Gateway Church's Podcast
Freedom from Insecurity
A Gateway Sermon
Good evening. How are you? I just want to let you know that Pastor Robert is still on our staff. Still here. You know, I grew up in the 70s and I'm lucky to survive the 70s. And how many of you grew up, like if you were between the ages of 5 and 15, that's why I kind of called childhood years, you know, where you can remember things. After 15, you go nuts till about 25. But between 5 and 15, it's kind of your golden years of childhood, you know, and I spent most of those years in the 70s. How many of you grew up in the 50s and 60s or 70s during that time? Look at all the survivors. You know, for example, when I was brought home, my mom brought me home and put me in a lead-based paint, right in the crib, there was lead-based paint. They didn't know that it was toxic at the time, and it was bright colors. I've got pictures of it. I wrote down some things here that helped me survive the 70s. We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles. None. In fact, the only thing that they keep you from doing now is to keep an adult from opening them anyway. We rode our bikes, we had no helmets, and we even hitchhiked, and we survived. As children, we'd ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags. In fact, most of the time we'd ride in the back of the pickup. I mean, we rode in the back of the pickup, not strapped in, sometimes even sitting on the side with a tailgate down. We drank water from the garden hose, didn't have any idea what bottle water meant. Many times we even shared a single coke can, a can of coke with like four of us, and put peanuts in it and even shared the peanuts that were floating around on top. How many of you survived that? How many of you still do that? Don't raise your hand. We ate cupcakes and white bread and real butter. Do you remember those days? How many of you just sometimes just want some white bread and some real butter? I won't even buy real butter anymore. We fell out of trees, got cut, broke our nose, lost our teeth, and no one got sued over it. In fact, I knocked out several neighbors kids by accident, the teeth and ears and things, and no lawsuits so far. I was given a BB gun for my tenth birthday, and although my mother said, "If you're not careful, you'll put someone's eye out. I never put anyone's eye out." They got close. I shot at my brother a few times, but other than that, parents never bailed us out if a police officer showed up at the door. In fact, all every single time they always sided with the police officer. That's back in the good old days, right? And then the last thing is no, Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Do you remember that? They actually cut people from the Little League. If you weren't good enough, you didn't get to play. It leads me to the title of my message tonight, "Freedom from Insecurity." [laughter] It really is what I'm preaching on, but you know, things like that in our life, you know, getting cut from Little League. Now we know better because parents today are much smarter than our parents were, right? All of us who are parents now, we've got it together. We've learned all these things. We know that lead-based paint causes mental disorders now, and we don't do that. But the point is, is that when I was growing up, I didn't realize it, but I was one of the things that really tormented me growing up was feelings of insecurity, not knowing that I'm not being confident of my future, not being confident of where I was going, being uncertain about who I was. I grew up with these feelings of insecurity, and about two years ago, I got so tired of dealing with insecurity that I just asked the Lord one morning. I remember that I just shut my office door, and I said, "If I don't get anything else accomplished today, I want, I have to have an answer for this." Because I was, you know, at that time 36 years old, tormented by these thoughts, tired of dealing with it, quite honestly. And I said, "Lord, you've got to show me in your word how to get free from this, because I realize I can't go to the next step in my life unless you do." Now, you're going to feel like a priest and I, because I'm going to confess a lot of things to you. This story, this message has been ruining me for about two years, but I've been so insecure, I've been able to give it to you. But I'm so, so feel so much better right now that I'm going to actually share the message. Here's what the definition of insecure means. It means unstable, uncertain, lacking confidence, unsure, shaky, and unsound. That's the emotional feelings that I had, and listen, that's not the way I appeared on the outside. Because I was successful in school, I graduated with honors from high school, I was very successful in sports in high school, we won a state championship, we went to the college, I made several lists, one which was the Dean's list, some are not so good list. But I made those lists, you know, I got married, my marriage was good, I was successful in business, everything about me looked like that I had things together. But inside was a constant turmoil, a constant train of negative thoughts and feelings that I could not get a handle on. I would pray about it, I would have people ask me about it, I would go to people