White Stars With Glimmers of Blue: Treasuring the Greatness of Jesus By Fighting the Hidden Insecurity

By Reyshawn Bobo

The hidden insecurity described in this book is monumentally important because it exist in everyone.This insecurity is intensely troublesome because it directs its victims away from treasuring the greatness of Jesus.Jesus is an all surpassing beautiful treasure but this insecurity, regrettably, implores us to think otherwise, hence the reason why Jesus is precious in the heart of a Christian sometimes and not all the time.Herein. also lays the reason why some, who have not come to faith in Jesus, struggle to entrust their lives over to Him.

We live in an age where fighting insecurities has lost its following as has become a doormat to self-betterment.Instead of following the pattern of this age, we will uncover the insecurity that warrants us to fight it and when we do we will fight it for the hope of treasuring the greatness of Jesus

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456608286

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Introduction

There are three types of people: people who have no clue that insecurities exist, people who assume insecurities are someone else’s problem, and people who know they have insecurities but sometimes don’t know how to fight them. The reality is: insecurities do exist, and everyone has them. Not everyone has the same insecurities, except one that we all share and fight against. The purpose of this book is to reveal that specific insecurity and learn what it takes to fight it.

The insecurity we all share is the insecurity of greatness, and is defined by this statement: I feel like I have to be the greatest in order to be loved, appreciated, or accepted by God and people.

How do you know if you have this insecurity? This feeling is a close companion to anyone who has even an inkling of a desire for appreciation from others, and/or for people to want what they contribute to this society (their job, at home, school, and community) to be worthy of some, even a little, acknowledgment. This feeling is common to any Christian who has ever asked or thought to ask God, What else do you require of me?

White Stars with Glimmers of Blue is a title that God moved to my heart, and it has taken up permanent residence there. I estimate that this very same title has required me to add a couple more bedrooms and barns to house all the epiphanies that came to me from writing this book. The title is the tool that God has used, in me, as the revealer of this one particular insecurity. But for the joy of Him in all the earth, I am eager to unveil it to others.

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?

This book is for all three types of people: those who do not know that insecurities exist, those who know what insecurities are but link it to everyone else’s problem, and for those who have seen insecurities in their life and want a practical solution to fight them.

For those who know that insecurities exist and have been anxiously awaiting a solution to fight them, I have a special, special place for you in my heart. My life has been so chock-full of insecurities, and they are frustrating and painful. For this reason, I know this message will especially excite you, because the solution to this particular insecurity will yield hope for you to treasure Christ in midst of and in spite of the many other insecurities you may have.

To those who are convinced that everyone else has insecurities but you, I challenge you to not let the day pass continuing to think that way. My hope is to come alongside you and help you gauge your heart and direct you to the barriers that keep you from confronting the truth about insecurities. There are enlightening and eye-opening statements that will help you see Jesus as wonderfully beautiful, and you would certainly miss out on this resounding prize if you were to put this book down.

To those who do not know what insecurities are, then there should be much joy in your heart, because there is a discovery in your life story that is waiting to be unraveled. If your story has as much importance to you as I think it does, the message in this book will undoubtedly interest you. I also tell you this: please don’t fret that you do not know much about insecurities. This book reveals the insecurity that most of us professed insecure people do not consider. Therefore, we are all on the same playing field.

As a staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU), I have worked alongside colleagues and mentored college students long enough to know that this is an important issue. Christians and non-Christians alike deal with this insecurity of greatness. By the grace God granted to me, I have a growing awareness of the necessity of this topic, and I pray that same grace may be granted to you also.

As I tried to find out what people were reading in regard to insecurities, I found no books that have addressed the necessary component in the fight against insecurities. White Stars with Glimmers of Blue does this by aiming at this one insecurity.

If you were in battle, would you compose a battle strategy to take out the ground troops if there was a turret gun picking off your men one by one, from behind? If you would do that, I suggest that you not play the game, Call of Duty, with the college students I mentor. You probably would not last a day with them. It’s a no brainer, right? You will summon up the best men you have, and devise a plan to take out the turret gun.

Likewise, instead of methodically chipping away at the pervasive insecurities, only to leave us groggy for more help, we will aim here to reveal the hidden insecurity that causes the most damage.

