Self-Forgetfulness for the Insecure

Porch, how are we doing tonight? Are we doing okay? It's great to see you. Thanks for being here, as always. It's wild to think we only have two weeks left of regular Porch gatherings here in 2025, but I'm glad you're here this week. We have next week. I think God has really big things in store, and then Christmas at The Porch is going to be amazing too. So, thanks for making time to be here with us in Dallas, Texas.

We love what God is doing amongst young adults here in our city, but we also love what he's doing in the lives of young adults all over the nation. I know you don't get to see it, but we get correspondence from different people, particularly our Porch.Live locations, where God is doing a similar work there that he's doing here, and that is an amazing thing to see. Special shout-out to our Porch.Live locations, Midland, Wheaton, and Boise, specifically. We love you guys, and we hope to track with what God is going to do the next two weeks as well as in the future.

Well, I remember I was 9 years old when I encountered insecurity for the very first time. At least, that's the first time I can remember it. I was running for fourth-grade class representative. After making posters that said, "Vote for Kylen; you'll be smilin'," I came up short of actually winning. I came up in second place.

Fast-forward from there to my senior year of high school. I remember I'd put my campaign woes behind me, and I decided in this moment to run for student council president. I was doing so against one of my best friends, so I thought to myself, "Hey, it'll be great. They'll win or I'll win. It doesn't matter. Either one of us will go." But I knew, deep down, I really wanted this thing.

I felt well positioned to serve the people and to be voted in by those people, because at that point I was on the football team. I was a leader amongst my peers. I knew I was genuinely well liked amongst people around me. I was destined for Texas A&M. Despite it all, once the ballots were tallied, I found that I again came in second place, and I was not sufficient to serve my friends the way I wanted. I looked at myself, and I had no posters to blame any longer. Now it just felt as if I wasn't good enough.

Fast-forward from there. I did end up going to Texas A&M, and as I was at Texas A&M, I got to serve for a campus ministry that I genuinely loved. This was something so unexpected for me, yet when I got there, and I found myself enrolled as one of their volunteers, it was the best experience. I met Jesus for the first time, and I fell in love with the Scriptures. I was getting the chance to serve my peers.

As I was doing all this, an opportunity came my senior year of college to step into a potential leadership role because a vacancy had finally come open. It was a dream of mine to step into that position and serve the students of our campus. You didn't get to apply for these leadership positions. Instead, the staff would come along, tap you on the shoulder, pull you in, and appoint you to a position. I was praying that they would do it with me, but they didn't. Instead, they selected somebody different from a different team altogether, because they estimated that there were no suitable leaders on our team. That one hurt.

Then, after I graduated, I found myself working my first full-time job. It was in a company I really loved amongst people I really loved. They were young, and they were innovative and ambitious. They were the kinds of people I wanted to be associated with. I liked my job, but there was a new job coming open. I was like, "Man, I've got to hop into that thing, because that is the kind of position where I could really see myself sitting and staying a while. I could drop roots. I could cement a type of experience in this corporate environment that will last the test of time."

So, I put my application in, and I went through the entire interview process…one, two, three interviews. Naturally, I came up second again. They went with someone different, someone unexpected. Though I wanted to be there so badly, in that moment, for me, it felt like they didn't want me to be there nearly as badly in response.

Insecurity is a really big part of my story. And I could go on. I tell you that because I think some of these moments in my life are reflective of some of the moments in this room. You have experienced your own insecurities, because it is extremely prevalent in the lives of people, but particularly young adults.

Like, you think about yourself, and you assess yourself in comparison to others, and you find yourself insecure…insecure in the things you have or have not achieved, insecure in the way you do look, insecure in the eyes of your heroes and not measuring up to what they would want, insecure at the possibility of failure.

Because you feel this way, what ends up happening is you change yourself. You look at yourself and deem yourself insufficient, so you start to contort your identity to become more than you actually are. You go from being insecure to now becoming an imposter, which isn't just some of us; it's a lot of us.

According to the American Psychological Association, 82 percent of adults report facing feelings of imposter syndrome. What's imposter syndrome? It's feeling like a fraud, like a phony, like a total sham, like you're sitting in rooms you're not supposed to be in, doing things you feel totally inadequate to be doing. You're acting like something you're not just because you feel the real you isn't enough.

