12:45] If we can backtrack and trace it back and say, okay, you know, I think the reason I don't feel like I'm a child of God is because maybe I just wasn't. I wasn't really close to my dad, and I didn't really in. I didn't really feel like I was loved, you know? And so you're viewing God through that same lens, and that may be causing you to be insecure about his love towards you. Therefore, you may walk through life feeling depressed, feeling overwhelmed, feeling inferior to everyone else. That is something I can totally relate to, is just this inferiority complex that I had for years. [00:13:25] A lot of times that can happen because physically you're different. [00:13:30] You know, children are cruel to each other. [00:13:33] I had a lot of kids. Not a lot, but I had a handful. And that's all that it took to make fun of me, to point out the fact that my nose was crooked and then my eyes weren't straight. [00:13:44] And that just set me on a course to be super insecure. I mean, there were years that I wouldn't even look people in the eye. [00:13:52] I was like, I just didn't want anybody to talk to me or look at me. I was so quiet and withdrawn, and everybody was like, oh, she's just a quiet child. No, really, I was insecure. And I didn't. [00:14:04] I felt ugly. I felt ugly. And it just really created such a Deep vacuum in my soul and just feeling unloved by God, feeling unloved by people. [00:14:19] So when I talk about having confidence, I know what it's like to have to trace this back and figure out why I was so insecure or why I've walked in insecurity for so many years. So I definitely understand this. And if you're going through it, the best thing you can do is get into your Bible and, you know, Google, okay, I need scriptures about confidence. I need scriptures about God's love for me and just meditate on that stuff. Because the Word is what brings life to us. Faith comes by hearing, but it has to be hearing God's Word, because God's Word is active and alive. [00:15:07] And so it was lies that the devil used, and he planted those and they brought death. So. So by the same way, God wants to bring life, but he's going to do it through His Word to you. [00:15:19] So it can be through you meditating on the Bible, learning it, reading it, getting it down in your soul, praying and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal places to you that you have believed lies or what the lies were, and then just replacing those with what God says. [00:15:39] Sometimes you need someone else to help you with that, whether that's a counselor or a coach or it could be a friend who's like, no, that's not true. [00:15:47] You know, in love, maybe correcting some things that you're believing because it's just hurting you so bad, right? So that's where you have to start, is establishing identity. [00:16:01] And then I think if you really could grow in understanding, you know, of course God loves you, but he's also protecting you and guiding you. So once you can establish the identity issue, you can start realizing that he is protecting you. [00:16:19] He is guiding you like he is all around you all the time. It's not like he just says a few things to you and he's like an. [00:16:31] Really a parent who's just got their hands off of this situation and you and just whatever happens, happens. That's so not how he parents us. [00:16:38] I just want to read a few, a few scriptures for you about confidence. And I hope that they can encourage you today to really look at this and gain some perspective, you know, so of course, I mean, Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through, through Christ who strengthens me. So realizing that you're even the very strength that you need, being confident that God's going to give you the strength that you need. I've been through seasons in my life where I like was at the last shred of confidence I had. I persevered for so long. And I remember just saying, lord, I need you to give me strength. You're so all sufficient. [00:17:25] You are life. You never run out of strength. You are the source of life. [00:17:30] And I would just. I would just get into his presence and he would give me strength. It was supernatural. [00:17:37] And I know today that if that's where you are, just hear me out on this. You can do anything through Christ because He will give you strength. There is not a situation that, that he's not equipped for and doesn't want you to walk in confidence. That he's going to help you and strengthen you to get through it. [00:17:58] Yeah. So let's look at Hebrews 10:35. [00:18:01] Therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward for you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. So there's confidence here, but it's confidence in God to always fulfill his promise. [00:18:20] Right as we persevere. This scripture basically says, hey, as I persevere in what he's told me to do, I have to endure a while. But to do this will, but I will receive the thing that he told me was going to be mine, the promise. [00:18:35] That's just fact. [00:18:38] Because God is. In some ways. I don't know. In some ways I think of him. I always think of him as an artist, but he's also a businessman. And he's making it. He's made it. I think of his promises is almost covenantal. [00:18:52] So he said, this is what I'm gonna do. You know, you do this and I do this. This is my part. [00:18:58] And you better believe he backs up what he says he's going to do. We just have to do what he's told us to do and walk in obedience so that he can fulfill his promises to us. So you can be confident in that. [00:19:13] I Love this. Proverbs 3. 25. Do not be afraid of sudden terror, nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes. For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught. [00:19:27] The Lord your God will be your confidence, and he will keep your foot from being caught. [00:19:33] Oftentimes all the time the enemy is trying to set us up. Set up a snare, a trap or something, you know, to try to trip us up or get us off track or destroy our lives. It's always for destruction. [00:19:48] But I love that there's this confidence that we can have that even, even if that happens, because you know he's gonna try that. God will be my confidence to even get out of that or to see through that or. Or to deal with it if I need to. He will keep my foot from being caught. So maybe I almost get into it, but he stops me. We can be confident of his great love to do even things like that. For us, it's kind of a protection, you know, and a security that we know that he's watching every step we take. [00:20:25] Psalm 27. 