Should that be all I’ll ever need?
Or is there more I’m looking for?
Should I read between the lines?
And look for blessings in disguise?
To make me handsome, rich and wise
Is that really what you want?
What if God stepped down from heaven and told you that the plan he had for your life did not include any of the things you always dreamed of? What if God told you that you would never get married or have children of your own? That your future did not include the job of your dreams, and in fact, it did not include guaranteed income of any kind. That your future included living under the poverty line and there would be times that you would go hungry. Would that be ok with you? If the thing you always dreamed of never happens. Would your faith be shaken? Or is the thing you always dreamed of a deeper relationship with God?
This is my big question: Is Jesus enough?
Is what Jesus did for us enough? Is the gift of eternal life enough? I know that for most of my life, and even since accepting Jesus as my savior, I suppose I’ve always known that Jesus should be the love of my life and I should count everything else as loss compared to knowing Christ Jesus. But that is really difficult to do. I still want to be married someday, I have a dream of being a full-time artist with a really cool studio and I spend a lot of my time thinking about and focusing on things like my hair and clothes (much less on the world race, but still). I also have to ask God to help me love him more everyday because there are a lot of times that I don’t feel like I actually LOVE Him.
When we accept Christ as our savior, are we accepting Him because of what he DID for us? Or are we accepting Him, expecting that he will help us attain the dreams we already had for ourselves before we knew Him? Does Jesus fill in the gaps in our lives when we accept him as our savior? Is His gift of our lives really all we’ll ever need? What is the ‘more’ that we are looking for that isn’t satisfied in Jesus? We keep turning to other things that we think will fulfill a part of our soul that we believe Jesus can’t fill, or that we don’t give him the chance to fill. But in all reality, God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end. He is everything, and in that, can and should be everything to us that we need.
But we aren’t satisfied with Him. We still want a nice house, nice clothes, marriage and a good job that will allow us to be comfortable. This is a problem because I don’t believe that Jesus died so that we could be ‘handsome, rich and wise’. I know that is not really what God wants for us. Jesus had “no place even to lay his head.” Because we are all God’s children, I know that He would want the same things for us that He wanted for Jesus. Those things may not look the way we expect though. He may want our lives to look more like Paul’s life than an average American.
I know I’ve always expected more from life than just what Jesus did for me, but recently I’ve really began praying for Jesus to be the only thing I need. I’ve recently found myself wanting to be much more like Paul when, in Phillipians, he said, “I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ…”
I know some of you are thinking that I’ve either gone off the deep end or you may enjoy what I’m saying and be challenged by it. I just want to state that it is not bad to desire to be married or have dreams about your future, but I think it’s important to remind ourselves to not make any of the things we desire more important than what Jesus did for us. Notice that Paul says that “everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ…”. The desires we have for our lives may not be sinful or unbiblical in any way, but when compared to what Christ did, they become like garbage. He’s speaking this way to illustrate just how amazing what Christ did is.
It’s easy to forget how amazing it is most of the time, but I want to challenge you to occasionally remember to ask yourself:
Is Jesus enough?