You think, "No, I need to be someone smarter. I need to be someone sharper. I need to be someone stronger. I need to be someone prettier. I need to be someone wittier. I need to be someone better. I need to be someone impressive." You think to yourself, "I'm not sufficient, so let me add to myself whatever it is I'm lacking so that way I can be." The repercussions of it are really damaging.

I remember I had a friend in high school. He was an awesome guy, but he would change the way he talked depending upon the people he was with. You have friends like this. Some of them are sitting in this room. Whenever he was in the locker room with the boys, he cussed like a sailor. Whenever he was in classroom with our teachers, he had the best manners. Whenever he was talking to a girl, he was the smoothest guy around. He would adjust the way he spoke depending upon the crowd he was with.

So, one day I just asked him. I was like, "Hey, why do you do that?" He said something I thought was really profound. He was like, "People don't want the real me; they want their version of me." At just 18 years old (from the mouths of babes), he said something that resonated deeply, and it felt so very sad. As true as it was then, I think that is still true for many of us today.

Now, let me be really clear. When I talk to you about changing things about yourself, I'm not saying that every time you change something about yourself you're trying to make up for some deficiency; you feel that everything you adapt is because you're insecure at heart. That's not the truth. The reality is many of you are wearing camo, though you've never worn camo in your life, and the reason you're wearing camo right now is because it's fashionable, not because you're insecure.

I think that's really funny. Hunters, people who wear camouflage on a regular basis, are some of the least fashion-conscious people in the world, yet they're the ones setting the trends for young adults like you and me here today. But that's beside the point. The reason I bring that up is because you're allowed to change things because you like what you see on the outside, but many of us change things because we don't like what we see on the inside. We don't like who we are, and we don't think others will either.

So we contort our identities. We change who we are socially, professionally, romantically, and even spiritually. The mental toll of doing so can be really devastating. Just doing some research on this… If you indulge your low self-esteem or your insecurities, it could lead you to experience burnout because you're overworking your job. You're performance oriented, and you want to measure up in the eyes of other people, so you're going to burn yourself out out of a desire to prove yourself to others.

Maybe that's not the case for you. Maybe it's you're filled with an intense self-loathing because you're not achieving your goals, so you've grown dissatisfied with who you are and your incapacity to actually attain the things you want in life. Maybe it's not that. Maybe it's you're indulging in an eating disorder because you're unhappy with your body. You look at yourself in the mirror, and you wish you could change some things. Perhaps it's not that. Maybe you're filled with social anxiety. You come into places like this, and all you want is to fit in, yet you feel like no matter how hard you try, it's so difficult to do that.

Maybe that's not it. Maybe, for you, you're battling trauma because you endured some sort of past abuse that you never invited into your life. Someone stepped in and took something from you that was not theirs to have in the first place, and now you're left picking up the pieces and moving forward as well as you can. You're actually traumatized. Maybe it's something else entirely, but here's the thing: people suffer in the face of their insecurity.

So, tonight, I want to give us (it's not just you; it's us…it's me too) a new perspective on insecurity. The way I want to do it is I want us to look at Psalm 139. This is a really famous psalm. It's a beautiful passage of Scripture. Honestly, part of me kind of dreaded teaching it because it feels so esteemed, and I want to honor it as well as I can, but I think it's the perfect place for us to come tonight.

Now, here's what you have to know. The reason we're in the Psalms is because, as we've been working through this series called 20/20, we're trying to get God's perspective on our mental health, and the reason for that is God is an emotional being. Do you ever think about that? All throughout the Scripture, you can look at the way he interacts with people and see he is a God filled with emotion. Because we've been made in his image we, likewise, have emotion, but oftentimes, we don't know what to do with it.

For many of us, emotion freaks us out, so we stuff it way down deep inside where we can never see it and no one can ever see it either. Others of us love our emotions. We wear them out on our sleeve like an accessory for the world to admire. I don't know what your position is when it comes to your emotions, but the truth of the matter is the Bible would advise against both of those alternatives, that you shouldn't just suppress your emotions and you shouldn't obsess over them; rather, you should just express them. You should just tell God what it is you're actually feeling.

We're to feel our emotions deeply, express our emotions honestly, and then process our emotions truthfully. We come to God and give him what we feel, and he comes to us and gives us what he says. The union of those things, his truth and our feelings, leads to a wholly integrated type of belief, one where we can love the Lord our God with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. That's the beauty of learning how to do this well.

