The Impact of Security & Significance Issues

How are we affected by Security & Significance Issues?

Over the years, working in Church ministry and just observing my own life, I've sensed a growing awareness of the impact of Security & Significance issues in both my personal life and the development of the broader Church. In this article I would like to explore some of those impacts and look forward to any comments you'd like to add.

How many of our life choices, ministry approaches, and leadership postures stem from a failure to recognize the impact of what took place in the Garden of Eden as relates to personality development and life motives?  I think many of us fail to recognize just how affected we really are.

Prior to the Fall in the Garden Adam & Eve were at rest with themselves, their environment, and God, but after the Fall significant change took place in them that affected how they and the rest of us view these areas of existence. We were more significantly damaged than we often recognize.

Before the Fall Security: Both of them were completely secure in terms of provision and confident hope.

Before the Fall Significance: Both them were at rest with their sense of personal value and worth apart from performance.

After the Fall Security: Both they and the rest of developing mankind have always been fearful of how they will carve out financial and personal life hope security in a world that feels hostile to us at all times.

After the Fall Significance: Both they and the rest of developing mankind have always been uncertain as to what makes us truly valuable, our sense of self worth, and how we will develop our personal destiny in a way that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Whether we are talking about these issues on a personal level or the development of families, tribes, clans, or nations, these issues have had a profound affect on all levels of life, and if we are to live as successfully as God intends for us to then we are going to have to look deeply into the way the Fall has affected each of our lives in terms of security and significance, because these issues frame most of the motives for everything we do in life.

Where do the fears you wrestle with come from? Do you even know? How do they affect your relationships, your personal peace, the directions you take in life?

If we allow false security and significance issues to rule our lives we will be hurt and will hurt others at every turn of our lives. If we find our security and significance in Christ alone we will walk in His peace and experience healing towards wholeness in Him increasing continually.

How do we relate to life and others? Do we seek to carve out security for ourselves in ways that sacrifice personal peace and wound others in our pursuit for security? Do we develop principles of success that are more about us and what we want or feel we need than what honors Christ and blesses others? I'm not suggesting we become doormats or to live as if God doesn't desire to bless us, because these are errant approaches to life and don't comport to divine realities. But, when we pursue our own security at the expense of others we are forsaking the way of love and pursuing selfish goals that will never bring us peace or personal life satisfaction. We will continually live with a sense of being "ill at ease" in those deep inner motivational places within us. This is no way to live, and yet it characterizes so many people.

How do we handle significance issues? Am I co-dependent and "need" others to affirm my self worth and allow myself to compromise the way of love just so as to gain someone else's approval? Am I hamstrung in relationships so much so that unless I can control people or events in a way that I perceive will strengthen my significance I fear great personal loss? How many of my decisions revolve around doing things that compromise the way of love towards others in favor of enhancing my personal position at the expense of others? 

I'm not suggesting that it is commensurate with love to embrace disdain for my sense of needs or ignore my need for provision of both tangible and intangible things, but when the fulfillment of my needs so takes precedence over that which is best for others and disdains what is best for them then I know I am manipulating my life experience and others so as to achieve my goals in ways that violate true love and end up damaging myself and those I relate to.

True security and significance is always important to the Lord. He wants us to find security and significance in Him first and foremost. When I have faith that He loves me and cares for me and desires to bless my life I'm less inclined to allow others to use me as a doormat so as to gain their approval (co-dependency) or to manipulate them so as to get out of life what I most feel I need. Faith in Christ always turns me towards the way of love both in terms of trusting Him to love and care for me as well as trusting Him to treat others in love knowing that they were never really my source for security and significance anyway. He alone is my source.

When Jesus tells us "I came that you may have life and have it abundantly," and "Whom the Son sets free is free indeed," no where are these truths more powerful than in giving us life and setting us free from the fears connected with security and significance issues. When I no longer look to you to provide me with these things I'm free. When I know and trust that He will meet these needs suddenly abundant life begins to stream into my life. In terms of Quantum physics, as woven into the universe by the Lord, I firmly believe the universe turns its head our direction when we begin to get resolve in these areas. I believe the entire universe is tuned to meet our truest needs in Christ when we look to Him for security and significance rather than to others. There are resources woven into the universe which will begin to pour into our lives the things we most need when we cease looking to the wrong sources for life and begin to focus our faith in Christ to meet these deepest of needs.

Money will come, doors of opportunity will open, relationships will be enhanced, as we gain new resolves in these areas. We will cease being victims and begin to become overcomers. Bitterness and resentment will lift from our lives, when we recognize that people are not our source...Jesus is. It is a wonderful thing to life shift away from being a victim to being an overcomer. Life outside the Garden is scary enough, we don't need to make it worse for ourselves by a thinking that sees all of life and people as threats to our best interest and feel pressured to force life and people to conform to an approach that makes us feel safe. Once again, I'm not suggesting we posture ourselves in clearly unsafe ways before people, but I am suggesting that we not allow ourselves to believe that we need to get others to do things for us that we should be looking to the Lord for. The kind of fears that are attached to such manipulation are very unhealthy for us.

