Before we said goodbye, she held my face in her hands and waited for my eyes to meet her deliberate gaze.
“You are enough.”
Tears blurred my vision. I felt anything but good enough, quite the opposite actually. A failure in every arena of my life.
“I didn’t say ‘You are good enough,’ I said, ‘You are enough.’”
Had I spoken my thoughts out loud? Tears, now pooled along the rims of my eyes, spilled over my lower lashes and onto my cheeks. How did she know?
YOU ARE ENOUGH.
Those three words—not four—were quiet waters in the parched desert of my soul.
Over five years later, my pastor asked me a question, and I realized I was still striving to be "good" enough.
“Is God proud of you?”
“Yes.” A quick answer, not from confidence, but from knowing what I should say.
“Why is He proud of you?”
Hmm… He caught me! A simple yes or no wouldn't suffice. “Well… I guess because of the work I’m doing at the school… my teaching and taking on the extra responsibilities God asked me to—”
“Those are good things, but God’s proud of you apart from the things you do for Him. He’s proud just because you’re you. Do you believe that?”
“No… but I’d like to.”
We can be quick to remind ourselves and each other of Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast,” but it’s quite another to live it.
In a competitive and performance-driven world, we can measure success (whether we’re “good” enough) by our production level and the responses to what we’ve produced. Even with God.
Has anyone ever told you (in so many words), “If you were the only person on earth in need of saving, Christ still would have died on the cross… just for you.”
What do you think? Is this true?
I wasn’t sure it was until l took my eyes off myself and placed them on Jesus.
If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. Matthew 18:12-13 (NIV)
Why does the man go after the one? Because it’s his best sheep? Most productive or obedient? Quietest (sheep can be noisy)? Or maybe because it’s the one who loves him the most?
No; the sheep belongs to him—the man owns him—and that’s enough.
Christ offered His life; His sacrifice is enough to save us from the penalty of sin and death, we need nothing more. Through His actions, doesn’t Jesus say, “You’re enough?”
Yes, He does!
Is that reason enough for us to believe it’s true?
I pray it is!