Day 2984 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

Sufficient

If you're still reading these posts after all the topics and truths that have likely stung a little bit then you probably know that we talk about all of the things that we've gotten wrong quite often within these daily ponderings. And that's because there are plenty of them! We are in every way a very confused and disorganized and disgruntled people. We make far more mistakes than we care to admit. Get far more things wrong than anywhere close to right.

But there is one thing that we are absolutely correct about. One thing we have actually understood. One thing we have figured out. And that's that weakness is an insufficiency.

It's an insufficiency of strength. It's a failure to be enough in light of whatever situation or circumstance is being considered. It may be a physical incapacity to withstand some weight or pressure being pressed upon us. It might be a mental inability to consider or contemplate things that we've simply not learned or known anything about before. Or it could be a spiritual insufficiency that has us largely unable to grapple with the more difficult and demanding concepts and requirements of something like faith or belief.

But all in all, weakness is an insufficiency of some sort. It's our human limitations showing for all to see. It's our inabilities hindering something in some way. We are in fact often insufficient, not enough, inadequate, unable to fulfill the given requirements or expectations demanded by a situation.

That's hard for our ego to admit. Our arrogance is a force unlike many in that it can seemingly always find a way to convince us of something impossible, untrue or unrealistic. It blinds us to reality so that we needn't consider our inabilities nor actually work to address them. Arrogance is more than happy to allow our foundation to crumble so long as the exterior remains looking pretty.

It's that exterior perspective that's kind of what we've been talking about a little here recently. It's this misconception that looks are all that matter. It's this worldly perspective that has us looking in the mirror trying to see our identity, our worth, our purpose. It's this sad human condition in which we think beauty and value and strength and ability are all things that can be shown or seen.

But the truth is that there is far more going on under the surface and beneath the facade than there is to be viewed in a mirror or captured in a photograph or described by description.

And that's where the problem arises.

So much of our life has been given to portraying this image of perfection. That's what we discussed yesterday. It's this human inclination to think that we can earn something through our proving worthy of it. It's something that we've all had to do within this society in which we live. We've had to look just right, sound just right, wear the right clothes, buy the right brands, support the popular team and share the trending tags in order to glean the acceptance and awareness that we desire as evidence that we belong.

We do everything we can to exude this image of superiority thinking that if we can convince enough people that we're good, decent, upstanding, and strong then we can prove that we're worth their time and attention. And as that mindset has become our main understanding, it has been applied to everything. We've even apply it to our faith.

Deep down we know we don't deserve everything the Gospel teaches us. We don't deserve mercy. Don't deserve grace. Don't deserve a chance at being forgiven let alone saved from all the mistakes we've made. We know that we've failed to be anything close to the perfection and holiness that God not only asks for but indeed fully deserves.

We know we're not close. So we fall back to that way of life that's had at least some semblance of success in the past.

We focus on how it all looks. We pour ourselves into looking as good as we can. We take hold of that tired assumption that we can please God just as we've lived to please mankind. Say all the right things. Wear the best clothes. Seek to perfect the image of a perfect Christian, whatever it is that we think that looks like.

But the problem is that when the appearance is our focus, the unseen remains unaddressed. And the simple fact is that, just as I said above, there's far more beneath the surface than there is to be shown by the surface. The Lord Himself said this very thing to Samuel. "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Yet somehow we've missed that. We lost that truth behind all the others that we tend to focus on. We allowed that reminder to become insignificant as we've held tight to the worldly way of life that we've always known. And as such, we've kept putting forth this effort to make ourselves worthy of God, when in reality, our perfection, even if that were in any way attainable, would still prove insufficient for His love. And ultimately, the hearts at which God looks have been left unimproved as all our focus has been placed on trying to make our surface look sufficient.

But we’ve not realized that leaving our hearts unchanged and unchallenged has left them as they’ve always been.

We've all been born into the sins began by those before us. And as a result, we've grown and seen and walked amongst a world entirely filled with all of that insufficiency. God may have made us in His image, but humanity traded that image for an incomplete replica a long time ago. And when they did, they opened the door to a way of life that is entirely unacceptable in God's eyes. And it's that way of life that has taught us to look at the outward, to focus on that which is seen and to ignore anything and everything that might bring us shame.

And of what are we more ashamed than our weaknesses and inabilities and inconsistencies as the world has convinced us that they’re unwelcome insufficiencies? Those are the very things that we've always heard make us unacceptable, unworthy, unlovable. So for us to admit them, confront them, embrace them is a calling that requires a kind of humility largely lost on humanity.