Where can we make practical application of these principles?

Government - do we look to our government to make us safe and secure, to guarantee us opportunities to find significance? Do we feel like victims to an overbearing government intrusion into our lives to the point where our peace is gone because we don't believe we can do much of anything to stop their over-reach? Do we really believe it is the job of government to bring financial prosperity into our lives? Do we find ourselves maligning our government officials because of our anxiety that they aren't doing what we wish for them to do? We all too often tend to look to them to provide for us what we should only be looking to Jesus for. I'm not saying we shouldn't vote, or protest, or make our voices heard, but at the end of the day our sense of security is not to be based in whether we feel we were successful at turning them to support what we are passionate about.

Marriage - do we look to our spouse to make us safe and secure, to believe that it is their responsibility to so provide for us emotionally, intellectually, financially and physically in ways that enhance our security and significance that when we can't achieve our goals we are either tempted to become co-dependent upon them for this (resulting in very unhealthy relational choices including abuse) or to manipulate them towards this by threats, unhealthy emotional outbursts, or unfaithfulness? My spouse is not my source for my truest needs. This doesn't mean I allow them to abuse me or over reachingly use me,  or that I don't work consistently towards a great marriage experience, but I also don't tell them or myself that my happiness in marriage is entirely dependent on my spouse meeting my deepest needs in these areas.

Family - do we tell ourselves we "need" our children to behave in such a way, or respect us as we feel we are due, or to do things that enhance our significance in the eyes of others based on their performance? Do our kids need to perform in any particular way for us so that we feel we are good parents, have done a good job, or make us feel good about ourselves? These are family killing motives and our children can sense these motives even if they can't articulate doing so. It warps their developing sense of security and significance and prepares them to either reject you or become co-dependent upon you for their sense of worth and then later to do so with others.

Church - do we as Church leaders tell ourselves it is our job to control our flock, to cause them to grow in Christ, to evangelize and bring people into the Church, to obey the standards we'd like exemplified in our Church, submit to our leadership and do as they are told, give a sufficient amount of money to pay our salaries or fund our projects, etc., etc.? These are prescriptions for abusive control and manipulation and will ultimately lead to legalism, abuse of power, and confusion in the body of Christ. Leaders are called to "influence" rather than "control," and when they miss this distinction they make their callings very difficult, wound the Church, and dishonor the headship of Christ. Leaders must learn to find their security and significance in Christ rather than using money manipulating messages or false approaches to controlling their congregations. When they settle that Jesus is the Head of His Church and not them, then they let control leave their ministry and focus on loving the flock, leading by example, caring, serving, and growing in grace. If we have exhausted these approaches and still our congregations dishonor the Lord there is nothing left for us to do but pray, and if we resort to any form of manipulation, performance orientation, or fear mongering we have violated the way of love and will not be happy with the results. The role of being a CEO type senior pastor is a miserable one and fraught with all kinds of conflict and trouble. Far better to walk in Servant leadership without forcing titles, positions, or respect for them.

These principles are so critical to life happiness. The happiest people aren't those who successfully manipulate life to give them what they want...the happiest people are those whose expectations are not that this life, this world, or people will provide our deepest needs, but that only Jesus is capable of and willing to do this for us.

And, when it comes to trusting Jesus to meet these deepest of needs we must be very careful that our expectations of what He should do for us don't violate our trust that He will always do what is best for us. This is where anger with God often develops... We think God should have done this or that for us, and because He didn't we feel insecure and insignificant and as if we'd better take care of ourselves because we surely can't trust Him to. This is such a prescription for failure and ultimate disaster. No, He is our source, and our faith must rest in Him to decide how and when to meet our needs for security and significance. To be angry with God is truly illogical in the sense that if He is God and if He is a good God and if He is a powerful and wise and good God how could He possibly be any of these things and then fail to meet our truest needs? If He truly fails us where He shouldn't then He is none of these things and then we are without any hope in this world. Better that we look exclusively to Him and trust that He can never fail us in these areas than to make a completely illogical conclusion that He should have done something for us that He didn't do. I need to conclude that if He didn't do something I hoped He would that it is because He knows all of the variables involved in giving me what I want and that giving it would have been worse for me than if He didn't grant it. Trust just makes sense...any other position will cost you your only hope for peace outside of the Garden.

Life outside the Garden is never going to be easy. Life outside the Garden continually reminds us we are vulnerable and fearful of that vulnerability, but as we learn to lean on Jesus for everything we discover that our sense of Security and Significance is always increasing and with it a deep peace of safety and joy begins to fill our lives.

So, how do you relate to these things? How do you see yourself as struggling with issues of security and significance? Where have you been wounded by others due to looking to them for these things? Where have you struggled in life with personal decisions that missed alignment with these things? If you'd like to share your thoughts on these things this a forum of opportunity - feel welcome...

Your brother in the journey...
Tom Sparks