and confess it, but I could never get free from this insecurity. And so, one that morning in my office, the Lord took me to the Webster's Dictionary. Now, you know, it's got to be God if the Lord takes you to the Webster's Dictionary. That's the first time I had opened it in about 15 years. And here's what the word secure, the definition of the word secure means. It means having full command to rule, to be without anxiety, and to be free from care. Now, when I read that, I believe the Lord spoke to me and said, that's how I created you to be. That's the life, Brady, that's the emotional thought process that you should have. That you should be ruling your thoughts, you should be free from anxiety, you should have full command of your emotions. And Brady, I want to show you in my word what the root cause of insecurity is. Now, I believe that insecurity, quite honestly, is an epidemic in America. It's an epidemic in marriages. It's what causes most marriages to fail, by the way. It's this root of insecurity that's in most people's lives. And so, I want to show you today the root. But before I do that, I've been around insecure people all my life because insecure people tend to hang out with insecure people. And so, I had a little club working. Most of my friends were very insecure. Most of the people I hung out with were very insecure and we'd share our insecurities with one another, make each other feel better. You know, what was meant to help us actually just enable us. And so, here are the four traits that I discovered about myself first and about others who were dealing with insecurity. Here's the first trait, is that insecure people are constantly tormented by what people think of them. Now, here's the irony of this. Most of the time, people are not thinking those thoughts about you, that you're convinced that they are. You are absolutely convinced that people are having negative thoughts, saying negative things, having negative thought process about you when in actuality they're not. And you fall into this paranoia that every time you get around someone, maybe you meet them for the first time and you're trying to make a good impression upon them. You walk away from the meeting and you're absolutely convinced they think you're a total loser, that there's something wrong with you. That's this tormenting thoughts that come to you every time that these people are having negative thoughts about you. For example, do you immediately feel that a personal attack is behind every criticism or correction? For example, a boss, a husband or a wife, someone has some influence in your life, someone that you've allowed to speak into their life. Every time that they speak into your life and correct you or give you some type of correction, you always feel that it's personal. That it wasn't meant for your good, it was meant to harm you instead of meaning to help you. You see, that's what insecure people feel. They feel that every criticism, every point of correction is personal and that's the tormenting thoughts that they have. Here's the second thing is that do you immediately think of ways to even the personal scoreboard with others? If you hurt me, I'm going to hurt you. If you compliment me, I'm going to compliment you. If you make me feel good, I'm going to make you feel good, but at all times the scoreboard is going to be even. My scoreboard and your scoreboard is going to have the same number on it. So if you make me feel good, I'm going to make you feel good. If you attack me, you've just met your worst enemy. That's what insecure people do. Insecure people say the scoreboard's got to be even. Your scoreboard and my scoreboard's got to have the same number. Here's the second trait. Insecure people are quick to accept negative thoughts about themselves. Now I'm talking about the thoughts that are going on in your own mind about yourself. By the way, if you are always agreeing with negative thoughts about yourself, guess what the enemy will always do. You'll always supply plenty of thoughts for you to agree with. If you're so quick to accept everything negative about yourself, I'm a failure. I'm a loser. I'm never going to succeed. Guess what? The enemy will always make sure that those thoughts are rotating through your cycle of thoughts because he's going to want you to agree with them. Here's the third trait. Insecure people are defensive and they cannot have healthy disagreements with people. Your response to people when they criticize or attack you reveals your level of security. If you're insecure, you cannot have a healthy disagreement with people. By the way, where two or more people are gathered together, there is a disagreement about to happen. And so disagreements and debate and conflict is a part of living life, right? I mean, if you're going to work with people, if you're going to mentor people, if you're going to disciple people, if you're going to be a boss or own your own business, if you're going to be married, you're going to have disagreements. And the way you respond to disagreements reveals your level of insecurity. If you can have honest, healthy disagreements with people, if you can have open debate with people without becoming defensive, it reveals a level of security in your heart. But defensiveness is a sure