Thankfully, there's a message like this found in 2 Corinthians. It's a reminder that our sufficiency, albeit nonexistent, isn't what saves us. Our ability to walk a perfect path of faith isn't what leads us home. Our willingness to be honest is what makes that home possible. Our courage to admit our flaws so that we can be truthful before God is what achieves our receiving of His mercy. Our embracing where we are helps us appreciate all that He did to help us leave where we are behind.

You see, sadly, that is something that's been lost on us. His mercy isn't for us to obtain. It's for us to receive. His love isn't some prize to be won through good deeds done in perfection. It's a gift given to those entirely unable to offer perfection. His grace is only grace because it's given to those who don't deserve it. And so for us to try so hard to deserve it is to do a disservice to the service that's been done for us.

Christ did not come to condemn, but to remind us that, through Him, condemnation is ended. He came to show us the very sad way in which we'd lived and to offer us a brand new beginning through the death of that old self and a rebirth into a new life spent following Him, serving Him, honoring Him. He came to wash away the old and herald in the new.

Our imperfections, our weaknesses, our insufficiencies are atoned for in Him and what He did for us.

And while our arrogance and desire to avoid the guilt and shame of what He had to go through on our behalf may try and convince us that we need to earn it, trying to earn it only seeks to strip it of its loving kindness. We can't live to put ourselves on His level by thinking we can earn our own salvation so that the pain He felt and the misery He endured and the death He died had nothing to do with us.

It was entirely for us. And to try and outwork that sacrifice is only akin to saying that we can do what He did. But we can't.

Friends, I know that we've been taught to abhor our weaknesses as the world tells us that they speak to our being unworthy and unwelcome. This place teaches us that only our strengths matter as only they have something to offer. But our faith tells us a much different story. It reminds us that it's our weaknesses that testify to God's mercy. It's our failures that prove His success upon the cross. And it's our cross that bears our testimony that we have been saved only by the love of God made manifest in Christ.

We don't honor God by pretending that we never needed Him. We honor Him by showing the world all that He did to help us overcome all we'd done in those old lives lost in this foolish effort to prove ourselves worthy of something. We are not worthy of anything, and that's the power of the Gospel. It's God coming down to earth to save a bunch of heathens who'd become far too worldly for their own good. It's God choosing to love us in spite of how much we didn't, and still don't deserve it.

It's God showing once and for all that He is bigger than us. That He is better than us. And that we are therefore unable to undo what He's decided to do. He chose us when we were still sinners living a kind of life that had led us impossibly far from where and what He created and called us to be. And it’s our weaknesses that prove that He is good because they prove just how far we’d fallen and just how far He came to bring us back to Himself.

Friends, our weaknesses may prove us worthless in the eyes of the world. But it's those weaknesses that prove us recipients of a kind of love this world knows nothing about. A love we don't need to earn, because we never could and never can. A love that isn't withheld from certain people, but that was poured out for all. A love that does not remember our transgressions nor holds them against us, but that came to take them off of us so that we could finally be what we could never be.

This world boasts in strength as it sadly thinks that human strength is enough to accomplish anything. And while humans may be able to do a great many things within this life within this world, there is one thing that we will never be able to do by ourselves or with our own strength. And that is make ourselves right in God's eyes. That is one thing that we've done too many wrongs to ever hope to accomplish.

Thankfully, it's not on us to accomplish, but simply to accept. Jesus did that for us. He atoned for all we've done against Him. Not because we were worthy or because He knew that we could somehow pay Him back. But because He knew we couldn't. And He simply loves us too much to allow us to go forever without knowing it. Even despite our clear weaknesses, He offers us His strength so that those weaknesses don't have to keep us apart from Him.

We will always be insufficient. But He is sufficient for us. He is enough for us. He is perfect for us. And it's not that we shouldn't try to do better, we absolutely should because He truly deserves it. But it's that our perfection shouldn't be the focus, the priority, the goal. Our only priority should be living in eternal gratitude for the One who did all we couldn't so that we could become all we never were. And we simply can't show Him our gratitude if we keep trying to find some other way to satisfy God's expectations.

It is through Christ alone that we are made right with God. Not our strength, but His. Not our perfection, but His. Not our sacrifice, because we're not worth what He is. So if the world wants to live boasting in their strengths, so be it. We should boast in what proves God loves us. And it's the fact that He died for us when we didn't deserve it that proves that best.

Our weaknesses may be worthless to the world around us. But they're the very weaknesses that show us best all that He's done to make up for what we could never do.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold