Enough: Are You Enough?
by Daniel Burton
We have come to God knowing that we are not enough but that God loves us despite whatever we do. Yet, for whatever reason, we can know that God’s love for us goes beyond our ability to earn it and still hesitate to give Him our lives. There is a deep seeded fear that God is not enough. We fear that by giving God control over our lives and our salvation, that God would crush us. The fear that God’s love is not enough stems from the disappointment we have faced from others. Maybe a family member who let us down, a friend who disappointed us, or a significant other who rejected us. We view the love as God as comparable to those who have rejected us in the past and ask of God “Are you enough?” not in anger or spite, but in fear.
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
2 Peter 1:3-4, NIV
Having a relationship with God is more than enough. Not only does God offer us forgiveness from our sins, but continues and offers us that full connect and communion with Him. We have the ability to not only be forgiven of our sins but to participate in the divine nature. We are not only free from our past, but our future is secure in the divine protection of God. Going above and beyond, God was not content to rescue us from our past, but to ensure our future.
Judging God By Man’s Standards
Other people’s failure to love and reflect the image of God can often put a bad taste in our mouth about God. We feel that if our earthy companions that we can see and touch fail us, then the God we cannot see nor touch will most assuredly fail us. Yet it is precisely the opposite that is true. The love of God is perfect and will not ever fail us even though other may. God who, under no moral obligation to do so, sent His Son to die for our sins. Taking the burden of everything we do, He assured our salvation, craving that we should have relationship with Him. For a God who created everything even before the existence of time, we know that He is King. Our God is a loving and fully sovereign King who will not let us down or reject us.
The failure of others to live up to the standards of God cannot be applied to God. God is the standard. Perfection is measured by God. Although we as people will fail to meet it and we will be hurt by others who have failed to meet it, God remains perfect love. Comparing God to the failures of those who are in just as much grace as we are will miss the experience of fully understanding the depth and magnitude of the impact of the love of Jesus Christ.
Our Vulnerability
At the core of the question of whether God is enough, is our fear of being vulnerable. Following God requires that we lay down our very lives. We give up the control of deciding our destiny and our fate, however horrific that may be (after all we are still at least in control), and we hand over the direction of our lives to God. This is particularly scary. Everything is out there in the open. The light of authenticity and truth shines on everything we desired to hide and even on the things we didn’t know we had. Everything is laid bare.
As we stand before God in our vulnerability, we can do so in confidence that God’s love remains supreme. Where God could have easily sought to ruin us because of our vulnerability, instead chose the act of mercy. Rather than be condemned, we are forgiven. Rather than sending us to the consequences of our sin, we are redeemed and clothed in righteousness. God sees us in our weakness, shame, and vulnerability yet loves us, offering us an eternal relationship with Him by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
