My cursor hovered over the “Publish” button, anxiety coursing through my body. Who am I to write about God? I didn’t go to Bible college. I haven’t even read the whole Bible. I’m the last person who should write a mental health faith blog.
The same thing happened when I contemplated offering piano lessons. I started playing piano when I was 7 years old and continued all the way into college. I have over 25 years experience at this point, but I didn’t feel qualified to teach piano to others.
Our culture gives this the name “imposter syndrome”. Merriam Webster defines imposter syndrome as a “persistent doubt concerning one’s abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one’s ongoing success”(LINK).
We can feel like an imposter in anything we do. Even if we have past success, we still feel like a fraud or that we’re not “qualified enough” to do something we know how to do.
What’s ironic is God gave us unique gifts for a reason, but the enemy knows how to get in our heads and convince us we’re not good enough. Our God-given gifts go unused, not because we’re lazy, but because we’ve already decided someone else can probably do it better.
When Humility Is a Disguise
Especially when it comes to stepping out in faith, it’s easy to feel disqualified. There’s a specific shape of imposter syndrome when faith is involved.
“I’m not spiritual enough.”
“I’m too new in the faith.”
“My testimony is too messy.”
“God doesn’t use people like me.”
Or maybe we think if we wait, then we’ll be ready to serve.
But this is where it gets tricky. We think we’re being humble by saying things like this. But often, it’s really fear in disguise.
Genuine AND false humility sound the same, and we can’t tell them apart from the outside. It wears the costume of something the church praises most: humility.
Church cultures that reward the polished and platformed teach everyone else that their gifts are second-tier. We think, “Well, I could never be a pastor, so I guess my spiritual gifts don’t matter as much.” We might even think, “How will my small gift impact the Kingdom anyway?”
The Gift You Didn’t Earn
Any spiritual gift we have was given to us, not earned. The Holy Spirit handed it out. We didn’t achieve it, we don’t deserve it, and we don’t have to be “good enough” to keep it. Spiritual gifts aren’t rewards for competence. But that doesn’t mean we leave them where we found them. A gift given is still a gift meant to grow. We practice, we stumble, we get better. Not to earn the gift, but because it was given to be used, not admired from a distance.
In 1 Corinthians 4:7, Paul writes, “What do you have that you did not receive?”
Everything we have was given to us.
If God is the one giving us spiritual gifts, then “I’m not good enough” is measuring the wrong thing. We were never meant to decide whether or not our gifts count. It was never our call to make.
A Buried Talent
In Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus tells the Parable of the Talents. In this parable are three servants. The first servant receives five talents, the second gets two, and the third gets one. The first two servants choose to trade their talents to multiply them, but the third servant decides to bury his singular talent out of fear.
When the master returns, he praises the first two servants for being faithful with their talents. But he scolds the third, calling him lazy.
The third servant thought his one talent was too small to bother with. He only got one single talent and decided to hide it rather than use it like the other two servants.
His failure was deciding his talent didn’t count.
The gifts aren’t the problem; the burial and “I’m not qualified” are.
The master never praised the first servant more than the second. They brought back different amounts, but the praise was the same.
The master gave the third servant one single talent, but the servant wasn’t scolded for the number of talents he had. He was scolded for being fearful and hiding it away.
The servant might’ve thought, “I only had one talent, and I was scared, so I hid it.”
And today, we think, “My gift is too small, and I’m not even qualified, so I’ve never used it.”
Yeah. It’s the same fear. The same burial.
The thing we call humility, the servant called fear.
What the Master Actually Measures
Imposter syndrome lives in fear of being found out. In the parable, the master’s return acts as a moment of being found out.
But the master’s “well done” to his servants was directed at their faithfulness, not the size or number of talents.
The exposure we dread does come, but it measures if we used what we were given. Not if we did more or less than someone else.
God isn’t going to tally up how many followers ARMR Collective has. I remind myself all the time, if this helps even ONE singular person get to know God, then that’s enough. There were so many times where I could’ve given this blog up. I was told it was “fueled by a church hurt narrative” or that it was just something I write to make myself feel better. I’ve been told I should delete the entire thing, and even now, I don’t feel like I know enough to write this.
But God literally told me to do this and gave me the gift of exhortation for a reason. I refuse to bury it.
Faithfulness Ahead of Readiness
If you’ve felt any of this, you know the weight of it. The gift that sits there while you wait to feel ready. Maybe you decide to bow out before anyone can reject you. But disqualifying yourself over time can bake into your identity. “I’m just not someone who x, y, and z.” Maybe you could be that someone, but fear made you bury the talent before you used it.
Imposter syndrome. The fear that you’re not who the gift says you are.
But you are children of the King. He bestowed a gift to you, entrusted you with something to use to further the Kingdom.
Who are we to decide it’s too small to do anything?
Not every hesitation is fear. Sometimes it’s discernment, and Scripture tells us to weigh things with sober judgment (Romans 12:3). The difference is whether God is leading you away from something, or fear is keeping you hidden from it.
We might never feel ready to use a spiritual gift. But readiness is the wrong gate. Faithfulness is the only one the parable names.
You don’t have to be “good enough” to start.
You just need to start.
There’s just one problem with all of this: you can’t use a gift you haven’t named yet. So, next week, we’re figuring out how to find it.
