Giving Up The Fear of Not Being Enough

Why would they choose you?

What do you have to offer?

What makes you think that you could ever do that, especially with your past?!? 

These and other similar lies are questions that I have to believe all of us have thought at one time or another.  I see these kinds of doubts in myself. I see them in my friends. And perhaps more than anywhere, I see this play out in the lives of the young people I get to interact with.  There is this underlying question in our hearts:

Am I enough? 

In the question itself is where the fear lies. Fear that the answer is no and if that’s the case we’re back to that lonely place, that place of looking to what others think to find our worth. 

As I got to thinking about why this seems like such a universal fear, I realized that it probably comes out of the fact that, to some degree, it’s true. We AREN’T enough.  

God made all things and deemed them good.  Yet, as sin creeped into the world with that snake in the garden, it took with it our enough-ness.

No longer are we good enough… We see all the mistakes we’ve made.

No longer are we smart enough… We too, like Eve, get deceived by the serpent, Satan.

No longer are we brave enough or strong enough or thin enough or………… and the list goes on. 

And Satan can get us to believe those things because we really aren’t enough. 

BUT…

Our GOD is enough. He’s always been enough and always will be.  When I trust in His saving grace poured out from the cross, all those “not-enough” fears come untrue.  

Perhaps you’ve heard of the phrase “robe of righteousness”.  It sounds kind of “churchy” but it’s a perfect picture for this. Look at it this way, to be “righteous” or have “righteousness” means to be right with God, or perhaps in other words, to be enough. 

In our nature we are UNrighteous… NOT enough. But Jesus came to earth, takes away that “not-enough-ness” and covers us instead with a robe of righteousness, a robe of enoughness, you might say. With that covering any imperfection or hurt or pain or sin, when he looks at us, we now are enough!

The way we give up this fear that we’re not enough is to compare ourselves to God alone.  When we compare ourselves to others we will never measure up (or we become prideful and think we’re better than eveyone, also not a fun place to be). That’s the end of the story. 

When we measure ourselves against God and his standards, well, we don’t measure up there either… not even close! BUT there’s a Savior! He is MORE than enough and comes to make us new, to make us enough.

So now, the only real truth left on the table is that YOU ARE ENOUGH! 

You are smart enough, brave enough, strong enough, good enough! Because you’ve got Jesus’ ‘robe of enough-ness’ on!  No matter how frazzled or fearful you feel, wear that robe proudly today! You are enough!