sufficiency.

February 12, 2011

Lately I’ve been confronted by my own inadequacies.  I’ve been  doing my best to juggle various activities and homework and a job and people and my relationship with the Lord, and the truth is, I don’t always do it so gracefully.  In fact, I drop a lot of balls.

I get overwhelmed, I get discouraged, and the devil creeps into my thoughts, seeking to attack every weakness (and there are several).  Lately that has looked a lot like: FAILURE.  Being convinced that I will fail.  That it’s no use trying, because ultimately I will not succeed.  And, hey, look at the people all around you, they are doing a lot better than you are.  They’ve got it together.  They’ll be okay.  But you’re not like them. You can’t do it…  It gets old very quickly.  I get weary.  And I start to become convinced of these lies that seek my destruction.

Praise the Lord, though, for His faithfulness to speak truth to me through His word!  I have encountered this blessing several times recently, the first coming through Luke 18:9-14.  Here Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector who go into the temple to pray.  The Pharisee looks around him and says something like, “God, thank you that I am not like them, the sinners all around me.  I have done good things for you.”  But the tax collector could not even lift his eyes to heaven.  His prayer was humble and simplistic, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  And the tax collector went away justified before God.

What I see here is that the Pharisee came before the Lord boasting, because he was comparing himself to the people around him, and thought that he was doing pretty well.  But the hidden sin of his heart was PRIDE.  The tax collector, on the other hand, saw himself in relation to the Lord rather than others recognized his complete and utter depravity before a HOLY God and begged God to have mercy on him.  HE had it right.  ”For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted,” (vs. 14).

2 Corinthians 3

“Are we beginning to commend ourselves again?” (vs. 1)  Oh, let us never commend ourselves!  For “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.  Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant…” (vs. 4-6).

I take great comfort in the fact that my sufficiency comes from an all-powerful God, not my feeble heart.  I don’t have to do or be anything great.  But I can ask big things of a big God who desires to work in and through me.  AND he will make me competent to do His work, to love and serve and share truth and light with the people around me.  Which is ultimately all that matters.

Lastly, encouragement in Psalm 143:11-12

“For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life!

In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!
And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies,

and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul,

for I am your servant.”