As I was driving home the other day I turned on the radio to hear a song that repeated, “You're enough, you're enough, you're enough for me, Lord”. When the song ended, I switched off the radio and spoke into the open air, “Lord, are you really enough for me?” I know the answer in my heart but honestly my actions don’t reflect that knowledge. I wrestle with allowing Him to be enough for me. I keep Him at arm’s length sometimes out of fear, out of selfishness… out of my own self sufficiency. And if I am being honest, I have changed the question to be, “Lord am I enough for you?” Into the same open air, I weep deeply for I know that I have missed the mark. I know I have made my life more about what I can do and give to Him than what He has given and continues to give and do for me. Far too often I live from the place of self-sufficiency, more than I live from the place of gratitude.
I see my weaknesses and convince myself that I am not enough for the Lord. I know it does not work like that-- that Christ loves me unconditionally, without merit, and in my weaknesses --perhaps because of my weaknesses and my utmost need for Him. Still, I struggle with feeling I have to earn it or prove myself worthy on some level of His love. That is the world speaking however, not Christ. I find myself constantly assigning human ways, human thoughts, and having human expectations to the Lord. He tells us that “His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). This wrestling, this inner heart ache, and desire to be defined as a gal that loves the Lord with her whole mind, body, and soul, I have spent time this week reflecting what it looks like to live a life rooted in faith and grace in a world that pressures anything but.
I don’t want to resemble the Pharisees who were virtuous, moral, and lived a life to the letter of the law but were inauthentic. Christ does not want my perfection, my good deeds. He wants my heart. In my weaknesses I am more open to Him and His grace. I want to risk showing my weakness, share my feelings, hurts, and joys with others like that of a child…unabashed, unashamed, and with a joyous heart that knows no bounds. “It was for liberty that Christ freed us”. (Galatians 5:1) I pray with all my heart that I will relish in that liberty and not live from a life of policies and rules, and other’s expectations but from the very heart of God, complete in my weakness so that His glory would be evident in my words and actions.
Weakness is a negative word but it doesn’t have to be. Weakness can be a gift when we recognize all that it brings to our lives and allows us to bring to our relationships. It is the area we are perhaps more ourselves than any place else. It is a place where pride is at bay and our humbleness and need are brought to the forefront of our lives. It causes us to “relate to the people we serve,” it allows us to feel with them the “human condition, the human struggle and darkness and anguish that call out for salvation”. Further, weakness relates us profoundly to God because it provides the arena in which His power can move and reveal itself. When I consider my actions, I realize that I often am communicating to God that I don’t need Him. How this grieves my heart to write these words…to bring light to my inner struggle.
Perhaps you have heard the term “dying to self”. It sounds sacrificial, doesn’t it? It sounds intimidating. It sounds unpleasant, honestly. What it means essentially is that Christ explicitly becomes the center of our lives, not us, not our good ideas, not our good efforts…Christ and Christ alone. When I ask the question, “Lord am I enough for you?”, I am dangerously close to serving myself, making my relationship with Christ more about me, than I am about Him. I am still learning what this looks like practically in this life but I know without a doubt it begins with being rooted in the faith conviction that I am loved, beyond my comprehension, by God as am, not as I should be.
“I will all the more gladly glory in my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecution and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong”. 2 Cor. 12:9-10
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