Editor’s note: The following article was adapted by the author from his book Pour Out Your Heart: Discovering Joy, Strength, and Intimacy with God through Prayer (pp. 20-29). To celebrate Pastor’s Appreciation Month, we are giving away the ebook of Pour Out Your Heart for free throughout the month of October here.

---

There’s an epidemic in our churches, and it seems to be true across evangelical, charismatic, mainline Protestant, and Catholic churches. Like most epidemics, it’s invisible but widespread. It’s an epidemic of insecurity. We believers are remarkably insecure. Before you take that as an insult, let me explain. It might just be the key to discovering a freshness, depth, and secure love you’ve never known before.

Insecurity is a state of life where we are not safe and sheltered in someone or something’s strength and affection. Many places are quite unsafe: prison, an open body of water, middle school. And Christianity can also be a deeply insecure place, that is, if we haven’t fully grasped the good news of our union with Christ and adoption.

This is the good news of Christianity: when we put our faith in Jesus, turning from our sins and following him, we are joined to him as one. The Father accepts the Son’s death in our place—the payment for a penalty that our sin has created. We are restored to the Father; he forgives our sins and receives us into his vast and unending love. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, he welcomes us gladly and calls for a celebration. Even more, we have inexhaustible spiritual riches in Christ, we are given the Holy Spirit, and, one day, we will be raised with renewed, resurrected bodies to live with God for all eternity in the new creation. Good news, right?

So why then do so many of us struggle to grasp this remarkable life with God? Why do so many Christians believe in Jesus, get their salvation secured, and then go on living a generally unchanged life? Why are so many of us still so timid toward God and others?

I believe it has to do with a limited understanding of God’s love for us, a failure to fully grasp the beauty, power, and security that comes with being a beloved child of God.

Recognizing Insecure Spirituality

Richard Lovelace, a church historian and theologian I have spent the past decade reading and re-reading, put it like this:

Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons—much less secure than non-Christians, because they have too much light to rest easily under the constant bulletins they receive from their Christian environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have.

Consider what Lovelace is saying. If we believe our standing before God depends on our spiritual achievements (that is, our obedience, our recent Bible reading, our service to the church, tithing, and so on), then we will be radically insecure. In fact, we will be more insecure than even non-Christians, whose conscience doesn’t continually convict them of sin and who aren’t regularly reminded of their need of the gospel.

If this is true (and I believe it is), just think of the way it will shape our lives. A spirituality uncertain of God’s love will always have to perform. It will always have to prove. It will always have to defend. It will always be scheming and striving, and it will never be at rest. An insecure spirituality is a brutal type of life.

Insecure Spirituality Is Always Performing

In our church, we use the phrase “performative spirituality” to describe the default position of our hearts toward God and prayer. I’m not exactly sure where this phrase originates, but I’ve heard it from New York City pastors Jon Tyson and John Starke. Most simply, performative spirituality is performance-based religion. It’s living to get God’s approval and affection. It’s an act to convince yourself you’re becoming a better Christian and more useful to God and others.

Let me be clear: performative spirituality comes straight from the pit of hell. Nothing robs us of more joy. Nothing is more assured to give us either religious pride (if we’re performing well) or spiritual despair (if we’re performing poorly). Nothing is better at producing superficial, impersonal, and powerless prayers.

Why? Because the performance-based approach to Christianity puts us on a stage to earn God’s acceptance and approval. That’s the extent of our relationship with him. That’s the best we get with this spiritual posture. It’s an exhausting posture, and Scripture says nothing good of it.

Diagnosing Our Own Hearts

Have you been living by the wrong posture? Have you been prevented from receiving the embrace of the Father because you’re too busy trying to impress him and others? Have you been held back from a deeper life with God by your ownincessant need to strive, hide, and try every possible path of self-improvement?

