I have struggled with feelings of inadequacy before I could even say the word.

When I was a little girl, the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was an artist. It just made sense to me: I absolutely adored arts and crafts, pretty much worshiped Bob Ross, and was content to spend my time coloring, drawing, and painting my days away. I had every intention to spend my adult life just making cool stuff, but one day I had a terrifying revelation: I needed to be a good enough artist in order to have people buy my stuff. 7-year-old me thought, how am I supposed to support myself off of sub-par drawings and smudged paintings? With this realization came a new determination: I needed to get good at art—like, really good. I put in hours and hours of furious practicing, but ultimately it only led to mistakes, frustration and disappointment. I told myself that I didn’t have the talent that it took to be an artist, in any form. So I gave up on my dream. I just wasn’t good enough.

Eventually, I found a different creative outlet: writing. I have loved storytelling since I was a kid—I remember making my dad sit down at the table after dinner to write wild and nonsensical stories with me (which usually involved my favorite cartoon characters). Writing became a hobby over the next 10 or so years, until the opportunity came for me to start publishing my work on Odyssey. Finally, I had a platform to do some real work and write about whatever I want.

When I asked myself what I really wanted to focus on in my writing, the answer came easily to me: God. I’ve been a Christian all my life, and He’s what’s on my heart and mind 24/7. It just made sense. I wrote several God-focused pieces that I was proud of, but when the time came to publish, I froze, backtracked, and submitted something else.

Why?

Because I was terrified that I was not good enough to be writing about God.

The truth is, no matter how hard I try, I still have sin in my life. I mess up daily, at both the little and the big things, and would probably manage to mess this up, big time. It was pretty easy to justify my fear of writing about God to myself. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I somehow accidentally taint His good with my bad? How can I write about someone so good, if I’m so undeserving of Him in the first place?

The weight of this familiar fear of inadequacy became overwhelming and oppressive, so I did what I normally do when I need guidance in my faith—I texted my mom. “I want God to be able to use me but I’m anxious that I’ll disappoint Him. Do you ever feel like that? How do you fight it?” She replied quickly, “That’s the Devil wanting you to think that way.” Then she sent me a link to a devotion that she had read just days before, addressing my fear of failure (Here’s the link to that devotion if you're curious).

The very writing of this essay is me breaking through my fear of not being good enough—a fear that He doesn’t want for me, anyways. Here we go.

Feelings of inadequacy come in all forms, and ultimately they come from the Enemy (check out 1 Peter 5:8). How do we know this? Because if they get far enough, they can take us off the playing field for serving God. The fear of not being skilled enough, not saying the right thing, or even of being unworthy can be powerful enough to keep you from the mission that God has in your life.

Don’t let allow your head to be filled with vicious lies. Focus instead on the truth.

God loves you and wants to use you, wherever you’re at in life. He doesn’t require perfection. If you were perfect, you wouldn’t need Him, and that's the way He designed it. Time and time again in the Bible, you find that he uses people who aren’t perfect for the job—good luck finding somebody in the Bible that didn’t have some sort of flaw (Moses, Sampson, Thomas, the list goes on). He chooses those people to display His true power and the way He wants to work in our lives.

Don’t waste your time waiting on yourself to become perfect and start serving Him now. God doesn’t call perfect people, he calls people with willing hearts. Don’t get me wrong, putting yourself out there for Him can be scary sometimes, but it can lead to some pretty incredible outcomes. Fight your fear, and go for it.