Enough

Summer is over.  The school year has started.  My house is quiet, too quiet if you ask me.  

I am left alone with time to think, time to reflect.  

For me, this was a summer of not enough.  There wasn’t enough of all the things you think summer should be.  We did our family vacation back in March so we didn’t really go anywhere “fun” this summer, there wasn’t enough travel.  The weather was a little cooler than a typical Kansas summer and there wasn’t enough time at the pool.  My kids have reached the age where they are wanting to do their own thing, pick their own camps, hang with their friends and there just wasn’t enough family time.

This was also a hard summer for me spiritually.  I was overcome with this feeling of not enough.  I began to feel as though my worship wasn’t enough, my prayer life wasn’t enough, my sacrifices weren’t enough.  Nothing I did was enough. 

I understand full well there is nothing I can do to “earn” God’s love or my salvation.  I get this, really, I do!  But this summer I have been struck by this idea that He is wanting more from me.  That the measly little things (time, money, attention, thoughts) I give him are not nearly enough.  He is my God, my Father and my creator.  He deserves EVERYTHING!  And I tend to give Him not nearly enough.  

I have lived with this tension all summer of knowing there is nothing I can do, say or give to make God love me more, yet unsatisfied with where I am.

I look at the red-hot-on-fire love the 1st century church had for Christ and then I look at this lukewarm, sometimes-barely-tepid love our 21st century church has, and they look NOTHING alike!!  And I am left thinking we have gotten it all wrong, that I have gotten it all wrong!

I look at what the “Christian” world does, the things they say and how they act and I find no comparison to it when I look at the scriptures. 

And then, just recently, in this last week of summer, God has put on my heart the entirety of the lesson He has been teaching me.  I was right.  My worship, my prayer life, my sacrifices are NOT enough.  They aren’t.  

They never will be.  

But His grace IS enough.

This has been my lesson this summer.  

Jesus’ grace has got me covered.  

I am not enough.  My worship is not enough. The time I give Him is not enough. The finances we give are not enough.  He deserves constant on my knees worship, with heart and hands wide open all the time! Not just on Sunday morning, when I like the song and am feeling the Spirit!  He deserves ALL my time.  He deserves all my finances, resources and talents.  He has promised he will provide all my needs, why would I ever doubt that?  Why would I hold so tightly to what he has given me, refusing to share it like a spoiled child?  He deserves all my thoughts and all my attention, he longs to take my worries and my troubles from me, yet I INSIST on keeping them for myself. Why?

I thought this summer was a summer of not enough.  And it has left me wanting to try harder to give him enough, to give him what I know He deserves.  But the thing is I can’t.  I won’t ever be able to give God what God deserves.  It’s just not possible, he deserves so much more than I could ever give.

He knows that; he knows I am not enough.  But He also knows that I love him (even when I don’t show it very well), so he sent his Son.  A Son who gives me grace; who teaches me  and draws me closer to Him each day.

There is still a tension I feel.  I don’t want to rely so heavily on His grace that I spend more time focused on the world than on God.  I don’t want to be so confident in His grace that I’m not continually growing and moving toward Him.  There is a tension between living the best life you can live and knowing that in the end only God’s grace will ever be enough.

So maybe this hasn’t been a summer of not enough after all.  Maybe this has been a summer of just enough.  This has been a summer of grace.  And God’s grace is always enough.