God's love for me is enough. I didn’t always believe this, and I don’t always believe this now. This is the part of faith that I miss out on the most. This is the part of faith that I scarcely have a hold on. Faith enough to believe that God’s love for me is enough.
I continuously seek out things to make me feel enough. I need to pastor better, work harder, find success, be a good husband, be a good dad, hold fast to my commitments. Because if I do these things then, I can see that God might be “ok” with me. If I do “the right things” I can think that perhaps God won’t send me to a fiery demise. But all of those things . . . ALL of them, are like a noisy cymbal in the ears of my creator if I don’t first see that his love for me is real and that it is all I need.
Being a good pastor, worker, husband, father and “oath keeper” are all great things, they genuinely are. My motivation behind them however is what determines whether they are right or if perhaps it’s just a mask that I put on to disguise the broken person I don’t want to admit to being. Trying to be good to earn a place at my father's table, to disguise the person I believe I am. All the while my father just wants me to know him and to enter into an honest relationship with him. One where I remove my mask and peel back the layers of fig leaves I’ve used to cover myself with and stand before him unconcerned about my nakedness, unaware of it because it’s the most natural thing.
He desires communion with me as he created it to be. A place where I steward/manage what he has placed before me, not so he will love me or so I can be worthy but rather as a reaction to the truth that he loves me and created me as worthy. The belief that I have value and that God's love for me is real and enough is what will cause me to find true rest, real peace and to move, live and behave as a good manager of the things placed before me.
The Bible illustrates how detrimental not seeing “God’s love as enough” has been for us through the story of Adam and Eve. In the story humanity, is convinced that if we do this thing you will be like God, "eat this fruit and you'll be like God" (Genesis 3:5). The truth is we believed the lie that something we do, could “make us like God” when according to that same story, we are already created in the image of God. We are already “like God”. He has accepted us right where we are because he created us to be accepted, valued and loved by him.
Sin; the things that separate us from God is simply doing things in such a way that we deny God’s existence love for us right where we are. “Sin” is pursuing a life of selfish ambitions and selfish gains over a life of receiving and reflecting God’s love. He loves us because we are his creation, not because we do or do not do. We walk away from his love, he does not withhold it from us. We leave him and wander through life like the prodigal son trying to live out our inheritance selfishly. We are doing good only to make us feel good or to cover up our belief that we are not worthy of God’s love. We go about seeking “happiness” or “chasing our dreams”. We think that if we find happiness or make our dreams come true, that is when we will be worthy or have value but these are desires of selfish vanity that will only bear good fruit in your life for a short time. We are offered joy, peace and love through relationship with God through Jesus, these are not things we find in the search for happiness or dream chasing. The Violent Femmes have a song on their “Freak Magnet” album called “Happiness Is” the lyrics are as follows. . .
“I don't know what one means by happy
I'm happy spasmodically
If I eat a chocolate turtle I'm happy
When the box is empty I'm unhappy
When I get another box
I'm happy again
Happiness is a word for amateurs”
Happiness is fleeting and based around whether the situations in our life look like what we think they ought to look like or not, and the second our life doesn't match up to our selfish expectations we lose the so called happiness.
The truth is that the more we seek after selfish gain, whether it be living to climb the corporate ladder or doing good to make ourselves feel better the more lost we become. As we become even more lost, the further we distance ourselves from God’s open arms of love.
The point is this: if we are honest with ourselves (I, you, we) all want to be accepted, loved, valued, and and found worthy, but there is no need to search for it. It’s always been there and is still there waiting for you at the end of the road with open arms, ready to throw a party to rejoice that you have come home and accepted your Father’s love. A good life isn’t found in trying to be good but rather recognizing that He who is good desires you above all else.
~josh evans