A couple years ago while hosting a women’s retreat, we set out adult coloring pages that had encouraging words written with beautiful fonts and fleury backgrounds to color in. One of the pages touted “You are Enough”. It just didn’t sit well with me in the moment.
I’ve continued to see various memes of this sentiment, sometimes even scrolled with other truthful statements like “you are beautiful”, “you are worthy”. And this past summer, most of the world got to chuckle at the amusing “I am Kenough” from the Barbie movie. One of my friends shared with me that she drives by a church near her home that has “you are enough’ on their signage outside.
You are enough. I am enough. An easy motto to repeat over and over. I’ve even come across some catchy, empowering songs on Spotify with this title to get you motivated and hyped up, exclaiming: “this is my jam!” And you know what? It IS helpful in moments. I can dig deep, pull through, and discover in some moments that I am enough, I had what it takes. That I had the courage to speak up; or the ability to bite my tongue. That I could study hard enough to pass the exam, or press on long enough to finish the project.
Did you know that if you repeat anything enough, whether it’s a truth or a lie, it becomes true to you?
These words seem so true, and they are everywhere, but are they really true? What happens though when reality hits hard, and reveals how not enough we are?
We don’t have enough energy to handle the people or situations in our lives
We don’t have enough intelligence or wisdom to know if we are making the right decision
We don’t have enough information, despite all the information the world can offer right at our fingertips
We don’t have enough patience, or control, or_________________ (fill in the blank)
We do have a lot, sometimes more than we realize, but what happens when we hit that limit? Where do we go?
The best place to go is to God and His word. God says we are a lot of things, but one of them that we are not, is enough.
You are not enough.
You are complete in Christ (Col. 2:10), you are loved (Rom. 5:8), you are known (1 Corin 13:12), you are assured all things work together for your good (Rom. 8:28), you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength (Phil 4:13), etc… But the fact that we are not enough, and the fact that we are any of these other things in Christ, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, unless we know who God is.
A book that has really helped me grasp the character of God is None Like Him by Jen Wilkin. The first character of God that Jen highlights is that God is infinite. She shares how we love to measure things as humans, it give us a sense of control and a level of comfort. When we measure something we can know it’s limit and what to do about it or with it. We can measure just about everything in our world. I love that! In college, I pursued a chemistry major along with a math minor and I continually enjoy that everything can be assigned a number: temperature (its 32 F outside and 80% chance of snow), time (its 10 am), distance (it’s about 1.2 miles from the campus to our house), membership (there are 18 relatives on my side of the family and around 250 relatives on my husband’s side). But have you ever considered that we cannot measure God?
Job 11:7-9: Can you find out the deep things of God?
Can you find out the limit to the Almighty?
There is no limit to Him, and therefore He cannot be measured.
Ps. 145:3 Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.
Unsearchable, which means He is unmeasureable.
Isa 40:12-13 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?
13 Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord,
or instruct the Lord as his counselor?
As Jen writes, “put succinctly, who has measured everything? God has. Who has measured God? No one.”
If you think about, the concept of “Am I enough”, is a term of measurement. Have I measured up?
Jen goes on to write “Our whole lives as Christ-followers are to be given over to the identification and celebration of the limits God has ordained for us. He lovingly teaches them to us through his Word, through trials, through discipline. He humbles us through these means to remind us that we are not him, nor is anyone or anything else we know.”
Before I read this book, I was aware of several places I was limited. But after reading this book and looking at the character of God that she develops in this book, I realized there isn’t one single aspect of my life where I am NOT limited. God has placed limits on every single thing in our lives and in our created world, because only He is limitless, only He is self-sufficient, only He is enough.
If I were enough, I wouldn’t need a Savior. If you were enough, you wouldn’t need a Savior either. There is a danger in this phrase “I am enough” because it sets me up to be my own mini-god. I may as well exclaim “I am God.” I am effectively saying that I don’t need God because I am enough. Where it’s the opposite that is true, I need God because I am not enough. My limits are given to me by God so that I will go to Him, first for salvation and then to continue to go to Him, every day, to experience Him, to do life with Him! You are not enough and it’s a good, good thing, because it’s an invitation to come to God, again and again.
When you feel anxious or overwhelmed, those emotions are a warning indicator that you have reached a limit in your life. It’s similar to a warning light or beep in your car. You could ignore it and push through and risk your car falling apart, or you could take it in to a mechanic. We also can either try to push through and risk collapsing under the weight of anxiety, or we can go to God.
There’s a viral video on instagram I saw a while back that encouraged me greatly. I don’t know anything about her except that her name is Athena Avellanet. It was a mic drop moment for me as I hadn’t made the connections before that she shared. She shares it better than I could, so please take a quick watch:
If you aren’t familiar with these stories, or even if you are, I encourage you to take a moment to look them up.
Moses had a staff
The woman had jars and a little bit of oil
The disciples had five loaves and two fish
The staff was not enough. The oil and jars were not enough. The five loaves and two fish were not enough. But… they were offered to God, and they became more than enough.
God takes what we have, and He makes it more than enough.
What do you have? Or as Athena put it, “Whatchu got?”
Do you have time? Offer it to Him.
Do you have a desire for hospitality and a dorm room or a small apartment? Offer it to Him.
Do you have a heart that wants to see your friends come to Jesus? Offer it to Him.
Offer to Him what you got, and see what He can do with it. And keep doing it.
Even though I’ve been in ministry for a long time, and by now I have a lot of experience and skill, I still have to keep offering what I have back to God.
Two recentish stories:
One girl I disciple had a bad attitude that I knew I needed to address when we met for our 1×1 the next morning. Despite discipling women for over 25 years, I was really unsure on how to go about it. I prayed, but didn’t sense God giving me any kind of direction. I felt so limited, despite my experience. I offered myself to God, I offered my experience and wisdom, and waited on the Holy Spirit to guide me. When she showed up for our 1×1, she opened the conversation talking about her bad attitude, her struggle with trying to change it, and in that moment, I had a clear picture from the Holy Spirit on how to help her walk towards freedom in her attitude.
A few weeks later I met with a different girl who drained me completely that day. I had another 1×1 right afterwards. (I usually try to not schedule immediate 1×1’s back to back, but it was a reschedule due to holiday conflicts.) My next 1×1 showed up and I was struggling to engage her. My girl noticed and asked if I was okay, which I wasn’t, and then prayed for me. As she prayed, I felt the heaviness I felt for the first girl lift. That feeling of overwhelm was an indicator of my limitation. Despite all my skill and knowledge, I don’t have enough or know enough to help her. I struggled with that limitation, seeing her brokenness and wanting desperately to help her.
But only Jesus is fully enough, not me. As the saying goes, she needs a Savior and I’m not it. But what do I have? I have a heart that longs to help girls know and love God. I have years of experience and knowledge. It’s not enough, but I can offer it to God, and He can use it to minister to others. This was true for me way back when I first started discipling girls and it will be true if I get to keep discipling for another 25 years. Even when I first started discipling girls and I had no idea what I was doing, whenever I offered what little I had to Him, He showed up and I got to have a front row seat to God at work and be a part of it!
On a daily basis, I am met with how I am not enough to meet the tasks at hand. I don’t have enough energy and time to keep up with two small children, take care of a house, and work in campus ministry. I can never get my to-do list done; some days I can’t even get it started! When I was in college, I struggled then with trying to get everything done. But usually my problem was putting way too much on my to-do list. I would be so productive at the start of the week, but by Wednesday I would run out of energy and then not be as productive by the end of the week. That constant in-my-face limitation kept drawing me back to God. Because I looked for a sense of worth/value in my accomplishments, I would subconsciously think “if I can get everything done, then I am valuable”. God made sure I couldn’t get everything done, despite how hard I tried, so I would come to Him to get my value and worth from Him and Him alone. Because He knows that accomplishments can never fully satisfy. Only He can satisfy my longing to know that I am valuable.
When we are frustrated with our limitations, and feel anxious or overwhelmed, is the answer to remind ourselves “you are enough”? I won’t deny it can help, hence the reason for it’s popularity. There is more we can do, can offer, can get through. We are more resilient and capable than we realize. HOWEVER, those thoughts can only help us to a point. There is a limit to how enough we can be. As Athena said in her video, we are not enough and that’s the point.
Thankfully there is an answer! We can:
* recognize our limitations as invitations to come to Jesus
* come to Him to know what He says about who we are in His Word
* come to Him know Who He is, and then it makes what He says about us actually matter.
Knowing God makes knowing what He says about us so much more than a fancy scrolled, feel good word on a pretty background. It makes it a fulfilling, life altering, sustaining word of truth.
A few reflection questions you can use if they would be helpful to you to ponder this further:
- Where are you currently feeling frustrated, anxious or overwhelmed?
- What limitation are those emotions indicating?
- How might Jesus be inviting you to come to Him through your limitation?
- Where is God in this? How is He enough, more than enough, to handle that limitation?
- “Whatchu got” that you can give to Him?
God has limited us on purpose. Our culture tells us to “push the limits and break through” yet God has limited us on purpose. When we look to Jesus as the only Unlimited One, we can begin to accept our limitations as gifts, see 2 Corinthians 12:9-10.
Art of Discipleship 