The Psalms teach us better than most other places, because we see the authors, the psalmists…David, the sons of Korah, Asaph, a variety of people…do this themselves. Tonight, we're going to see David do it himself. Before we can actually see what the right perspective is on this problem, we need to understand the problem. That's what we've been doing in this series. We've been trying to take each mental health disorder or issue and unpack it a little bit at the beginning before we apply God's Word to it specifically. So, that's what I want to do with you here.

You see, what we find is that Psalm 139 helps us to understand the problem of insecurity. If you look at it, it's 24 total verses, and those 24 verses break into four different sections, each six verses apiece, and those four sections tell us something really important. They help us to identify the source for much of our insecurity. So, I thought it would be helpful, in an effort to understand the problem, to talk about these four sections before we study them together. So here they are. What do these four sections say, and where might your insecurity be particularly rooted?

The first one is there can be insecurity from what you've done. This specifically comes from shame you feel over actions you've taken. These are the things you did, the things you said, or the things you thought. It could be that you're ashamed of how you handled a past relationship, ashamed of how you treated an old friend, ashamed of how you took advantage of someone else for your own benefit, how you made fun of someone just to get a rise out of other people.

I don't know what it is for you, but it's really important for us to consider what we have done that might be producing insecurity in our life. To help you figure that out, I have a series of diagnostic questions that will help us process these four categories. The right diagnostic question for shame over what you've done would be…What is your biggest regret in life? If an answer springs top of mind, then that tells you, "Man, I probably have some insecurities rooted in things I've done in the past." See how that works?

Okay. The second would be insecurity from where you've been. This one isn't about shame from actions you've taken; it's about shame from situations you've faced. It could be that you're ashamed of where you grew up. You're ashamed of the family you come from. It could be that you're ashamed of the college you went to or that you didn't go to college. It could be that you're ashamed that you had a marriage that failed and now you're divorced. It could be you're ashamed of the job you sit in or the job you don't. It's shame rooted in a particular situation.

So, here's a good diagnostic question for you if you're trying to discern, "Am I insecure about some place I've come from or somewhere I've been?" The question is "What part of my story am I most embarrassed by?" If something just screams straight to mind, then that's probably an insecurity source in a place you've been, somewhere you were.

The third one can be insecurity from how you're made. This one is all about shame, not from your actions, not from your situation, but from your distinctions, those little uniquenesses, the things that make you who you are. It could be that you're ashamed of how you look. You're ashamed of how your voice sounds. You don't like the way your personality is expressed. You wish you could change something that is intrinsically true about who you are. You're not where you want to be in life. You wish you weren't so emotional.

This is the area most people, statistically, are insecure in. A good question, if you're trying to identify if this is where your insecurity is sourced, is "What would I change about myself if I could?" Again, if I pose that to you and something comes very quickly to mind, there's a good chance that you have some insecurities wrapped up in who you are and how you're made.

The fourth one is insecurity from why you're here or why you do what you do. This one is not about action, not about situation, and not about distinction; this one is all about motivation. It could be that even though you would never admit it, you're actually ashamed of the reason you have that job or date that girl or hang out with those friends or buy nice things, and that's because your motivation isn't as innocent as you'd like.

It could be that your motivation for having that job is just because it makes you feel powerful, not because it's doing good or serving people. It could be that you're dating that girl or dating that guy just because it feels good to be needed and you get approval from them. That's a very selfish reason to be in a relationship. It could be that you buy nice things because it makes you feel important and it actually makes you feel better than other people. All of these are not good reasons to do what you do.

A helpful question just to diagnose, "Is this my personal insecurity, the root of so much of my low self-esteem?" would be "What area of my life do I justify most?" If you have to justify it, you probably don't have a very good reason for doing it. See how that works? Again, these questions don't help us solve our insecurities, but they do help us understand them, where they come from.

As we understand our insecurities, what we realize is insecurity ain't cute. It's easy to talk about insecurities, because everybody has them, but insecurities are not cute; they're dangerous. Really, insecurity is an attack on self. So, a good word for insecurity, a synonymous description, is insecurity is basically the same as self-hate. There's something in you you do not like, so you are willing to do whatever it takes to change that part of yourself.

Sure, maybe it's because you think you'll be better, but ultimately, it's because you think you couldn't get worse. We have to understand what God has to say about self-hate. So, to help us figure it out, we're going to look at Psalm 139, because although your problem may be self-hate, your perspective can be self-forgetfulness, which I know probably catches you off guard a little bit.

