First, a few helpful Scriptures on the topic:
“So do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant; do not be dismayed, Israel”, says the Lord…”Israel will return and will have peace and security in their own land, and no one will make them afraid. For I am with you and will save you, says the Lord” (Jere. 30:10-11).
“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out” (Prov. 10:9).
“Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in Him” (Deut. 33:12a)
“You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take rest in safety.” (Job 11:18)
“May those who love You be secure” (Psalm 122:6b)
I wish – no, I pray – and yes, also seek with all my heart – to know where true security lies. So often, we believe and behave as if it’s something attained through the right external “props” – e.g., wealth, health, marketability, being savvy about life and living, etc. Yet, in all honesty, I’ve met and known people who are very secure financially and vocationally, yet still very insecure inside themselves personally. Doesn’t each and every one of us enter life anxiously?!
To be truthful, many of us also place our security – and worth - in another person, who holds great value to us. But when we do this, we find ourselves rising-and-falling in our own personal sense-of-security, in direct proportion to whether or not that person counts us as valuable and precious in their lives. And if we become too dependent upon them for our well-being, we will at times press-and-pressure them in unhealthy ways.
Again, to be quite truthful, when I choose, as an act of faith and of will, to place my security in an all-loving-and-constantly-resourceful-relationship to God, as the above scripture passages both explicitly and implicitly counsel us to do – I find myself to be freer to be a person present to others, but no longer overly-dependent upon them for my well-being.
Indeed, when I choose, by faith and trust, to rest, place and know my security resides in a personal-loving God, then I can be present with others, without pressing them. I can listen with a greater openness, and abandon being so anticipatory of what I believe that person will say next. I can, more ably and freely, garner helpful insight into a situation or person, by welcoming the Holy Spirit to help me think anew, rather than function simply within my “normal mindset” on matters. And I can respond out of a compassionate spirit and rich regard for truth – and thereby be the blessing and helpful presence God Himself intends me to be.
So, you see there are some personal mis-notions residential within us, of what makes for true, personal security, which need to be “traded-up” for God’s sound counsel on the subject and which we encounter in His Word. Of course, the etymology of a word – i.e. its original reason for coming into being – reveals its true and original intent. Security means: “feeling no care”, being safe and certain. It comes form the old Latin and French, meaning “free from care,” “feeling no apprehension.” It implies that a person, in the midst of life’s travails and vicissitudes, trustingly feels ‘in harbor’, at anchor.”
To go to the heart of the matter, how in the world are you and I going to be free from care, with little or no anxiety? The truth of the matter is that anxiety is a constant in our lives, but need not be in the driver’s seat. Rather, attitudinally, we can choose to escort our worry and anxiety to a side-seat and invite them to watch a gracious, loving, dependable God work in our lives – rather than as we often do, lodge God on the sidelines of our lives and welcome Him to watch anxiety-and-worry rule-and-diminish-and-run our lives. So, security comes only from properly-placed trust; to misplace our trust in externals is to up-end our lives with constant torment and uneasy, unresolved paralyzing worry. Friend, a loving-and-resourceful God is our only true, abiding security. All else about us is in flux. “May those who love you be secure.”