3. This is about protection. Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war may arise against me in this, I will be confident. So it's like he's saying, doesn't really matter what comes my way. I will be confident that God is going to protect me. [00:20:45] Even in the most dire, overwhelming situations. [00:20:50] I find myself in one. [00:20:55] What's the word I'm looking for? I'm struggling for words today, so bear with me. [00:21:00] Find myself in one overwhelmingly challenging situation after another. It's like the last five years of my life, God has been like, okay, I'm gonna grow you up in some places and I'm gonna allow some things to happen, but I'm gonna be with you. [00:21:17] But it's gonna be tough. [00:21:19] And that's how my life has been the last five years. It. And I will at some point be talking about some of the things I've been through in the last year. And I think some. Some of you probably your jaw is going to hit the ground when I. When I tell you, because you're going to think, well, you should. You should like, be in a mental hospital. [00:21:38] And I don't know, by the time you hear this, I'm. I may have already released my husband and I released our marriage Altar podcast. And so a lot of that story will be there, but if not, and I haven't released it, just know it's coming. And you would be able to hear about that more if you listen to the other podcast. But there will come a time when I talk some about that. But I want to release those episodes first for the marriage podcast that we've been working on. But I will tell you this. [00:22:09] The devil had traps set for me at every turn that I didn't know they were there. [00:22:16] Army, it felt like an army of demons, you know, But God always was there. Like, he went before me and he already, like, made a way out. I can think of so many financial disasters I've been through over the years, especially the last few years. [00:22:36] And, like, I don't know how I've Made it. But he's been there every time, protecting my finances, protecting us, making a way where there was absolutely no way. [00:22:51] So I love that. [00:22:52] So let's talk about having confidence. And actually this, this verse stuck out to me recently. [00:23:01] First John 5:14. [00:23:03] Now, this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything, anything, according to his will, he hears us. [00:23:15] So we can always know. [00:23:16] And Jesus even said this. The Father always hears us, always. We can know that anytime we speak to God, anytime we pray, we ask anything according to his will. And that's. I think he hears everything, of course. [00:23:32] But man, when you pray according to his will, that's something he's going to act on. [00:23:38] We can have confidence about that. And if you don't know what God's will is in a situation, because that's oftentimes, I think why we get super generic in our prayers, because we're like, oh, man, I don't even know how to pray in this situation because I don't know what God's will is. [00:23:56] It's super easy to just say, God, Father, I don't know what your will is, but I pray, Holy Spirit, that you reveal to me the parts of God's will that I can know and show me how to pray effectively. [00:24:12] Because if you want the will of God to come to pass in your life, then you have to pray effectively according to the will of God. Because sometimes what you think might be God's will, like, let's just say your child is going through something really challenging and you're just praying, like, praying for the whole situation to just go away. [00:24:31] You're just praying for it to come to nothing and for them to not have to have any pain or suffering or whatever. But God may be saying, no, I need them to learn some lessons, and I can't just take the situation away. I want to grow them through this. [00:24:48] So the will of God, maybe, maybe that you pray for your child to begin to understand and begin to rise up within, like the Holy Spirit rising up within them and teach them what it is that the Father wants them to learn. You know, pray for them to be steadfast, pray for them to be strong, pray for them to turn to the Lord, pray for their. Whatever it is that God reveals to you. Pray that way because he hears you. [00:25:14] Because anytime we speak his word, because when we release his will, we're releasing his word that he's already spoken over something, and then he can act on it for whatever reason. This has always floored me as I look at scripture and think about the Lord and how he interacts with us. But he has chosen to partner with human beings to bring about his will in the earth. [00:25:39] He could have just used, like angels and bypassed us altogether, but he said, no, I have given you dominion in the earth, and I want to partner with you to bring about my will. [00:25:54] So our role as the church is oftentimes just to praying the will of God. [00:26:00] It's so crazy to me, isn't it? Like, he doesn't need us, but he's decided. He decided long ago that he didn't need us, but he wants to use us. He wants us to be a part of the plan. It's like your kids when they're growing up, if you have them at home or if they're older, whatever, you give them a job because it gives them a sense of belonging and gives them a sense of having value. When you have an assignment, when you get to do something, I mean, it's not that you put your whole identity into the assignment, which is a whole other problem, but it's that it gives you just a purpose almost. And he wants us to feel that we have purpose here, that we are part of the plan. We get to be a part of it. [00:26:43] So I love that. I love that we can be confident if we ask anything according to his will, that he's going to hear it. [00:26:50] I'm going to give you just one or two more. Hebrews 4:16. [00:26:56] Let us therefore come boldly, boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Oh, I could go somewhere with Hebrews 4:16, but I don't have time. [00:27:10] I did. I had the privilege of speaking at a church in El Paso earlier this year to some women. And I talked about the tabernacle of Moses and what it represents in the mercy seat. And when I got to the mercy seat, I just wept. And women were getting saved