Millions of believers read their Bibles, (sort of) pray, and go to church with decent regularity, and yet they are simultaneouslydry spiritually and unchanged in their Christlikeness. They may read of God’s power and love every day. They may hear the gospel week after week. But none of it seems to make a practical difference. They are still insecure, day after day. Despite all they know and do, their natural posture in life looks like this:

Posture
​​God is my boss, I am his servant;
God is the critic, I am the performer

Default mode
​I’m on my own;
nothing good happens unless I make it happen

God’s view of me​
God wants me to do better;
he’s a bit disappointed, or He is distant and busy;
he’s not actively engaged in my life, or
God is fine with things as long as I perform decently enough

Toward others​
I live to be seen by others, craves their approval
I greatly fear being exposed as a fraud
I tend to be critical, comparative, competitive, easily angered, easily hurt
I often see others as a threat or a burden

Present to others​
I am conditional and distant
I am always comparing—constantly aware of where I (and others) rank

Finds comfort
​​I find comfort in busyness, addiction, distraction, and empty religious activity—whatever makes me look good or feel appreciated

Toward time
​​I am typically in a hurry, I struggle to slow down and rest

In the church​
I seek positions of honor, power, and influence

Prayer​​
My prayers are sporadic, scattered, and distracted
I often feel guilty: “I should pray more”

Suffering
​I am non-resilient, unable to handle challenges and trials of life without bitterness
​​​I view suffering as a sign that God is not with me or against me

Unfortunately, this chart wasn’t difficult for me to create. I am so familiar with the orphan’s heart that it’s still so regularly my default mode. I’ve been grinding all my life. I’ve been working and scheming and defending and protecting and projecting. Why? Because I assume everything depends on me. Even when I say otherwise, my actions and stress level suggest it. And from my years of pastoring, I know that I’m not alone in this struggle.

So, what can we do?

Releasing and Replacing Insecure Spirituality

If I remember anything from my infectious disease studies in college, in an epidemic, we must notice common symptoms, identify the cause, and find a cure for the infection.

Lucky for us, we’re two-thirds of the way through. We’ve already listed the common symptoms above (insecure spirituality list), and we’ve already identified the cause (performance-based living). What’s left is to embrace the cure: putting off the orphan’s heart and regaining our child’s heart – one trained in receiving the love of our Father.

Said another way, the cure is to release insecure spirituality and replace it with something much better. After all, the orphan’s heart will never be satisfied. It’s looking for its Father all along. Nothing else will do. Getting the love of the Father deep into our hearts is the only way.

At this point, we might see the presence of insecure spirituality in our hearts and turn to guilt and obedience. “Don’t be insecure!” we tell ourselves. Sadly, many sermons and counseling sessions can do the same: “Stop worrying!” The subtle message we can turn to is just another version of performance-based religion—“Just try harder.” But this is not a work of willpower; it’s a gift of the Holy Spirit, one that we participate in by God’s grace, releasing and replacing insecurity spirituality.

The gospel reminds us we already have everything we need—and we have it in abundance in Christ!

Once we recognize our insecurity, then, we can also release and replace. We can release insecurity and replace it with the Father’s love. While it sounds too simple to be true, it is a pattern that will be fruitful over and over again as we walk in the childlike faith that Jesus commends.

In other words, another kind of life is available to us. Once we have identified the source of our insecurity, and traced how it shows up in a performance-based lifestyle, we’ll be able to pull it up from the roots.

This lie from the pit of hell can be dragged out into the light and left to suffocate and die in the light of God’s love. And instead, a different type of life can take root in the good soil of Jesus’s life.

And once we’ve identified, broken, and released this insecure, performative spirituality, a confident new life of prayer can be opened to us.

As my mentor-friend Scotty Smith likes to say, “You can hear the lyric of the gospel and still not feel the music.” This is what performative spirituality does best; it robs our lives of its rhythm and dance. But if we can identify and uproot this performance-based mentality, we can break the cycle and be renewed in our minds.

This, then, is God’s invitation for you and for me: Release your insecure spirituality and enjoy life as a beloved child!