You Are Enough

If you’re anything like me, you have times in your life in which you wonder if you are enough.  Am I good enough?  Do I make enough money to support my family?  Do I excel at my job?  Do my friends like me?  Am I a good husband/father?  And if you are really honest, am I good enough for God to love me? 

It’s human nature.  Most of the time, we are our own harshest critics.  We compare ourselves to others and think that we can never live up to what we see in the person next to us.  The problem is we don’t see the full picture of the person we are comparing ourselves to.  Think about it.  When you compare yourself to someone else, it’s like looking at their highlight reel and comparing that to all of your negatives, because we only see what that person shows publicly.

One of two things happens when we do this.  We either see people that we constantly think are better than us, thus pulling ourselves down into negative, depressive thoughts.  Or we go to the complete opposite side, and try to find people that we think we are better than.  “Well, I’ve never done that, so I’m in pretty good shape”. 

If we fall into this trap, as Christ followers, one other thing happens.  We start thinking that we have to earn God’s love and salvation.  It becomes a balancing act.  We look at all the negative things in our life, and try to make sure we have more positive things to outweigh the negative.  When we do that, salvation, and a relationship with God becomes dependent on us, not Him.  In other words, we make it more about us than Him.

We think we are either good enough that we are going to earn God’s love, or we look at ourselves in such a negative light that we think that God could never love or care about someone like us.  Neither are correct.  We cannot earn God’s love.  He loves all of us equally.  In His eyes, we are enough.  That doesn’t mean He’s not concerned with our sin.  Of course He is.  But we can never earn that forgiveness.  It is freely given through a relationship with Jesus.

Through that relationship, we should be changed.  We should continue to strive to be better, to be more Christ like, not because we have to earn God’s love, but because we love God and we know He loves us.  Whether you are a Christ follower or not, I want you to pay close attention to these next few words.  God loves you.  He wants a relationship with you.  You can never earn His love.  It is free.  But you can turn from His love by not accepting His Son, and by not repenting of your sin.

You are enough.  God’s love for you makes that possible.  He just wants what is best for all of us.  I want to share two passages with you. 

John 3:16 states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” 

Paul writes in Romans 5:6-8, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Stop trying to do this on your own.  Stop comparing yourselves to others.  God loves you.  He sent His Son to die for your sin.  Give Him your life.  That’s what really matters in this life.