sign of insecurity. Now, here's the fourth one. Fourth trait is insecure people believe that they must promote themselves or they will be overlooked by others. Now, I told you growing up that this was a tormenting thought. This was a root cause of most of the problems in my early adult life was insecurity. In fact, most of the time, when I grew up and I would get around someone of influence, someone that could help me, no matter where the conversation started, no matter what we talked about, it was my goal, and I became very good at it, by the way, was to somehow, before the conversation ended, was to make sure that I could promote myself and for them to hear something good about myself, because I never felt like that no anyone else would defend me. I never felt like that anyone else would promote me, so I had to promote myself. And I became very good at getting around people and working into every conversation something about myself that would make me look good in front of them. Now, again, the irony of this is I didn't need to do that. I didn't have to, but I did. I felt an overwhelming need to promote myself at every opportunity. Every opportunity I tried to promote myself, and I knew it was wrong, so I began to do it covertly. You know, people would just openly promote themselves, you know, everyone knows they're a jerk, but to people like me that are real good at it, I've been getting really good at this. I learned how to blend it into every conversation, so it actually made it seem like I wasn't talking about myself, but I really was. I knew, see, you know what's going on in your own heart, don't you? You know the motives of your own heart, and if you're really honest with yourself, you know that the reason you said that was to promote yourself. And it really began to bother me. It began to bother me because I was almost an addict. I was addicted to self-promotion. I was completely addicted, and as much as I did not want to promote myself, I would find myself doing it. You feel like I appreciate it because I'm just confessing my soul to you tonight, all right? Quit looking at me like no one else does this either, all right? If you'll just agree with me, if someone out there will just nod like this happen to them once or twice, they'd make me feel better, okay? They'll play along with me tonight. And so I'm telling you, no matter how hard I didn't want to do it, I would do it. And no matter how hard I tried not to be insecure, I was insecure. And that morning in my office I said, "Lord, I've got to know the root because I've tried everything. I mean, I've prayed, I've gone to people, I've gotten counsel, I've gone through freedom ministry. I just could not discover the root of what was causing me to go back to this lifestyle, this pattern of behavior. So I want you to turn your Bible to 1 Peter chapter 2, and I'm going to give you tonight the root cause of insecurity in every person's life. This is the root cause. In 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 21. Now the first part of the scripture is not very good. I don't really care for the first part of this. We'll read through it very fast. This suffering is all part of what God's called you to. Isn't that amazing that God actually leads us into times of suffering in order to test our hearts to prove us to try us? Listen, if you're born again today, God will take you through seasons of suffering in order to test you at times. I don't mean for you to amen there. I know it's hard to amen there. But that's the truth. So these tormenting thoughts that I was having, this season of suffering that I was going through inside my heart was for a purpose. God wanted to promote me. Here's the good news tonight. The reason that God takes you through suffering, the reason that God exposes the depths of your heart to you is because he wants to promote you. That's the good news. He cannot promote you unless he looks inside your heart and takes out the places where he's not Lord and becomes Lord over those areas. That's how you get promoted, right? And so God took me to the depths of, I mean to the lowest, one of the lowest points in my life two years ago. And he said this suffering is all part of what God's called you to. Christ who suffered for you is your example. Follow in his steps. He never sinned and he never deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted. And when he suffered, he did not threaten to get even. Notice how secure Jesus is in his scripture. He left his case in the hands of God who always judges fairly. Now underline that in your Bible because I want you to chew on that for about a year and a half like I have. He left his case in the hands of God. He personally carried away our sins in his own body, on the cross, so we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. And you have been healed by his wounds. Now listen, we all think and we all know that that applies to physical healing. But there was never a man on earth who was more rejected emotionally than Jesus. Not only are you healed physically by the wounds of Jesus, it is possible tonight to be completely emotionally healed because of the wounds of Jesus. Do you agree with that? Jesus suffered emotional wounds and he overcame emotional wounds. And because of him overcoming, I