How To Deal With Imposter Syndrome by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

I want to share on how to overcome imposter syndrome.

Why This Matters

Matthew 9:36 says that when Jesus saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Weary means they were weak and tired. Once a person has no shepherd, what they experience is weariness, tiredness, and a lack of togetherness. Jesus told his disciples the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few, and instructed them to pray the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into the harvest.

Jeremiah 23:4 says God will set up shepherds over His people who will feed them, so that they no longer fear, are not dismayed, and are not lacking. Lacking is not only about money. A person can be lacking in information, in health, in disposition toward reality, or in family life. God's answer to this is twofold: the gift of the Holy Spirit and the ministry gifts, for the establishment of believers in Christ.

What Is Imposter Syndrome?

Imposter syndrome is a persistent internal feeling of not being good enough, or as good as people think, or not deserving of opportunities and blessings, even when the evidence shows the opposite. It is a feeling, not a fact.

Two clarifying examples:

• A trained pilot, fully capable of flying a plane, who insists they cannot when asked, is exhibiting imposter syndrome, secondguessing an ability that genuinely exists.
• A twelve-year-old saying he is not ready to be a father is not imposter syndrome, that is a true lack of capacity, not a false feeling.

It is a feeling of being unqualified, rooted in self-dependence rather than God-reliance. Anyone suffering from imposter syndrome is choosing not to see themselves the way God sees them, but the way they perceive themselves, and that itself is dangerous, because self-perception can be entirely wrong. Even people who have done wicked things to the world often believed themselves to be saviours. Feelings cannot be trusted as final judges of truth.

Imposter Syndrome Must Be Treated as Sin

Imposter syndrome must be treated as a sin, not a flaw. It can be a form of unbelief, disagreeing with what God has said about you. When God declares you called, gifted, and chosen, and you insist that isn't really you, you are siding against God's word.

1 John 5:10 says he who does not believe God has made Him a liar. If God says a person is righteous, gifted, called, as He told Jeremiah he was ordained a prophet before he was formed in the womb, and that person says otherwise, they are calling God a liar. That is unbelief.

It is also a form of lying. If someone can drive and is asked whether they can drive, and they say no, that is a lie, and lying is a sin. Imposter syndrome makes a person lie against themselves.

Numbers 13:33 records the twelve spies saying, "We were like grasshoppers in our own sight." Numbers 14 records how the children of Israel murmured and complained after seeing the giants in the land. God's response, that as they had spoken in His ears so He would do to them, shows that what is spoken over a life shapes what happens in that life. If a person says they are weak, that becomes their experience. If they say they cannot do something, they will not do it.

When God calls someone into something and they say otherwise, they are despising the gift of God. God's greatest gift is Jesus, His own Son. To reject what God has spoken over a life is to dishonour that gift, the same way refusing to use a gift out of false humility dishonours the giver. What brings satisfaction to God is seeing His people walk in what He has given them, not leaving it unused out of feigned unworthiness.

What Imposter Syndrome Sounds Like

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Pastor Dolapo Lawal
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• "I don't belong here, and they will soon find me out."
• Feeling like the odd one out in a room of gifted people, when in truth an invitation into that room means one was meant to be there.
• Deflecting praise because it raises expectations that feel impossible to sustain.
• Doubting whether a new spiritual discipline, like consistent prayer, will last: "I think I'm faking it."
• Believing compliments are people being dishonest, while treating criticism as the only truth about oneself.
• Downplaying success: "I got lucky again," or crediting an opportunity to anything but personal qualification.
• Staying silent in a meeting or Bible study out of the belief that others are more spiritual or informed.
• Seeing one's background as a permanent barrier: "people like me don't get opportunities like this."

Imposter syndrome is a dangerous dimension of pride that disguises itself as humility.

How to Get Out of Imposter Syndrome

1. Proper Speech

   Proverbs 21:23 says whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles. What is spoken affects how a person thinks.

   Joshua 1:8 tells Joshua that the book of the law should not depart from his mouth, and that he should meditate on it day and night, so that he could observe to do all that is written. After Moses died, Joshua, who had watched Moses part the Red Sea and strike the rock for water, was told not to secondguess himself, but to be strong and of good courage, because God had designed him for that exact moment.

   • Words function like a deposit and a withdrawal, continually saying what God says produces the ability to observe and do it.

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   • Confession does not remove doubt entirely; even after years in ministry, doubts still surface. What makes the difference is putting the word of God in the mouth consistently, rather than performing for approval.

   Ephesians 4:29 says let no corrupt word proceed out of the mouth, but only what is good for necessary edification, so that it imparts grace to the hearers. Ephesians 4:30 warns against grieving the Holy Spirit, speaking badly of oneself grieves the Spirit of God who sealed the believer for the day of redemption.

   Psalm 52:4 speaks of one who loves devouring, deceitful words, and warns that God will destroy such a person and remove them from the land of the living. There is a curse attached to speaking rubbish over one's own life.

   Write out a confession that affirms who you are in Christ, and see it as warfare, bringing every thought into the obedience of Christ.

2. Walk by Faith, Not by How You Think

   Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The word of God functions as a perfect mirror: it does not merely show the problem, it also shows the way to fix it. Where a sinner is told they are a sinner, they are also told to go and sin no more.

   James 2:18-21 teaches that faith without works is dead. Even Abraham, who was never given the law, was justified by the works of faith when he offered Isaac. Fear does not make anyone act; faith does. The instruction is not to move according to feeling, but to do what has already been spoken in confession.

3. Shift the Focus From Performance to Purpose and Obedience

   Score yourself based on obedience and purpose, not performance. God is not asking for perfection; He is asking for cooperation.

   A mentor once gave the counsel to shift focus from people coming to serving God, to remember that God is the one watching, and that He is the one who gave the instruction in the first place. Scoring life on faithfulness rather than acceptance matters, because the same crowd that celebrates someone one day can turn against them the next, as happened to Jesus entering Jerusalem.

   Everybody cannot like you, in the same way not everybody likes God, there are atheists and people who consider God selfish or wicked, yet souls are still being saved. Learning to release critical, negative reactions, rather than fixating on a small number of negative voices among a much larger number of appreciative ones, protects a person from being pulled off course.

   Colossians 3:23 instructs, whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men.

   Matthew 21:28 tells of a man with two sons: one refused to work in the vineyard but later went; the other agreed but never went. The first did the will of the father. It is not about the willingness spoken, but the obedience carried out.

   Matthew 10:18 promises that believers brought before governors and kings need not worry about what to say, for it will be given to them in that hour, because it is not them who speak, but the Spirit of the Father speaking in them. Just as Joshua only had to shout and Gideon only had to obey, God does not send anyone to carry out His instruction alone.

4. Stop Comparing Yourself With Others

   To one servant was given five talents, to another two, to another one, capacities differ, and they determine drive. If God has called someone to be Caleb, they need not aspire to be Joshua. Some ministries build hospitals because they are graced for it; building one outside that grace could make a person its first patient.

   Comparing a two-year-old business to one that is forty-nine years old, or a two-year marriage to one that has lasted eighteen years, is not a fair evaluation. The very fact that a comparison can be made at all is evidence that something is already being done right.