The new year, besides bringing copious amounts of green tea with lemon and honey to soothe the cold that always seems to come with the arrival of January 1st, brings a time of self reflection. And as I look at the last year- a year primarily defined b transitions, I found myself disappointed i myself. Not for anything specific, just feeling discouraged with where I’m at: not feeling like I have a purpose or direction, not feeling like I’m stewarding my gifts or my life well, not feeling like I”m good enough or worthy enough to be used by the Lord, and feeling guilty and inadequate for not being able to hack it in full time ministry.
Brennan Manning captured the heart of everything I was feeling in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel,
Sooner or later we are confronted with the painful truth of our inadequacy and insufficiency. Our security is shattered… Once the fervor has passed, weakness and infidelity appear. We discover our inability to add even a single inch to our spiritual stature. There begins a long winter of discontent that eventually flowers into gloom, pessimism, and subtle despair: subtle because it goes unrecognized, unnoticed, and therefore unchallenged. It takes the form or boredom, drudgery. We are overcome by the ordinariness of life, b daily duties done over and over again… We start acting like everyone else. Life takes on a joyless, empty quality… Something is radically wrong.
Enter Jesus.
Someone once said, “To be disappointed in yourself is to have believed in yourself.” That’s exactly where I’m at. Wishing I was worthy. And yet, it is in the depths of my unworthiness that God meets me. At the foot of the cross, where He took my sin, my shame, the pride that carried me here. At the foot of the cross, where their power over me was obliterated.
And there lies a beautiful mystery that I will never understand. The greatest injustice- a perfect sacrifice- to avenge God’s justice for all time. Hebrews 10:10, “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all.”
I’m grateful that coming back to that truth again and again will always yield the same result: a steadfast God that would give anything, and has given everything, to know me. That is a truth I can build my life upon. Because for all eternity, Jesus will be enough for my inadequacies. And that is the springboard for the rest of my life.