can overcome all of the emotional wounds of my past and of the generational curses that were passed on to me. Amen? All right, so here's the root cause tonight. Insecure people believe that God is idly standing by and not helping their cause. I want to read that one more time. This is the root cause of insecurity. Insecure people believe that God is idly standing by and not helping their cause. They believe that God is distant. They believe that God has left them. They believe that God is not a good promoter, that God does not have a plan, a detailed second by second minute by minute plan for their life. When in fact he does. When in fact the Bible says that God has never left you, God has never forsaken you, God has never abandoned you, God has never left your side for one second of your life. God is in front of you and God is behind you. God is all in your future. God knows every second, every detail of your future and he is not standing idly by waiting for something else to happen. He is moving you toward your destiny as fast as you will let him go. I want you to let that sink in for a second. God is moving you toward your destiny as fast as you will let him go. God is not idly standing by waiting on anything but me. He is waiting for me to agree with him. He is waiting on me to allow his Holy Spirit to do a work in my heart and when I agree with God, he will move me closer to my destiny. But God has never abandoned me. And once I really caught that, I knew that in my mind, I did not know that in my heart. Two years ago, I caught this in my heart, that God is not just standing up in heaven, ringing his hands wondering what to do with me. He had a much plan, a big plan, a detailed plan and he wanted to implement it in my life. You see, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit cannot cohabitate with insecurity in our hearts. He is not going to battle with you. Insecurity and the Holy Spirit are not good cousins. They can't live together. And in order for you to take the next step toward your destiny, you've got to give the Holy Spirit permission to kick insecurity out of your heart. And this is a whole point that God was taking me two, two years ago. He was telling me, Brady, the irony of this is you think I don't want to promote you and I do want to promote you. You think I'm standing by in heaven not wanting to move you forward when in the whole time I'm begging to move you forward. But I cannot cohabitate in your heart with insecurity because Jesus was never insecure. Jesus was never insecure. And to prove it, look at John chapter 19, at the most troubling moment of Jesus' life. Jesus is hours away from being nailed on the cross, probably less than three hours away from being nailed on the cross. And he's standing before Pilate and Pilate is so frustrated with Jesus. Pilate is trying to look for some reason not to send Jesus to his death. He's looking for Jesus to cooperate with and give me some information so that I can take that information and tell the crowds so that we don't have to crucify an innocent man. That Jesus stood there quietly not responding to the false accusations that the people were bringing against him. You know what was being yelled at Jesus that day? He's the son of the devil. He's a heretic. He's an enemy of God. He's the son of God. He had all these false accusations from people that he had healed, people that he had loved, people that he had walked with. They were falsely accusing him in public and trying to send him to a death. And Jesus would not respond. And Pilate was frustrated. And this is what Pilate said in verse 10 of John 19. He says, "You won't talk to me, Pilate demanded. Don't you realize that I have the power to release you or to crucify you?" And then Jesus said, "You would have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above." That is an unbelievable statement from Jesus. "You don't have any power over me. You have no authority over my future unless it were given to you from above." That's the key for later in the message. People that are tormenting you right now have no authority in your life unless it were given to them by God. Do you agree with that tonight? There's an old song. I can't remember one or two lines, but there's one line I love out of this old song that I grew up singing. It says, "On Christ the solid rock I stand, and all other ground is sinking sand." You see, that's the essence of what God's trying to get us to. In this day and in this hour that we live as believers, we're on the earth for a purpose. These are dark times on most parts of the earth. These are times where our Christian faith and our Christian beliefs are being tried and tested like no other time in American history, by the way. You are being persecuted more than you know. You're being riled and persecuted more than you know. And there will come a time when every one of us in this room will have to make that decision. On Christ the solid rock I stand and all other ground is sinking sand. I'm telling you, the days ahead will make that phrase become more and more true in all of our lives. If you're building your house on anything other than Christ, it will become a big pile of sinking sand one day. And I'm so grateful that at 38 years over, the Lord's beginning to rebuild