as they were listening to this message, because they were seeing it from this whole other perspective. So when Jesus blood hit the mercy seat in the holy of holies, in the tabernacle of Moses, you know what that meant was his blood was powerful enough that now we have access into this holy place with our Father. Before that, you would die if you try to get into the presence of God. Even the priests, they had to tie the rope around their waist on the day of atonement once a year, when the priest would go in and make the sacrifice for the year, if that priest was unclean, they would die. Just being in the holy of holies, close to. To the Ark of the Covenant. [00:28:11] So because they would take that blood from the sacrifice and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. [00:28:19] And that was symbolic of saying, give us mercy, God. Here's the blood for the sacrifice. [00:28:25] Be merciful to us again, Father. Please forgive us of our sins, right? [00:28:29] But when Jesus's blood hits the mercy seat, he. For all time. This just makes me so excited. I could shout about this. If you really understand this, you will understand that absolutely nothing can keep you away from God now. Because what Jesus did is he tore the veil, he took his blood, and he just stuck it right there on the mercy seat. And he said, forever God will be with men. [00:29:00] I have atoned for the sins of the entire world, and there is now no separation between God and man. [00:29:09] And this is so beautiful. And so Hebrews 4:16 reminds us that we can come boldly into the throne room of grace. [00:29:17] We can come right up into God's presence now boldly. We don't have to grovel. I mean, I'm not saying I wouldn't because he's so holy. I just think I would just barely crawl up to him. He's so holy. But what he's saying is, you can have confidence now that when you come to him, he will give you mercy and he will give you grace in the time of need. Man, that is some good news. I don't know if you're excited about that like I am, but, I mean, you can just tell. That is like a fire that burns in my soul. I love it. [00:29:51] Yeah. [00:29:53] Okay, so I want to read you, like, one more, and then I'm gonna wrap it up. Maybe done a little bit quicker today than I usually am. I'm gonna read you Proverbs 14:26. [00:30:05] In the fear of the Lord, there is strong confidence, and his children will have a place of refuge. [00:30:12] You know, one of the things that this. This is speaking about to me is this reverencing the Lord, the fear, the reverent fear of the Lord. [00:30:21] I've lived my life this way. I think. Have I done it perfectly? No. But there were so many times that I think I was tempted to do things that I knew God wouldn't like. They were sinful. [00:30:36] And it was my reverence for him that kept me from going that direction, like my holy, reverential fear towards God. [00:30:47] And there's. There's a confidence that goes along with that, knowing that. [00:30:53] That I'm his child and I have a place of refuge as I reverently fear him, knowing that he's protecting me. I think that's amazing. I do want to read one more, and then I will absolutely go. This time I'm not gonna drag it out anymore. But Psalm 118, 6, the Lord is on my side. I will not fear. What. What can man do to me? I mean, are you confident enough to say, the Lord is on my side. [00:31:19] The Lord is on my side. So I. I just want to drop that last little bit there with you and just say, you know, anytime the enemy is coming against you and it. And you don't even realize it's him, it's your own thoughts probably, but you just need to say, the Lord is on my side. The Lord is on my side. [00:31:40] Do you know how big of a deal that is? Like, you can't lose. If he's on your side, you can't lose. I love this because this reminds me of David when he fights Goliath. [00:31:50] He absolutely knew the Lord was on his side. [00:31:53] That's why he was so confident. [00:31:55] He said to Goliath, and he said, you know, as Goliath is taunting him and saying, who is this little shepherd boy? And David is like, several times he said, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that would defy the armies of the living God? [00:32:14] And when you look at that, you really break that down. And it's like, why did he have to say uncircumcised? Like, why. Why did he say that? Well, he's saying that because he's basically, he's saying to Goliath and the Philistines, you're not in the covenant, you're uncircumcised. We're in the covenant. That means he's on our side and you're going down. And I think that's the attitude we have to have, is we now, we're of the heart. The circumcision of the heart is what the New Testament says. [00:32:43] We are circumcised before the Lord, and he's on our side now. He's proven that over and over and over with the blood of his son, with the way he feels toward us, all the promises he's made, all the things, things he's done. I mean, what else does he have to do to prove that he's on your side? You know, I'm just reminding myself of this because the enemy comes in like a flood, you know, but then it's like, God reminds me, me, how about, I'm on your side, I'm on your side. [00:33:14] So I hope today that that really encourages you. [00:33:19] And listen, you don't have to stay trapped in a, in a mindset that's full of insecurity. [00:33:27] God wants to move you beyond that. He wants to move you into a place of confidence. [00:33:32] Because when you're, when you get to that place of confidence, you're going to be able to walk right into the things he's called you to do. [00:33:39] Maybe it's a new season, maybe it's a ministry. Maybe it's a, a new job. Maybe it's a, I don't know, maybe you're just a new relationship. Whatever it is confidence, he wants you to have it. [00:33:52] So hey, be blessed. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please leave me a review. Hopefully it's a good review. [00:34:01] You can also check out the accompanying blog. I'll post it [email protected] I am, I am releasing or I have created a coaching program that is based on this. [00:34:18] It's a mindset reset program. [00:34:22] So if that's something you're interested in, I'll drop a link in the show notes and you can see that. And you can definitely reach out to me if you have questions or you can sign up for it. But be blessed guys, and I will see you soon. [00:34:41] His love is breaking through me.