You're like, "Wait. Hold on. So the solution to self-hate is self-forgetfulness? Wouldn't it naturally be the opposite of hate? Wouldn't it be self-love? Like, shouldn't I just book a couple 60-minute massages, get some mimosas with the girls at brunch, make sure I'm taking naps in front of the TV as it washes over me on Sundays and football is playing there? Shouldn't I just book my next trip and explore whatever my next national park is? Shouldn't I do something that takes the pressure off, that makes me feel good?" No.

I mean, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that stuff, but that is not going to deliver you from self-hate. The path out of self-hate isn't self-love; it's self-forgetfulness. It's realizing I don't need to give myself more attention; I need to give God more attention. As I set my eyes upon him, he who is worthy, he who is better, he who is infinitely good, I actually begin to see myself a little bit differently, because as I see God rightly, I see myself rightly in response.

That's what John Calvin said. He said, "It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then [after doing so] descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself." Scrutinize feels like a harsh word, but that's just evaluating yourself.

So, it raises the question for us…If the goal is to see God so we can see ourselves, what will we see when we actually put our eyes upon him? Well, that's what Psalm 139 is all about. We're going to take it verse by verse by verse. You're going to get four points out of this, and each of those points corresponds to one of the four categories we just talked about. We're just going to pick it up from the beginning. As we do, David is going to help us see four things about who God is that informs who we are. Got that? All right. Look at verse 1.

"O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it."

1. God knows everything. He knows everything. He is full of knowledge on every single topic in the cosmos. Another way of describing this is what theologians call omniscience. God is omniscient. What does that mean? Well, a good definition for omniscience is that God knows everything actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.

That feels like a lot of words, so I'm going to help you understand what it actually means, because it's profound when you really get down to the bottom of it. God knows everything actual. Meaning, he knows all that exists. Everything. All that exists within the world right now, he knows it. He knows the big things, and he knows the small things. We see that in the gospel of Matthew.

It says in chapter 10, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?" What's a sparrow? A sparrow was the cheapest offering someone could buy to give to God. Meaning, it is relatively valueless. Yet "…not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father." He knows the smallest thing. It says in the next verse, "But even the hairs of your head are all numbered." Which, for some of you, isn't hard for God to count, but others of you have a lot of hair, and God is working that out. He knows all things.

It's not just that he knows all that does exist; he also knows all that will exist. I love this one. Isaiah 46:9: "…for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…'"

What is that verse saying? It's saying God calls his shot, and he makes it every single time. He knows exactly what's going to happen, not yet what has but what will. He knows all that actually exists. That's the first part of the definition. The second part is that he also knows all that could possibly exist. Meaning, he knows completely about what could but won't happen. Isn't that crazy?

In Matthew 11, Jesus says, "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." Do you hear it? They would have. They didn't, but they would have. Jesus is able to look at a possibility and tell you exactly what would have happened, because he knows not just what is actual but also what is possible.

Meaning, he knows how things would have played out if you would have asked her on a date, even though you never will. He knows how good the Mavs would have been if we hadn't traded Luka off and could have paired him with Cooper Flagg, yet we never will. He knows what The Bachelorette Season 22 would have been like without Taylor Frankie Paul as the primary contestant, even though we never will. He knows all that could possibly exist.

That's so hard to wrap your mind around. Think about it. Think about how many different variations there could be to the way things play out, the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of variations that could be true in our world. There are animators who have come up with creatures in movies that don't exist in the real world, but God is like, "I knew about that one. I knew about that one too." He knows about things we've never even thought about. God has an infinite imagination, and everything that could be, all that he thinks about, he knows it completely. He's omniscient.

What's even crazier (this is the craziest thing for me) is that it's not even hard for him to do it. That's what it means when it says it is a simple act. It means he knows everything without ever trying to break a sweat to remember it. He's not ever looking at Gabriel and being like, "Hey, tell me about that thing we talked about that one time." He's not calling up the archangel Michael and being like, "Hey, you're going to have to remind me from time to time." No. He doesn't need anybody to help him out. Things just instinctively, intuitively come to him because he's omniscient.

It's simple, and it's eternal, which just means he's never going to learn anything he doesn't already know. He knows it all right now. That's how big God is. We should get our eyes on his omniscience, the fact that he knows everything. Here's the amazing thing. David knows God is not just omniscient universally; he's omniscient personally. He knows everything about everything, and he knows everything about me, which tells us the first thing you have to know if you want to overcome self-hate: God knows all about you.

