You are not enough, God is

People on social media have taken to permanently inking their bodies with these three simple words “I am enough”. The idea is that if people see it, it will start a conversation about how they think that they are good enough so, you know, who cares what everybody else thinks.

I really had to dig to find out where this idea came from because, let me tell you, it is not found in scripture.

With a quick Google search, I found hundreds of articles, websites, and books each one saying what that particular author thinks the bible says about me not feeling like I’m enough.

Well here’s the bad news:

I’m not enough and no matter how much you all proof-text random bible verses, I will never be enough.

You won’t either.

Let me clarify, proof-texting is when you take a verse and tweak it to mean what you want it to mean. Some preachers do this every single week and we need to always be aware of it (Matthew 7:15). That is one of the reasons why you need to be in your bible, reading and absorbing everything it has to say each and every day.

But here’s the thing, I can take all these different verses that were written to different people and make them fit what I want it to say but it just doesn’t work.

Here’s the ugly truth: You’re not enough. I’m not enough. No one is enough.

You’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You're not pretty enough. You’re not strong enough. You’re not nice enough. You’re not anything enough.

You are not enough. Period.

That’s a hard reality to come to terms with. Nobody wants to hear how much they don’t measure up (I am chief among them) but it’s the truth.

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to be enough because God is more than enough.

2 Corinthians 12:9

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (ESV)

I don’t have to be enough because, in my weakness, God’s power is made perfect. He is way more than enough to cover how insufficient I am.

This cultural ideology has been perpetuated by our version of our identities. That identity can be found in a spouse, a child, a job, a talent, an athletic ability, a group of friends, a net worth calculator, a status, a social media friend count, a 401(k) balance, a hobby, anything.

For example, If I find my identity in my work, I am going to turn that into something I worship. I will put too much time into it, I will ignore the needs of my family, I will choose it over spending personal time with God, I will lose sleep because of it, I will put it before my personal needs, and so on. If I find my identity in the people I socialize with (or date), I will be utterly devastated when one leaves, moves, betrays me, or chooses another over me.

Trust me, I’ve been in both situations.

What to do if you find your identity in the things of this world:

Turn back to God.

Ethan was teaching youth group the other day and he had these four points on the powerpoint: follow me (leave the life of sin you’ve been living and choose to be covered in grace), leave your life of sin (leave your desires behind and follow Jesus), you’re a hypocrite (turn away from your pattern of intentional, willful sin), and feed my sheep (discipleship - full time or otherwise). The idea of this lesson was that we each find ourselves in one or several of these categories. His challenge was to decide which of these categories we are in right now.

As I talked through these with some of the girls, I began to think about how we are literally in this cycle daily (did you notice in the last lesson that I like patterns? Here’s another one). We have to intentionally choose to follow God every single day just like we have to choose to leave our dead lives of sin behind and then choose to completely turn away from our willful sins as the hypocrites had to. Then, we have to intentionally choose to invite that friend at work to come to church, or even to have that tough conversation with a friend or spouse living in a pattern of willful sin.

Everything that we do should be done with intentionality. That’s how God designed it.

See, when I become enough for me and my life, I turn my life into a checklist. I come up with an exact timeline of what I am going to do and when I am going to do it. I achieve a few and I suddenly start worshiping this timeline of the way I think my life should go. When something happens and the timeline is altered or stopped, I panic.

Remember what 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

But in remembering that God is more than sufficient for our mistakes and sins, remember that Romans 6:1-4 commands us not to continue in our life of sinfulness just because there is grace to cover it:

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Just because Jesus died on the cross for our sins that does not give us the right to continue on in our life of willful, intentional sin. We need to be reading our bibles, praying, learning, and constantly worshipping Our Creator, the only one who can actually ever be enough to cover our mistakes.

Let’s end today by reading the following truths:

You are loved (John 3:16), you are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27 - Imago Dei), you are adopted into God’s family (Romans 8:7), you are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14) but you are not enough (2 Corinthians 12:9).