to me what that solid rock looks like and what the sand looks like. Because I don't want to spend 40 more years of my life building anything other than what's going to survive for eternity. Do you believe that tonight? Is that what you want? On Christ the solid rock we stand and all other ground is sinking sand. Well here are two keys tonight being free from this insecurity. And if you're like me, I was so desperate. Lord, I am desperate to be free from this because it was holding me back from what God had called me to do. And here's the first key to the Lord showed me. There's probably seven or eight keys. I can only give you two tonight. Here's the first one. Stop fearing people. Stop fearing people. Now listen, I am completely submitted to human authority on the earth. I am completely, unequivocally 100% submitted to human authority. Pastor Robert, Pastor Tom, who oversee me on the staff, I am completely submitted to their leadership. I am completely submitted to the elders of the church because they are God's authority on the earth in my life. I honor my parents. I am a law abiding citizen because I believe that God has given them authority and I am to submit to that authority. However, I do not fear people. I respect them. I honor them. I serve them. I'll lay my life down for them. I'll walk alongside them. I'll go to battle with them, but I don't fear them. It's God who gave them the authority to speak into my life, and I trust God to take me to the place that he's called me to go. You understand, we cannot fear people. Fearing people, Proverbs 29 says, "Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but to trust the Lord means safety." Now, I want you to hear this tonight. If you fear God, the more you fear God, the more you will serve him with joy and complete gladness. It is a privilege and a pleasure to fear God and to serve him with the joy that comes. That's resulting of that. You understand, if fearing God and serving God out of that fear is a privilege and a joy. It brings gladness and joy and safety to my life and to the lives of my family and my children. For me to fear God brings joy to my home. For me to fear people makes me live my life with constant dread and anxiety. And by the way, you will serve whomever you fear. And that's the truth. You will ultimately live your life to please whomever you fear. I fear God, and I know that God has given men and people authority over my life, and I submit to them out of my fear of God, not out of my fear of people. But you will serve whomever you fear. You fear people, you will serve them, and they will become a taskmaster to you that is not pleasant. You will live your life with anxiety, fear, and dread when you fear people. Isaiah 51 verse 12 says, "I, even I, am the one who comforts you." So why are you afraid of mere humans? Who wither like the grass and disappear? Yet you have forgotten the Lord, your Creator, the one who put the stars in the sky and established the earth. Will you remain in constant dread of human oppression? Will you continue to fear the anger of your enemies from morning to night? You see, if you place your security in Jesus, the compliments and the attacks of people will not affect you the way they're affecting you right now. If you fear people, you will long for their compliments. If you fear people, you will live for their compliments and not gods. Whoever you fear, that's the compliments you want. I want compliments from the Lord. Now I enjoy compliments from people. We all need encouragement. We all need to be exhorted. There's a spiritual gift of encouragement that I believe that the church probably needs more of. But I don't live for that. I live for God's to say it with me one day. Well done. My good and faithful son. Come now and enter in with me. That's what I'm living for. That's the prize that's before me to hear those words, not Pastor Brady, that was a good sermon. Now I appreciate the compliments. I appreciate the criticism. I appreciate any of those things, but I don't live for it. Now I don't fear it. I can't fear it and live the life that God's called me to live. Here's the second key. You got to stop fearing the future. Now I'm telling you, this doesn't make sense, but I'm telling you, insecure people fear the future. That's the reason we're insecure. We don't believe that God has a great future for us. I want you to know tonight that Satan cannot see your future in detail. Satan does not have the divine ability to see all the details of your future. He has no idea what's going to happen in the years to come in your life. He does not know. He's not all knowing. Here's what he does see though. He sees the gifts of the Holy Spirit in your life. He hears the prophetic words spoken over your life. He sees the horizon of your life. He sees the possibilities. And so therefore, his strategy is to try to convince you that your future is really not as secure and successful as God is leading you on to believe. He wants you to believe that your future is not going to be what you're thinking it is. He wants you to begin to doubt the gifts that God's placed in your life. He wants you to begin to doubt the call that's upon your life. In fact, he'll make even doubt the successes that you've already had. I mean, as someone who speaks