David says God has searched him. Isn't that interesting? I thought God couldn't learn anything. What's he doing searching you, investigating you, literally digging into you to uncover something? Well, that language is actually really beautiful. It wouldn't be wrong to be like, "God knows me," because that's true. But when he says, "God has searched me," he's not just saying, "God knows me"; he's saying, "God has gotten to know me."

That's a relational type of language. It's a language that says God cares to spend time to go slowly, to learn about who I am, even though he doesn't even need to learn it because he knows it already. It's an incredible idea that God is aware of all of you, and he has taken time to make it clear to you. That's really important when we deal with our insecurities, because the same God who has gotten to know you has not forgotten about you.

No matter how overlooked or unimportant or undervalued or insignificant you feel in life, God knows you. He knows the most secret things in your life. Go down into whatever is most secret within you. God is deeper than even that. God knows the thoughts you think about yourself that you would never admit to the open world. God knows the words you whisper under your breath so that no one would ever hear them, yet he has.

God knows the very thing you are fully intending to take to the grave with you. He wants you to know he went to the grave for that thing too. He knows everything about you. He knows the answer to that first question: What's your biggest regret? He knows it because he was there for it, and he died for it.

Why would God do that? Why would an all-knowing God do this? So you and I can have confidence that God knew what he was purchasing when he died on the cross for your sins, that there's nothing about you he's ever going to uncover and think to himself, "Oh boy. I didn't know that was going to happen." He's never going to second-guess whether or not it was a good decision calling you to salvation through faith in his Son.

He's never going to wonder, "Man, did I make a good call or would I take it back?" No! He knows everything about you, yet he chose to die for you anyway. He chose to rise for you anyway. That gives you, in the face of insecurity, great security, because you can know, "I am fully known, the best parts of me and the worst parts of me, yet I'm still fully loved." That's the first thing. Let's keep going. The second thing we're going to pick up in verse 7.

"Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,' even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you."

2. God is everywhere. Another way of saying it is he is omnipresent. What does that mean? It means God is present in all places with every part of his being. He is present in all places, which means you should never play hide-and-seek with the big guy. You're not going to go somewhere where he doesn't know where you are. He's already there right now.

That's what Jeremiah 23 says. "Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord." That is astounding. There's nowhere you could ever go where God will not be there.

David unpacks five different descriptors of where he might go, yet God is there too. He says, "If I ascend to the heights of heaven…" Meaning, "If I go to the land of the living." "If I descend to the depths of Sheol, the place of the dead, God, you're there." He says, "If I rise up on the wings of the morning…" The dawn. In what direction does the sun rise? In the east. Meaning, if you go as far east as possible.

"Or if I go to the uttermost parts of the sea…" Which from David's vantage point in Israel would be west. "No matter how far east I go, no matter how far west I go, you're there too. Even if I try to conceal myself within the dark where none can find me, the darkness is like light to you." David is saying, "You are omnipresent. You're everywhere. You are omnipresent universally, and you're omnipresent personally."

God wants to be with you. That's why he says, "Your hand will lead me, your right hand will hold me." Again, that's relational language. God doesn't have us all on Find My Friends. Like, "Oh, look. There they are. Where are they going? What are they doing out there?" That's not how God treats you. He doesn't have you on Find My Friends. He's with his friends. He's with you wherever it is you are.

This is the second point you have to know: God is always with you. That is why I regularly say to our online audience…I'll say it to you again…we believe God can meet with any person at any time and in any place, because he is as much here as he is anywhere. He's wherever we are.

Now, let me be really clear. I've had some stunning encounters, some powerful moments with God in awesome places, like at the summit of a fourteener or in the Christian catacombs of Rome or singing amongst thousands of believers, young adults just like myself, in this room here tonight. Yet some of the most powerful moments with God have not been in the most stunning of places but in the most simple, because he doesn't just meet you in the extraordinary; he meets you in the ordinary.

For me, God has had some powerful encounters with me on the corner of my couch early in the morning. He has had some powerful encounters with me sitting in the driveway of my house in Houston, some powerful encounters with me as just a college sophomore on the floor of his bedroom trying to figure this stuff all out. You see, it's not where you meet with God that makes the moment powerful; it's that you're meeting with God that makes the moment powerful. That's what makes the difference. That's what makes him awesome.

