Sufficiently Insufficient

God's been impressing to me in the past year or so how insufficient I am. Despite the talents, despite the track record, despite my own optimism, I am insufficient. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, in fact I'm still optimistic about it. But it's amazing that God would bring that realization to me because it wouldn't be natural to dwell on that fact otherwise! He's making me more and more insufficient every day!

Really, the main thing God wants from us is to realize that we are insufficient (we can't save ourselves from impending doom) and that He IS sufficient, and to give up and turn to Him.

Here's how I'm insufficient:

• I couldn't come to God on my own. I'm thankful that He placed me in a Christian family who raised me in a Christian environment. He could have just as easily made me Muslim or a fierce secular atheist. Remember those people are in His plan too, so I'm increasingly thankful that He didn't make me one of those. (Not like the pharisee, who thanked God that he didn't act like the tax-collector.) God pulled me to Himself, and I don't know why I preferred "right-ness" over pleasure.


• My psychological make-up seems to be all the tools with no hand -- insufficient to accomplishing "successful things" without God's direction. I seem to have talent but don't know how to use it, or don't want to. Why? I don't know. It's just that way, but God's direction gives me what I lack. I can be a competitive person.


• I can't do good on my own. Jesus paid for my sin, but even though I'm on the right path, I can't stay on the right path by myself. If I could lose my salvation, I would have long ago! But thanks be to God, who loves me so much He can't let me go!


• I can't give anyone but God credit that I know Him and that I believe what actually is the truth. There is no way I could have deducted that God loved me, and no way I would have looked for that to be the case -- but God saw fit to give me this, nothing else.


• If it wasn't for God's restraining power, I would have run away as a kid and probably not come back home -- putting me on my own and probably ending up either putting me in jail or making me into a hardened worker who hated life and God and everything else, while trying to survive and be better than anyone else.


• If it wasn't for God, I'd be a Nihilist. In other words I'd be believing that nothing has value or worth, I'd be mocking morals, and living without a purpose in life. I'd have to create my own purpose for life so I wasn't better off dead, and it'd probably include something to do with achieving with a high slant toward ego-building. All the while it would feel like living a lie; accomplishment in life for myself being the ultimate goal, the prospect of death would be ever on my mind. If it wasn't for God, who gives meaning and purpose and direction, and HOPE for the future.


• My understanding fails me. The only way I can make it through this life is with God's understanding. I can never trust my senses when I try to understand people -- all I can do is trust God to lead me. I can never trust my senses when I try to understand circumstances -- I can only trust God to lead me. Even in just normal conversations my understanding can fail me and I can be left with wrong impressions and wrong messages -- only God can ensure that I understand even communication properly. And when I observe something in the world, only God can give me the gift of a right understanding of it. Yes, Proverbs 3:6 says to lean not on my own understanding. The reason it says that is because my own understanding is so lacking!


• Besides all these things, I come up with small things every day that just prove to me even further how insufficient and incapable I am. Even in things I can do, I find that God has given it to me, and sometimes those things can become a stumbling block to me if I don't realize my dependence on God for those abilities.

Those things might all seem like rather small things, but to me they're huge! Several of them are life-critical to my values, pursuits and desires. I really want to strive for God but He alone is able to give me what it takes to do that. All I can do is ask and try, and whatever He gives me, He gives me -- though He's glad to do it!

Along these lines on a negative tone: Two kinds of people disgust me: those who blame God that they don't seem to have much (talent, money, friends, etc), and those who use what they have as if it's their own. Notice how the two are exact opposites -- if you are in one of those boats, the least you can do is be thankful that you are not in the other boat, but in either boat, start thinking more about your dependence on God. Literally all you have and ever will have are straight from God Himself. When you hear how anything you earn is from God because He enabled you to earn it, don't think that argument is lame. It's true. And think about this: For your sake and in some way for His own glory, God has allowed you to see the truth of His glorious way, and you cannot claim that knowledge as gained on your own merit.