and ministers a lot, the most difficult three hours of this weekend will be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday because that's when the enemy attacks anyone who ministers out of the pulpit. Tell them how terrible it was, how no one listened, how that didn't impact anyone because listen, Satan's design, he doesn't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but he knows this. He knows what the possibilities are. And he wants to attack all of the possibilities. Here's the bottom line tonight. Some of you in this room need to open up your heart to the idea that you're probably going to be successful. Tonight, you need to open up your heart once again to believe that quite possibly, in fact it's probable that you're going to be a smashing success in life because God did not design you to fail. And if you have convinced yourself that your life is a failure now and it will be a failure in the future, then you have believed one of the biggest lies that the enemy's ever spoken to humanity. You were destined to succeed. Maybe you need to change your definition of success and maybe apply God's definition of success, but I'm telling you that you were not designed and created in your mother's womb to fail. And insecure people have convinced themselves that no matter how good it is for everyone else, it will never be that good for me. Therefore, I've got to get outside of God's authority and do it on my own because obviously God's not doing it a very good job in my life. And that's when we're in danger. Now I want you to, there's two scriptures and Ephesians that when I read these, I read them over and over again, and it's going to take you a long time reading these before you believe them. I hope tonight it just snaps into your mind. Maybe you're not as hard-headed as I am, but I had to read Ephesians 1, these three scriptures and Ephesians 1 over and over again and pray these into my heart. Listen, it's one thing to hear it tonight in your head. It's another thing to believe it in your heart. Now these scriptures go to Ephesians 1 verse 4. Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us. Now I want you to put your name in where it says us. God loved Brady Boyd and chose Brady Boyd in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. And his unchanging plan has always been to adopt Brady Boyd into his own family by bringing Brady Boyd to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. Now I want you to read that and put your name where us is and do it for about a year and a half. And read it and believe it and get that in your heart. That before he even created the earth, he knew about you. And it was always his plan. He just didn't stumble upon you one day. He wasn't just walking through Texas and goes, "Man, there's a good girl, I'll take her." But before he even created Texas, he knew you. Before he created anything on the earth, he knew about me. And he said it's always been his plan, his good and perfect plan to adopt me into his family. And not only is he going to adopt me into his family, it gave him great pleasure to do it. By the way, that's a lot better than the response I got from any of you out there. It is his pleasure that he adopted you into his family. He did it, he didn't do it because he had to. He adopted you into his family because he wanted to. It's his desire for you to be in his family. And he gets pleasure out of it. The rotten person you were when he adopted you into his family still gave him great pleasure. He's not waiting for you to be perfect before he gets great pleasure out of you. Before he even adopted you, looking at you, knowing that the day would come when you'd turn your heart toward Jesus, he gave him great pleasure. To even think about the possibilities, and then Ephesians 1-18. It says I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future he has promised to those he called. And I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance he has given to his people. Tonight I'm telling you, if you want to be free from insecurity, you've got to stop fearing people. People are not your problem. People were sent here by God to cover you, to bless you, to protect you, to mentor you, to train you, to help you. They were not called for you to fear them. What people can do you, listen, God is in charge of your life. God has a plan for your life, and it's a good plan. It's a perfect plan. It's a plan for a hope and a future. And we need to open up our eyes tonight and say, "God, I think it's possible, even probable, that my future is in your hands, that I'm right there in the middle of your hands, and nothing, absolutely nothing, no demon, no trial, no tribulation, no dark days or dark nights, nothing can snatch me out of your hand." I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old, six-year-old boy, four-year-old girl, and my six-year-old came home from kindergarten this year and told me that he had asked a girl to marry him. Now, we don't talk about marriage right now, and when he's six, for somehow, though, he had figured out that boys marry girls. What? I think he was talking to some of your kids in the nursery here. Well, he wasn't -- nothing that I've talked about in great detail with him. But he didn't know all the -- all what it meant for that, so I had to have this long talk and say, "You know, Abraham, maybe one day when you're 45 or 50 dad, I'll help you find a wife." He was okay with that right now, so we have agreed. 