There is one major book that deals with the topic of insecurities, which has received much attention in Christian communities around the world. That book is entitled So long Insecurities by Beth Moore. Several women have told me that this book is beneficial and thought provoking. However, Moore’s book, like many others, is only geared toward woman. There is no doubt a need for a woman’s voice in the battle of insecurities; however, White Stars with Glimmers of Blue challenges both men and women to walk into a fight that will become a battle we fight together.

I was stunned to find out that the number of books on this topic is almost nonexistent. My hypothesis regarding this travesty is simple: people today are not admitting insecurities—and if no one is admitting them, then there is no need to read about them, and if there is no need to read about them, authors and publishers alike do not do much to make such content available. Not me. I am willing to hang in there while the crowd is thinning out, because I believe insecurities are so much more threatening and troublesome than we can imagine. In this book, I will explain why insecurities are hard to admit.

Another reason some Christians are not interested in reading books about insecurities is because the topic does not seem to be an essential topic of the gospel. I want to challenge this thinking, and say that most of how we see the love of Jesus manifested in our daily lives is rooted in our insecurity. This insecurity has manipulated our view of how we see Jesus. So, consequently, we slowly move further and further away from believing one of the simplest parts of the gospel: Jesus is the greatest.

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO

This book is predominantly expository more than speculative. I want you to know that, at my current stage of life, I am not a theologian, Bible scholar, or a pastor. In the matter of dealing with insecurities, I am imperfect. I am a twenty-six-year-old, ordinary missionary with a mission that seems extraordinary: helping our world fight insecurities in a Christ-saturated and Christ-exalting way. There are many man-made discoveries and philosophies in life. If you feel that this is another, let it pass. There is only one foundation, only one rock that all men should stand upon: the Word of God. Only one thing matters: glorifying God in the way He appointed.

I have held off on publishing this book for months, to see if what I conclude is really true, and if the solution is beneficial. By the grace of God, I have already seen God do tremendous things in my life since I have begun to apply the message in this book to my own life. So if you do not think this book is for you, I still argue that it is certainly for me. But I am very hopeful for many of you as well, as I have prayed many nights for you. Now, there is an insecurity to be revealed, and there is a battle to be won. Let’s start training.

1

It is I Who

Why do all these stars look the same? I asked myself. In Bozeman Montana, 2008, I was sitting at home; my roommates had gone out for the night. I decided to not be a slouch, so I put on my warm gear and walked outside of the double-wide trailer home I lived in. Down the steps I walked, heading toward my car. I remember it was cold enough to see my breath for at least two feet in front of my face. Hopping on the trunk of my car, I put my back to the window and gazed up at the moonlit sky. My mind became fixed on the billions of stars.

Have you ever pondered the luminous characteristics of the stars? I ask because it has much do with how we treasure Jesus in our hearts. I am sure that you may have thought about the luminous characteristics of the stars. Who wouldn’t? There are literally billions and billions of stars in our galaxy alone, not to mention all the other galaxies we can’t see. There is something about when our minds and hearts perceive the loveliness and details of creation that should put our hearts in a posture of awe.

The first verse many churchgoers think of, as it relates to us and the stars, is Psalms 147: 3–4, He heals the broken hearted… He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. I love this verse. This text, in theory, is supposed to remind us of our distinctiveness and preciousness to God.

I have sung Chris Tomlin’s song, Indiscernible, at so many retreats and different functions around the world, that I can belt out the name of the song when a guitarist only strums the first few notes. The part of the song that puts my heart in a state of awe goes something like this: "Indescribable, uncontainable, You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name, you are amazing God. All powerful, untamable, awestruck, we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim, You are amazing God."

The stars are not just thought of and described as beautiful by Christians. You can be a non-Christian and still have professed that the stars are beautiful, it is just that we Christians attribute it to God. I have met plenty of travelers, outdoorsmen, and deep thinkers who are not Christians, but enjoy the chance to sit under the stars. Mark Twain in, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written in 1884, wrote this in his book:

We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened—Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many.

