What is 'enough'?

Some ponderings which I shared at a breakfast I hosted last month:

Enough

There is never enough. Enough time. Enough money. Enough fulfilling relationships. Enough opportunities. Enough love.

1 Corinthians 13

Has anyone ever felt guilty for feeling they want more? More of what?

We live with the guilty feelings that we are not, have not, do not do...enough. Guilty, because we know we OUGHT to feel happy.

But God says to our hearts:

You were enough.

You did enough with what you had.

2 Thessalonians 1:1-2The Message (MSG)

I, Paul, together with Silas and Timothy, greet the church of the Thessalonian Christians in the name of God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ. Our God gives you everything you need, makes you everything you’re to be.

Ephesians 1:7-10The Message (MSG)

^7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

Living Bible ⁷ So overflowing is his kindness toward us that he took away all our sins through the blood of his Son, by whom we are saved; ⁸ and he has showered down upon us the richness of his grace—for how well he understands us and knows what is best for us at all times.

This is why Paul is able to say:

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.  Philippians 4:11 – 13

The Message: I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.

How do we ‘learn’ to be ‘content’ – not yearning for more, whatever ‘more’ looks like in each of our lives?

The clue is in the preceding verses: (The Message, Philippians 4)

Live in the present

Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!

^6-7 Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Focus on the good.

^8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

Be thankful.

Thankfulness focuses our hearts off ourselves and on to God, as we look at what we HAVE rather than what we have not.

Thankfulness makes us appreciate God’s gifts to us more.

Thankfulness changes our emotional state away from unhappiness and discontent.

Recognise the truth in our circumstances.

Taking a long, hard look at the situation gives us clarity and helps us to distinguish the blessings.

Identifying truth helps identify lies which stop us from being content.

Determine to press forward, not look back.

Worship: which, as Lysa Terkeust says, is 'the best battle plan'.

http://proverbs31.org/devotions/devo/the-best-battle-plan/  Lysa Terkeust

Romans 12: 1 – 2 The Message

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

RT Kendall speaks to us about enough: and how to get more of God.

He reminds us of AW Tozer's words: you can have as much of God as you want. You can have more of the Holy Spirit.

How? Simple, really: 

Get to know Him:

Study God’s word.

Spend time in prayer.

We need more than just common grace, which is God’s goodness to all mankind. We need God's special, Holy Spirit grace, expressed through the gifts of the Spirit:

1 Corinthians 12:31  “Earnestly desire the greater gifts. I will show you the most excellent way.” The smallest, the least desirable, the most embarrassing. Desire more of God. The way forward is to practise love.

So love. Be a nobody. Tear up the record of wrongs. Stop pointing the finger at others. Forgive TOTALLY and PRAY FOR those who have hurt me. Aspire to be more like Jesus, aspire to know God for HIS sake, not mine: NOT for what it will do for me.

                                                                                                                 

There is joy in suffering – RT Kendall calls it ‘dignifying the trial’. ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ Face suffering and persecution and keep quiet about it, that I might know God. Love ‘endures all things’.  Seek after the fruit of the spirit with intensity, waiting for God’s gifts.

And yet we fail to do this. Success seems remote: for who are we, so far short of perfect? As the rap artist Propaganda says, in his 'Gospel in 4 minutes': "You think you can heap up all your good deeds to reach His perfecion? GOOD LUCK!" 

Mary de Muth, author, says: “I also need to redefine success. I have to come to grips with the fact that I will never be the "it girl" speaker or author. But I can be faithful in small things, and that's all He really asks, right?

• Make the integrity choice when no one's looking.
• Serve the person in front of you.
• Take a moment to pray for a friend. Send a note of encouragement.
• Call that frustrated child.
• Remember that the world isn't about you, but it's about serving and the crazy upside down kingdom.
• Do unnoticed things with joy.
• Count your blessings even when things didn't go the way you wanted them to. There is ALWAYS something to be grateful for because we serve and love a gracious God.

I'd love to be able to drone on and on about all the victories, but that wouldn't be honest. More honest is this: perhaps the Christian life isn't about our personal success, but about our willingness to grow and keep taking the next step when things "fail."