45 or 50, I'll help him find a really good wife. The point is, though, I begin to think, "Lord, what would I do if I had final say over every decision that my child made, and I had the ability and the authority to make anything happen in my child's life that I wanted to happen? What would it be like? What would my child's life be like?" He would be blessed. He'd be protected. He'd be happy and secure. He'd know God with all of his heart. He'd use all of his spiritual gifts. He'd love people and love God. I would just -- I would just ordain every step that he had to be absolutely perfect. That's how much I love him. At some point, though, Abraham's going to leave my house. And the deposit that God's placed in him through me and his mother and through the Holy Spirit, he's going to have to make some decisions at some point on his own, based on that deposit that I put in his life through God and through the Holy Spirit. And Abraham is going to make some decisions, probably, that he's not going to get my full counsel on, although I hope he does. It's my prayer that he does. But most likely, he's going to test the water some and do some things. You know, he's going to make some decisions on his own. They're all going to be good. And I know that he's a blessed boy. He's very blessed. And he's going to be a success. I know that. And he's not going to have any rebellious days. I know that, too. I just speak that over him. He's wonderful. But the point is he's going to make some decisions on his own. And I want him to. But you know what? God never turned any of you out of his house and told you to go make decisions on your own. There was never a time in your life where God said, son, daughter, you're 40. It's time to leave. He's never done that to any of us. In fact, God, when he adopted you into his family, here's what he said. "I will walk with you. I will speak with you. I will go before you. I'll make a way for you. And if you'll ask me, I'll show you the next step. My word will be a light under your path. I'll show you every step you need to take. And not one time has God said to any of us in this room, it's time for you to leave my house. Go make it on your own. In fact, God said, if you'll draw near to me, I'll draw near to you. And I'll walk with you all the days of your life. And I will ensure your success if you'll ask. And I don't know about you, but it's hard to be insecure when you catch that revelation. What is there to fear? Why are we fearing people or fearing the future when God has said to me, "Son, your life is in my hands?" I'm telling you, it's taken me two years to get that in my heart because I was really messed up. But I'm not going back. And I'm more convinced tonight than I've ever been in my life that my future is secure. And I want yours to be too. I want you to disclose your eyes right now. I want to pray over you. And I want you to respond. I don't want you to respond to me. I don't want you to respond to the words that I've said. But if at any time tonight the Holy Spirit has tugged at your heart, if the Holy Spirit has spoken to you, will you respond tonight to the Holy Spirit? Will you respond tonight to what God is saying to you? Not what I'm saying. I want you to hear spiritual words tonight with spiritual ears. If you're here tonight and you are battling with thoughts of insecurity, maybe you're like me, you're being tormented by insecure thoughts. And you're so tired of living your life with insecurity that tonight you want to make a stand like I did that morning in my office. I may to stand with God. Lord, I'm not taking another step until I'm free from this. If that's you tonight, will you just agree with the Lord? Will you just show me your hand not as agreeing with me, but agreeing with God tonight that you want it to end, that you want to take a turn in your life tonight and go another way, that you want your thoughts and emotions to be healthy by the power of the Holy Spirit. And I want you to just lift your hand, keep them up because you're responding to the Lord. And I want you to begin to ask the Lord and begin to thank the Lord that your future is secure. I want you to begin to think about Ephesians chapter 1, where it gave him great pleasure to adopt you into his family. And I want you to think about the rich and glorious inheritance that he has prepared for you tonight. The rich and glorious inheritance that is yours. Lord Jesus, I thank you tonight that we are firmly in your hand, that we have been called tonight to walk with you. And I pray for every person in this room who's heard and felt the tug of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Lord, we respond to you tonight and we receive your mercy. We receive your grace, we receive your forgiveness. Lord tonight, we confess that insecurity is sin because we don't trust you. And Lord tonight, we choose to trust you for our future. Lord, forgive us and fill us completely with your Holy Spirit. And Lord, I thank you that tonight, the bondage and the curse of insecurity is broken all across this room. In Jesus' name, in Jesus' name, amen.