I try not to write on my blog about messages that I preach in the church that I pastor, but yesterday’s message was so strong that I find myself still thinking about it this morning. I know that I have to get the next message ready (Sundays never stop coming!), but I sense that I need to hang out a bit longer on this one.
In a world where everyone wants to have more and feels the pressure to be more, I think the good news of the gospel speaks a better word, and for me, in this season, that better word is “enough.”
When I’ve had enough, I stop being a victim.
When I have enough, I stop being a keeper.
When I am enough, I stop being a chameleon.
Here’s the thing about those statements: if we’re going to live them out fully and consistently, we need to embrace one more “enough” truth. We need to accept that Jesus is enough.
I love how Paul put it in his second letter to the Corinthians. He had just written about the struggle of not being able to please everyone (see 2 Corinthians 2:16) and had responded to that struggle with the soul-wrenching reality that he wasn’t enough! “Who is equal to such a task?” That word equal means adequate, sufficient, competent, or enough.
Ever been there? Pulled by the preferences and opinions of the people you really love and want to please? Caught in a tug of war between who you think you are and who you think “they” want you to be? I can feel the pressure even as I write those words and I find myself crying out with Paul, “I’ll never be good enough!”
I’ll never preach hard enough or deep enough or long enough or short enough or funny enough or theological enough or pentecostal enough or … the list is as endless as the people listening.
And yet, just 6 verses after Paul cried out in the realization that he would never be enough for everyone else, he wrote these life-giving words:
“Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.” (2 Corinthians 3:5 NIV, emphasis mine)
When Jesus is enough, my competence, my sufficiency, my adequacy — my “enoughness” — comes from him.
When Jesus is enough, I stop being a vagabond.
[Tweet “Because I’m enough for Jesus, I am enough, even if I’m not enough for everybody else.”]When Jesus is enough, he makes me enough, and because I’m enough for Jesus, I am enough, even if I’m not enough for everybody else.
And so are you.
