Here’s a question for you today: Where does your “good enough” come from?
I’m cooking lamb tonight. Not my best item, to say the least, just what’s in the freezer. Nor do I feel I’ve got time to do it well. I’m also working on some admin/accounting issues for our ministry serving discipleship venues and Bible translators and poverty workers around the globe; very important, but also not my best venue. Having to do counseling in a couple of ministries I get to work with who are in crisis. Again, counseling is also not my strong point. I feel I’m operating in areas of greater-than-normal weakness today, which certainly can make them areas of greater frustration and stress.
That’s actually really good, because in areas of known weakness and frustration, I pretty quickly recognize my inadequacy, so I’m much more likely to be actively depending upon Christ’s grace. I’ve learned to depend upon Him for big things, even where I have worldly aptitude, like teaching or Bible study. Usually, anyway. But I often stumble around in frustration where I have weakness and only eventually give up my “good enough” for His perfection by grace through faith.
My friends, we cannot simultaneously put our hope in our self effort and justification while placing our hope in Christ for sufficiency and righteousness by grace.
If you find yourself striving to be good enough you are not walking by grace, and if you are walking by grace, you have no need to be “good enough” – not to yourself, and not to anyone else. This is why grace sets us free, no longer being “up to me”.
When we say “grace is enough” we affirm that we are not enough apart from His grace. So, what we NEED is Jesus. And what we HAVE is Jesus. We are at rest, we are okay, we are content, we are made right by Jesus and for Jesus’ sake by His work through love, not our merit through self sufficiency. So…
Let’s make today a “grace is my good enough” day, and enjoy all you have and all you are by the surpassing abundance of the grace God! To receive Him is to give up on anything less than needing Him in every moment and every area of our lives. And there – only there in Him by grace – is rest and hope and peace and abundance and joy and overflowing life.
Question: What are the areas you KNOW you need Him to live through you today, and what are one or two you often operate in thinking you’re okay without His grace?
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