So, it raises a huge question for us. At least, it did for me. Why then do so many Christians feel like God is far off? If he's everywhere and he's always with me too, why then does it feel like he's so far off? I talk to people all the time down here at the foot of the stage, over coffees, at lunches, and they just feel like they're in a spiritual drought, like they're spiritually sedated, and they don't know why. They wish God were close to them again.

Let me tell you why he feels far off. It's not because he has moved; it's because we have. We move; he doesn't. For some of us, we moved deliberately. That's what sin is. Sin is a deliberate movement away from the presence of God. For others of us, we moved unwillingly from his presence. That's what suffering can do in the life of a person.

But here's the thing for most of us: We unknowingly move from his presence because things just get busy. Life gets crazy. We get swept up into work and friends and relationships. As we do so, we lose focus on him. As we lose focus on our source of security, guess what grows inside: insecurity. He feels far away.

If that's you… If you're here tonight, and you're like, "God feels so far away," then know this: he may feel far off, but you're not too far gone, because when you were at your farthest, Christ came for you. If you're here tonight, and you're resonating with this idea of "God, I just want to be near you again," I promise you he wants to be near you too. He's with you right now, and he has come for you tonight. You need only place your faith in him. That's not all. Let's keep going. It says this in verses 13-18:

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you."

This is the section of this passage that we have to liberate from your mother's coffee table. This is the portion of text that's not predominantly about you; it is predominantly about him. Listen to what it says.

3. God is all-powerful. He is all-powerful. He is omnipotent. Which means…what? A good definition for it is God is able to do all his holy will. Now, his holy will in that section is really important. The idea there is God will never do something that contradicts his holiness, his character. Some people are like, "Can God make a rock so big he can't move it?" That's a really dumb question. That would not accord with truth or rationale. Also, some people wonder, "Can God tempt me to evil?" No, because God is only good.

God can do all according to his holy will, which just means he can do whatever the heck he wants. All right? Jeremiah 32:17 says, "Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you." Ephesians 3:20: "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think…" How much do you think you could ask of God? How much do you think you could think of God? He can do more. "According to the power that's at work within you."

Matthew 19:26 says, "But Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" So much so, in fact, that God is able to do even more than he actually does. Isn't that crazy? Like, he can do more than he actually does. Just think. There's a story where John the Baptist confronts the religious leaders, and he says, "Hey, God could raise up children for Abraham from these stones." Huh? Did he do it? No, but he could have.

In Exodus 32, God looks at Moses, and he's like, "I'm done with the nation of Israel. They've betrayed me for the last time. I'm going to do away with all of them, and I'm going to start over with you." Could he have done that, start over an entire nation with one man? Somehow. He didn't, but he could. Again, God is all-powerful. Nothing is too hard for him. He can do whatever he wants so long as it accords with his character.

This is what grips David. He realizes God is not just omnipotent universally; he is omnipotent personally. The reason he knows it is because, as he looks at himself, he knows, "God made me exactly how he wanted me," and he made you exactly how he wanted you. He didn't make a mistake. As you evaluate yourself, whatever it is about you that you love in yourself, like a great head of hair, a strong jaw, and "I love the money I make…" You don't get to take credit for that, bro. God did that.

Even the areas of your life that you don't like what you see in the mirror, those things you wish you could change and have worked so hard trying to… Not even the things about your appearance, but the things in your life…the job you have, the city you're in, the places you go, the friends you have. Whatever it is in terms of your station in the world, God did that too. You're not an accident.

David says, "You formed my inward parts. You knit me together in my mother's womb." I'm not sure if it's trending anymore, but a year ago, knitting was cool again. Do y'all remember that? Everybody was kind of in their "grandma era." They were crocheting sweaters and scarves and hats and all those sorts of things.

I'm no expert when it comes to knitting. I'm not a "knitfluencer." Yet what I do know is every time I'd see somebody knitting or crocheting something… For the love of God! It never felt like y'all finished. You were just sitting there, always knitting. I'm like, "Are you ever going to wear one of these things?" Yet therein was such an incredible reality about the whole science to knitting. It wasn't just that you took delight in the finished product; you took delight in the process of making whatever it was you were making.

God doesn't just take delight in the person you are; he takes great delight in the process of making you who you are. Do you see it? He knit you together. He even goes on. He says, "I was intricately woven in the depths of the earth." I don't even know what that means, but that sounds awesome. It just tells you God had a vision in mind when he made you. He had clarity of what he wanted to be true in your life, and he accomplished it.

