By: Bethany Panza
We are not enough. Yes, I said it. It sounds offensive and untrue, but in reality we are not enough. At least not on our own. In culture, we are constantly seeking to find something to make us worthy. Whether it is self help books, trying to love ourselves through meaningless self-care techniques, or using social media influences to describe our “enoughness”, it all leads to a dead lonely end. We try to find “enoughness” in three areas. 1. We hold onto other things to value our “enoughness”, 2. We take what God gave us and run with it on our own and 3. We accept we aren’t enough and feel we deserve to be worthless or can’t come to God.
1. We hold onto other things to value our “enoughness”
This is probably the most commonly used method of deeming our value and “enoughness”. We carry pressure and expectations from ourselves, culture, things or other people and make it a voice for being enough in our lives. We then walk around feeling chained and burdened because we are carrying things that were meant to be left at the cross. Instead of surrendering these things, we hold onto them, playing the role of God, when in reality it is making us feel more worthless, more depressed and more anxious than ever before. In the session, we used books to represent the different pressures we carry to make ourselves feel enough and holding it was heavy and burdensome.
2. We take what God gave us and run with it on our own
God gives us all callings, gifts and talents. This can be sports, musical talents, being apart of a group or club, being in ministry etc. Do you ever feel drained or burnt out in them? It is not God’s fault. And often we place our "enoughness” in the things we do because God placed us there. But when we take the things God placed us in and run with it on our own, it becomes about us rather than being used for Gods kingdom. We will crash and fall and it could shake our identity because we placed it in the thing rather than God. This can happen either intentionally or unintentionally. We referred to Luke 15. There was a son who had everything under the authority of his father. When he took his inheritance, instead of stewarding it for blessings, he ran with it and did what he wanted. Not too long after, he crashed and burned and came back to his father asking to be a servant. The father took him back with celebration as his son. This is us with God at times. We can take our “inheritance” and rather stewarding ourselves in Christ to be a blessing, we run with it on our own thinking that will be enough for us but it actually does more damage. The good thing is that God can and will redeem us!
3. We accept we aren’t enough and feel we deserve to feel worthless/can’t come to God
Being told we are worthless and that's all we are is a lie. You might be thinking I am contradicting myself because I said prior that we aren’t enough. But we don't have to stay like that. We aren’t enough. If we were, we wouldn’t need God. Our sole purpose was to be living under the authority and abundance of God. We cannot be the problem and the solution. We need something bigger and better to make us whole. The good news is we do have that. We have Jesus. The sole purpose was for Him to come down so that we can be made more than enough- in Him. Jesus is knocking, maybe even pounding on the door of your heart and all you have to do is open it and let Him in.
Without Him, we aren’t enough on our own. We will never be. And the things of this world will not fulfill our “enoughness”. But with Jesus, we are made MORE than enough! When we abide in Him and follow Jesus all the way, we experience joy, peace gladness, patience, excitement, passion, and fulfillment. 2 Corinthians 3:5 says “not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God”. Have peace knowing that we don’t have to do anything but follow Christ to be made more than enough. No more pain. No more pressure. No more anxiety. Just living a life that honors Jesus!