Enough

It will never be enough.

Never.

Ever.

Ever.

No mater what I do; what I accomplish; what I become it just will not be enough; will not be satisfactory; will not be adequate.

God is so perfect and I am so not. Every day the words that Paul wrote nearly 2000 years ago echo in my mind, “I do what I hate.” My intentions are pure and holy and righteous and every other God-honoring buzz word that can fit there, but at the end of the day I will always fall short. I will always fail. I will never be enough.

All I want to do is be the man that God has called me to be, created me to be. He expects amazing things from me. And for good reason! I praise God because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. He has designed me, built me with so many gifts, talents, abilities, and resources that He should expect amazing, incredible things from me. Not being something absolutely extraordinary would be a waste of so much, a waste of a life. And perhaps it is this pressure that I have placed upon myself that I am buckling under. My God demands perfection because He is perfect and yet I will never meet His expectations. Little else in this world does as much to sadden me.

I want to be everything I can be; to give Him back just a small portion of what He has given me. I want Him to look down upon me and be filled with awe and wonder, with pride and gratitude for all that I am doing for Him, with the man that I have become. Ultimately, this has been my undoing time and again. This has caused me to turn and flee time and again in crippling fear and shame. At the first hint of hardship, struggle, or failure I turned tail and ran unable to handle even the smallest hint of inadequacy. Each failure meant I was less than God expected me to be, than God created me to be, and less than I desperately wanted to be. With each failed attempt I came to better understand how worthless I am. Little else fills me with such fear and shame.

I wanted to do huge, inconceivable things for God because my God is altogether huge and inconceivable. In each ill-conceived attempt, however, I found myself further and further from God and from His will. It became MY struggle and nobody else’s. I needed to man up and become the man of God that He expects and needs me to be. I have to get this right! My life was spent flitting about from one thing to another hopelessly lost in my pursuit of something, anything that would make me worthy, make me great. I spent my life searching for that one thing that would fix me, that would make up for all the lost time and resources, that would redeem me. I spent years searching for something I would not find anywhere except one place. 

Ultimately, I was not satisfied with simply giving myself to God. I had to give Him more. I am not good enough as I am and so I must become greater. I must become more. Then, when I am this new and improved self, then I can give myself to God to use as He sees fit. How dare I.

God did not ask for a specific version of me. He did not ask for some superhuman version of me. He did not ask me to be anything greater than simply who I am. Who I am is powerful, strong, wise, and wholly amazing not because of anything I have done, will do, or can do but because of who made me and all that He has done, will do, and can do. How dare I refuse to give myself over to the only person who could make me exactly what I ache to be.

It’s almost funny. I tried so hard to be great, to be heroic, that I failed to see the only path to true greatness in the arms of the greatest hero. God has a wonderful habit of taking imperfect creatures and performing works beyond belief with them. He takes people and does the absolute unexpected with them. He takes broken, sinful, disgusting, deplorable, tired people and makes them a living, breathing miracle. 

It reflects how little I have thought of God for so very long. It’s selfish really. It reflects a lack of trust and faith that God would be unable to take me just as I am and do whatever He wants to with it. I did not trust God to make the most of me if I gave myself to Him. It was a lack of trust, a lack of faith, and ultimately a complete lack of hope.

It is not my job to make myself worthy of a miracle; that would be a miracle in and of itself. My job is merely to give this sinful, miserable, broken life to the one true God and to step back and watch what He does with it. It is not my job to do anything except give myself to God and then ride along on a greater journey than I could ever imagine on my own. It is not about me. It is completely about Christ and Christ alone. He must become greater; I must become less. 

Wherever God takes me in this life will be so much greater than anywhere I could have taken myself. I have been promised this and I cling to that promise. God will take my life and do infinitely more than I could on my own. God will make me a miracle. 

I passionately give my life to Jesus Christ and I ask Him to do with me what He will. I know that I will never be enough, but the beautiful thing is that I do not have to be. I do not have to be great; Jesus is. I do not have to be perfect; Jesus is. I do not have to be anything more than I am; Jesus turns small gifts and small lives into huge, inconceivable things. This is my trust. This is my hope.

Even though I will never be enough, my Jesus is.

He will always be enough.

Forever.

And ever.

And ever.