David even goes on. He says, "In your book were written all the days formed for me before there even was one." Which tells us God not only cared about who David was, but he also cared about what David did. The same thing is true for you. He has a plan for your life. He has a purpose for the way you are.

That's why David said he was fearfully and wonderfully made. David didn't just step in front of a mirror and be like, "Now that is one fearful and wonderful devil." That was not the way he looked at himself. What he thought was "My God is fearsome and wonderful, and anything that bears the mark of its maker is likewise fearsome and wonderful."

Augustine said, "Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, [yet] they pass by themselves without wondering." You and I are one of the greatest evidences to the existence of God. We don't have time to get into the intricacy of the human anatomy, what it would take to make you, but I promise you it's not by happenstance.

It's not because something just fell together; it's because God knit you. He wove you. He made you. So, if you look at yourself and all you feel is self-hate…let me be really clear…you are looking way too hard at yourself, and you are not looking hard enough at your God, because if you look at him, you will not see self-hate; you'll fall into self-forgetfulness. You'll only see him. Last one. Here we go.

"Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!"

Now, admittedly, this last section, the fourth and final section, doesn't read quite as smoothly or poetically as everything else did before it. It's a little bit more bristling, which begs the question for us…Why? It seems like somebody poured salt in the open wound of David, and we need to assess why that is.

Well, just think. What has David said? What has David seen? He has seen, "God is omniscient. He knows everything. He knows everything about me. I'm fully known and yet I'm fully loved." He sees, "God is omnipresent. It doesn't matter how far I try to go from God. He's with me wherever I am." He knows, "God is omnipotent. God cares about how I am and what I do."

Because of all this, as he thinks about all of who God is, what it loads up into his mind is gratitude for the goodness of God. He sees, "God, you're not just all-knowing. You're not just all‑powerful. You're not just everywhere all at once. You are all good. You're so good."

4. God is omnibenevolent. Which just means God is always and absolutely good. He's always good. Meaning, there's never a time when his goodness is not true. Some of you question that, but just know this book attests to the fact that there's not a moment when he is not good. He is always good, and he's absolutely good, which means everything about who he is and what he does is always worthy of approval.

Luke 18:19: "And Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.'" Psalm 100:5: "For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations." Psalm 34:8: "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!" James 1:17: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…"

You see, when we consider who God truly is, we cannot draw another conclusion. All we can arrive at is he is always and absolutely good. He is the most omnibenevolent being in the universe, but he is also the most omnibenevolent being to you. He's good to you.

As I say that, I know some of you are like, "How can he be good to me? Yeah, the point is God is always good to you, but how can he be good to me? I've suffered. I've struggled. I've strived. I feel beat up. I feel broken down. I feel bruised. Kylen, it doesn't make any sense how he could be good. How can God be good and I deal with all that I've dealt with? How can God be good when bad things happen to good people?"

The answer to that question is they don't, for none is good, no, not one. God alone is good, and all he does is good. We are the ones who have wronged him in our trespasses and sins. Yet Titus tells us, "But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit…"

You see, the question we should be conflicted with is not how God can be good when bad things happen to good people; the question we should be conflicted with is how God can be good when the worst thing happened to the best person, his own Son. Do you want to know the answer? God can be good in the face of that because it proves to us that he's so good, he does not give himself for the lovable; he gives himself for the hateful, so much so that he would offer no one else for none else's good, but he would satisfy the righteous requirement of his own wrath by laying himself down through the form of the Son.

In so doing, he would endure all the hate you pent up for yourself. Christ died for that. He endured all the hate, all the insecurity, all the inadequacy, all of the inconsistencies you feel about who you are. He endured all of it. All the hate you have pales in comparison to all the hate God has against your sin, yet that laid on Christ as he stood upon your cross, and all the love you and I are so unwilling to give ourselves God has freely lavished upon us for those who have placed their faith in him.

You see, here's what you have to know: Christ became all that we're not. So, if you're here, and you're insecure from what you've done, God knows all you've done, and he died for it anyway. If you're here, and you're insecure from where you've been, God was there, and he's with you now. If you're insecure from how you're made, God knows what you don't like about yourself. He made it himself, but he died to save all of you anyway, not just the parts you think worthy.

If you're insecure from why you do what you do, why you're here, God's goodness is always reaching, especially when we're in the wrong. If you're here, and you're struggling with self-hate tonight, just know you should not hate that which Christ has loved and laid his life down for. Let me pray that you wouldn't.