The stars have been a universal enjoyment for centuries. In our childhood aspirations, we quietly dreamt of the day we could be an astronaut who would fly out into outer space just so we could touch the stars with our pointing finger. In our coloring books, we innocently scribbled a stick figure representation of our family in the sky among all the stars. There is something about the stars that, when our eyes gaze upon the loveliness and details of them, it puts our hearts in a state of awe and wonder. It does not matter if you are a Christian or a non-Christian. You do not have to be an astrophysicist to see the stars as lovely.

But the question that I want to ask is this: Have you ever had distaste in your mouth, or a disgusted feeling in your gut when you gazed upon the stars? The answer is probably no, right? But I did. I have come to understand that the number-one reason that question is extremely relevant to you, also, is because it has something to do with how profoundly you have understood the person of Jesus. I will explain what happened to me.

Why do all the stars look the same? I asked myself. From my vantage point, on the top of my car, they were just plain old white stars. They were little white dots sprayed onto the moonlit sky, by what looked like paint splatters from a newborn baby with no supervision. I guess I never noticed it before, like I did that night in Bozeman. That night was so frustrating. I concluded that it did not matter how far I look to my left or to my right, the stars will still be the same everywhere. They looked weak and pointless, these stars.

Instead of being in awe, seemingly like the rest of the world and like Christians who have believed Psalms 147, my conclusion rendered all the stars useless, unenjoyable, andnot awe-worthy. I knew I was viewing these stars in the wrong way, but I could not put my finger on why. Seeing the stars as useless made my heart gloomy, and my emotions got to the point where I regretted that I gazed upon the stars that night.

Would you call me crazy for thinking like this about the stars? I hope you would agree that it was not a normal or healthy response. I was not enthralled with the splendor of God’s creation that night, or any other night or for that matter. I seldom looked at the stars with a sense of awe and amazement. But during that moment in Bozeman, when I actually realized the stars were unenjoyable to me, my mind was overtaken by perplexities. My confusion was: Why would God make something that is so enjoyable to the rest of the world look so unenjoyable to me? Why don’t we just get rid of them? Unawe-worthy was one of the words that came into my mind. Who says that about God’s creation? Unawe-worthy? Who did I think I was to say such a thing to a holy God? It even sounds a little crazier to think about it now, as I write this sentence to myself and to you.

Three years later (2011), while in Seattle, the pieces of insecurities in my life, and how I viewed these white stars, began to mesh. I remember the day like I remember the one snowy day in California. It was the point of the day where the sun was nearest to the morning waters. The busy sound of the city was so obsolete in my three-hundred-square-foot studio apartment. In these moments, the experience was filled with much revelation. I felt that I was heading toward some monumental discovery in my life. I experienced a sensation in my thoughts like a carpenter would when he is ready to place the last piece of wood to a finish project.

It is I who felt as though I needed to be greatest star in order to be loved and appreciated! I emphatically proclaimed. Ah yes, that is exactly what is!

I now realize that what I had imagined was this: if I were a star, I would feel completely useless, because there was nothing that indicated that I was in any way awesome. I was just one little white dot among many other white dots. I had imagined, back then in Bozeman, that, because the stars were not awe-worthy to me, I was for sure not awe-worthy to God or people. And yet, maybe that was the problem; I wanted to be awe-worthy. The insecurity was that I felt I had to be the greatest in order to be lovely.

After all that I had experienced with the stars that one night, and as I continue on in my Christian faith, I came to an overarching conclusion: The greatest insecurity of mankind is the insecurity that we feel we have to be the greatest in order to be loved, appreciated, significant, or just acknowledged as a human being.

To this day, I am amazed at how God pieced my story and the stars together. It was not intuitive to bridge the profound concepts together. But for the sake of the glory of God to more fully treasure the person of Jesus, it has come together in this book. For this reason and many others, you must keep reading.

WHY YOU MUST KEEP READING

This next sentence will probably be the most important sentence in this book, so please do not flip the page just yet. You must keep reading because God does not like this insecurity at all. God has very astonishing words for people with this insecurity, and it is unlike the self-encouraging words we normally get from therapy sessions. His words are more ones of shock and amazement, much like seeing the devastating effects of an earthquake or a nuclear explosion.