Inside Each of Us
There is a garden of insecurity in us. It is a place of total security, but somehow, we’ve let our fears take root. Selfishness and our inability to control the future and our environment has incubated insecurity in us. While possessing what we need, we look for something more, something else to give us what only God can. Men and women in solid relationships with their spouses struggle with insecurity in their covenant marriage as their spouse interacts with the opposite sex. It usually comes from past experience or from their family of origin, but it has little to do with the immediate issues a husband has with his committed wife of several years, as she works with and relates with men. That husband can become jealous and angry and even spiteful toward his wife, even though she has given him no reason for such a response. She is committed to her husband, to her marriage, and his behavior reveals doubt of that commitment. That is insecurity raising its ugly head. In her book “So Long, Insecurity,” Beth Moore created a survey to find out about insecurity in women and one of the questions was “Do I fear that my husband might leave me for someone else?” Her response to the question “Not all the time. Not most of the time. But more often than I think is healthy.” Her book is about facing her insecurity and so if someone like Beth Moore struggles with that type of insecurity, even when she “should” feel secure, how much more other wives and husbands. The garden of insecurity can be found in good parents whose child may have made a mistake, or long-term employees who think they aren’t good at what they do. It can be found in those who are always seeking to make people happy and can’t abide being disliked. The garden of insecurity is the place where the Devil meets us, touching on our own doubts and fears.
Notice how the grace of God touched upon Adam and Eve’s insecurities. He provided covering for their shame. He told them what life would now be like to assuage their fear. He removed them from the garden so that they would not be eternally separated from his presence. He didn’t forgive their failure, but made a way so that one day it could be forgiven. The awesome thing was that Adam and Eve didn’t reject God, instead they continued to seek him and taught their sons to do so. That awareness of their dependency was still there. Although God never overlooks our sin, he does understand the weaknesses in us that lead to sin. Jesus’ first action following the inception of his ministry was to be led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. Hebrews tells that he was tempted in every way just as we are and yet didn’t sin. I wonder if Jesus actually experienced insecurity in his humanity and if Satan’s temptations were related to that insecurity, and yet Jesus didn't let it turn him from obedience. God understood the insecurity in the first couple, but he didn’t keep them from its temptation. They were not insecure from any lack on God’s part, but from their own limitations and fears.
