You Are Enough

There is this version of Christianity that far too many of us can't seem to shake.  It's the version where you have to fix everything that is wrong with you before God can love you.  

Maybe you have had some experience with that version.  Lord knows I have.  

The funny thing about that version of Christianity is that no matter how much you think you left it behind, at some point it seems to find its way back into your way of moving and being in the world. 

Back when I was a kid, it was a straightforward kind of thing.  If you didn't strive toward holiness (which meant abstaining from most of the fun things in life) all of the time, because your eternal soul was in peril.  

Even when I got older and realized that most of the fun things in life were fun because we were meant to enjoy them reasonably and well, I couldn't shake that feeling that I wasn't doing enough to make God love me. 

So many of us hang on to that aspect of the tired, old version of Christianity we thought we abandoned.  And we do everything we can to work hard enough, do enough good deeds, and the like in hopes that we'll finally pass muster. 

And when we do this, we almost always lose sight of the power of God's love, and how that love changes us if we will let it.  

Author Sarah Bessey recently wrote: 

Love can and does and will transform us in every way—our ideology, our opinions, our habits, our values, our priorities, our very names.  But it’s not a prerequisite or a requirement, it’s not behavior modification, it never is, not for Love. 

The fact of the matter is that there is no amount of work that we could do on our own that will ultimately tip us in the direction of true transformation. Only love can do that--the kind of love that God demonstrates by becoming one of us in order to rescue all of us.  

The good news for us is that we don't have to have everything sorted out before we experience this love, or even to benefit from it if we can't fully understand it.  There's nothing you can do to earn that love.  It simply is.  God simply is.  

If you've been spinning your wheels lately trying to get everything in your life fixed before you step out in faith on your journey after Jesus, quit it. 

All that you need to do is realize you are loved by the One who is pure Love.  Let this realization wash over you like a cool breeze, and may it bring you joy and peace that defies explanation.  You are enough just as you are.  Love will do the work if you let it. 

I hope you all know that as I write these devotions every single day, I'm writing to myself first.  I need to hear them just as much as anyone else.  And as I write, I find just a bit more courage to live more fully into what I'm writing.  

This is the way.  

May it be so for you today and every day going forward, and may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.