Me, me, me, God, me, me...oh wait....

Before I begin, I want to make one thing very clear: this isn't a sob story about how I'm a victim or how my current insecurity is a result of people being mean to me.  No, this is entirely about coming clean on a glaring area of sin in my life.
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I am incredibly and insufferably self-conscious.  I constantly scrutinize everything I do when interacting with people and/or cyberspace.  Questions of "How does this make me look?" or "Will saying this make me look stupid?" are, unfortunately, never far from my mind.  It's shameful.

What's sad, is that I've been like this most of my life.

I didn't have a lot of friends growing up.  I often lamented this fact to my Dad, who proceed to tell me that I have my sister (whom I later came to greatly appreciate) and that I'd meet my life-long friends in college.  I was rarely appeased.

Through a desire to have immediate gratification, I tried to pursue this one group of people in hopes of filling a void I thought I had.  Unfortunately, no matter how long, hard or how often I initiated with them, it was never reciprocated.  No friendships were formed and as a result, I became very introspective and self-conscious.  From then on, I've operated from a very selfish, appearance motivated, people pleasing mindset.

As a Christ-follower, this is the last thing I should be doing.  Instead of living a life devoted to glorifying God and dwelling in His love and mercy, I'm searching for people's acceptance.  When I feel like I'm not being accepted by people (i.e. them not reaching out to me, wanting to be the best of friends forever and ever), I berate myself, viewing it as "somethings wrong with me".  My "self-consciousness" ultimately becomes a pity party for me, myself, and I.  I'm being incredibly selfish and sinning in a big way.  My insecurity demonstrates an utter lack of contentment in what God has given me.  Even worse, I'm placing far more importance upon people's opinions, rather than God..

Jesus Christ didn't hang, suffer, and die on the Cross so that I can live a life spent worrying about MYSELF.  He died so that I could be covered in HIS Righteousness, so that when I stand before God, He won't even see ME - He will see Christ's Righteousness.  And here I am trying to be cool.  Geez.

I don't want to be the person that I am now.  I want to be completely consumed by Christ and a desire to bring Him glory, honor, and praise.  I want my identity to be solely found in Him.  I just don't know how to not care about what people think of me.  The only thing I can do is pray and ask that God help me overcome this area of sin in my life, and solicit the prayers of fellow believers.