Besides, only God knows the Kingdom metric. One small obedience, one dose of trust, one ounce of faith trumps all the spectacular, showy shows that we tend to equate with victory. I want to "win" at faithfulness in small things. It would be a tragedy if I won at external big things, but remained faithless in the background.

And as I think of Elijah and his stunning victory, followed by desperation so deep he wanted to die, I'm reminded that God loved him in both places. That's a comfort for all of us, isn't it? Whether winning or losing, joyful or depressed, succeeding or failing, God's constant love undergirds us all.

My friend Richard emailed this week and simply wrote, "Know that you're loved." He reminded me that I am loved by God, and that, my friends, is the sweetest victory.”

Remember: when we aren’t enough, can’t do enough...God loves us.

Life is becoming simpler, friends. I can pursue God in Bible study, chase after answers to my prayers, yet everything can be summed up in the words of the song: “Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so...”

I cling to, rest in, rely on, draw strength from Jesus’ love, looking to Him to supernaturally sustain me, provide for me, and reassure me that I AM enough. Because of Him.

And when I feel I don’t have, am not, cannot be enough... I remember who I am: a child of God, daughter of the King... and I straighten my crown. Because my heavenly Father and my brother Jesus provide for and make me enough.

And, some final thoughts from the apostle John, who wrote over and over about the Love:

 

1 John 2 The Message 

2 ^1-2 I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When he served as a sacrifice for our sins, he solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s.

The Only Way to Know We’re in Him

^2-3 Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep his commandments.

^4-6 If someone claims, “I know him well!” but doesn’t keep his commandments, he’s obviously a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the one who keeps God’s word is the person in whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived.

^7-8 My dear friends, I’m not writing anything new here. This is the oldest commandment in the book, and you’ve known it from day one. It’s always been implicit in the Message you’ve heard. On the other hand, perhaps it is new, freshly minted as it is in both Christ and you—the darkness on its way out and the True Light already blazing!

^9-11 Anyone who claims to live in God’s light and hates a brother or sister is still in the dark. It’s the person who loves brother and sister who dwells in God’s light and doesn’t block the light from others. But whoever hates is still in the dark, stumbles around in the dark, doesn’t know which end is up, blinded by the darkness.

Loving the World

^12-13 I remind you, my dear children: Your sins are forgiven in Jesus’ name. You veterans were in on the ground floor, and know the One who started all this; you newcomers have won a big victory over the Evil One.

^13-14 And a second reminder, dear children: You know the Father from personal experience. You veterans know the One who started it all; and you newcomers—such vitality and strength! God’s word is so steady in you. Your fellowship with God enables you to gain a victory over the Evil One.

^15-17 Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

Antichrists Everywhere You Look

¹⁸ Children, time is just about up. You heard that Antichrist is coming. Well, they’re all over the place, antichrists everywhere you look. That’s how we know that we’re close to the end.

¹⁹ They left us, but they were never really with us. If they had been, they would have stuck it out with us, loyal to the end. In leaving, they showed their true colors, showed they never did belong.

^20-21 But you belong. The Holy One anointed you, and you all know it. I haven’t been writing this to tell you something you don’t know, but to confirm the truth you do know, and to remind you that the truth doesn’t breed lies.

^22-23 So who is lying here? It’s the person who denies that Jesus is the Divine Christ, that’s who. This is what makes an antichrist: denying the Father, denying the Son. No one who denies the Son has any part with the Father, but affirming the Son is an embrace of the Father as well.

^24-25 Stay with what you heard from the beginning, the original message. Let it sink into your life. If what you heard from the beginning lives deeply in you, you will live deeply in both Son and Father. This is exactly what Christ promised: eternal life, real life!

^26-27 I’ve written to warn you about those who are trying to deceive you. But they’re no match for what is embedded deeply within you—Christ’s anointing, no less! You don’t need any of their so-called teaching. Christ’s anointing teaches you the truth on everything you need to know about yourself and him, uncontaminated by a single lie. Live deeply in what you were taught.

Live Deeply in Christ

²⁸ And now, children, stay with Christ. Live deeply in Christ. Then we’ll be ready for him when he appears, ready to receive him with open arms, with no cause for red-faced guilt or lame excuses when he arrives.

²⁹ Once you’re convinced that he is right and righteous, you’ll recognize that all who practice righteousness are God’s true children.