I am not enough.
When I hear those words, I am taken back about ten years to a time when those words were just starting to rattle around in my brain. I was young but old enough to fall into a spirit of comparison.
I knew that I did well in school, but could see that I wasn’t smart enough to do as well as some of my classmates. I knew that I wasn’t athletic enough to be picked first to be on someone’s team.
I knew I wasn’t ugly, but I also wasn’t pretty enough to be liked by others. I knew that I had friends, but not enough to be one of the popular kids.
Looking back, I know that I was not the only kid who felt that way about myself; I wasn’t the only kid who was starting to hear whispers from the evil one. I know that I was not the only kid who wanted my feelings of inadequacy to go away. In reality, I was never alone in my constant comparison, but focusing on your insufficiencies will always lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness.
As with most people, the realization of my insufficiencies continued to grow as I got older and started middle and high school. I started comparing not only my skills and appearance but my overall worth in comparison to the other three billion people with whom I share a planet. I started to realize that I wasn’t as good as I had always thought that I was.
I was a nice enough person, but I started to realize that I was also prideful and judgmental towards people who were different from me. I tried to do what I knew was right, but there was a part of me that was constantly slipping up and making the same mistakes time and time again. I went to church every Sunday, but I didn’t pick up my Bible or pray enough outside of Sunday morning.
But the thought that there was a god floating around somewhere in the sky who knew just how not good enough I really was nearly swallowed me whole.
During the summer after my freshman year of high school, I started working at a small summer camp near my hometown. In the time I spent there, I was surrounded by sisters in Christ who loved the Lord with all of their hearts. I learned so much that summer about who God is and what a relationship with Him looks like.
At least once a week, I would hear someone say that Satan uses the lie that we are not enough to keep us from seeing our true identity as Christ followers. People would say that because Christ went to the cross, I have been made “good enough” in the eyes of the God.
For years I accepted those words to be true. In fact, they became sort of a mantra that I believed throughout the rest of my high school years. Believing that I was inherently good because of my relationship with God was easier than swallowing the truth that I was still a sinful human being who was constantly failing to measure up to the standards of God. This line of thinking led me to forget my great need for grace and mercy from a holy God who holds a standard of perfection.
For years I believed that the lie Satan was using against me was that I wasn’t good enough to earn myself own salvation, but in reality, not being good enough to earn my salvation was a truth that Satan was distorting to keep me trapped in self-righteous thoughts.
If I were able to earn my way to heaven, Christ’s death on the cross was for nothing. Similarly, saying that Christ’s death made me good enough is also cheapening the gospel. If this were true, mankind would have no reason to rely on God after salvation. No, Christ’s death did not change the fact that I am still a soul trapped in sinful flesh that is in unholy rebellion against the holy God of perfect standards.
The truth of the gospel message isn’t that I have been made enough, but rather that my not enough-ness has been covered by the enough-ness of Christ. His goodness covers my lack of goodness. His perfection covers my imperfections. My sinful flesh is not changed all at once, but rather, a process of sanctification is started which requires daily coming to the Lord and confessing the ways in which I am not enough to earn my salvation.
There is something beautiful in knowing that I am saved not because of my works, but in spite of them. I find peace in knowing that my salvation is not reliant on my action, but a calling to action. Because I am not enough, I wake up in the morning praising a loving and gracious God who is more than enough for me.
And for that, I am grateful.
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Ephesians 2:1-10
