A few weeks ago I was driving from Rochester to Buffalo, making my weekly hour-long trek home from church. I was listening to K-Love, the local Christian radio station, and Chris Tomlin’s song “Your Grace is Enough” came on.
I love contemporary worship, but there’s no denying it’s repetitive. You know what point a song is trying to drive home because it will be sung at least a dozen times.
“Your grace is enough… Your grace is enough… Your grace is enough for me…”
My mind jumps from topic to topic pretty quickly, and the song took me to 2nd Corinthians 12, “My grace is sufficient for you…” It’s a favorite passage of mine, but my thoughts were immediately interrupted by another:
“Am I not enough for you, Sarah?”
It was jarring. There was no audible voice to be heard but this sentence that had crossed my mind was not mine. Why would I have used my own name? It had its own tone – one that reminded me of a loving father disappointed in his child. He cares deeply yet knows they can do better. He is comforting yet convicting all at once.
Needless to say I was a little freaked out, and I switched to another radio station to get away, but I couldn’t shake that question.
“Am I not enough for you, Sarah?”
At my church there’s this song we sing on a regular basis
“Christ is enough for me,
Christ is enough for me,
Everything I need is in you
Everything I need…”
But what if Christ isn’t enough for me? While I’ve gone through some struggles in life, I’ve never known true hardship. I live a middle-class suburban life, with a good job and luxuries many people don’t. A car, a computer, a place to live rent-free for the time being (thanks mom and dad…). I could go on.
If all of that was taken away, if I woke up tomorrow morning without all of these things I’m used to, would Christ be enough for me? It’s so easy to believe that God will provide for you when you lack nothing at that time. What happens when you don’t know how you’ll survive day to day. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy for us western Christians to be passive about our faith. We don’t “need” to rely on it.
When I was in Guatemala two years ago, my team spent an evening in the city dump, serving a meal and visiting homes of the people who lived there. People were literally living amongst garbage, in a makeshift community that had developed in the dump, completely with small shops, a playground, and streetlights made out of milk jugs and lightbulbs. That night, I met Elena Ramirez, an elderly woman who lives in the dump with her granddaughter. She sells tortillas from her front window in order to earn money – I don’t know if she has any other income. Her house is a thrown together sheet metal structure with no real separation between rooms. And yet she was thrilled to have us there, to show us her home, and to talk to us. Then, she wanted to pray for us. This woman lives in a garbage dump, and her only thought was to bless us, the gringo visitors who clearly had disposable income to get all the way to Guatemala.
Christ is enough for Elena Ramirez.
It’s easy for Christ to be enough for you when Christ is all you have.
I’m not saying we should get rid of all of our material possessions and live as if we have nothing, but in order for Christ to be enough for us, we can’t let our life be a distraction. Jobs, luxuries, health, and even relationships can all get in the way, but perspective is the key. A lot of people will use “you can’t take it with you” to justify spending money and living lavishly, but I think the point is missed in this. Because “you can’t take it with you,” it’s better not to be attached, because for all you know it could easily be taken away.
But Christ won’t be taken away from us. He will sustain us in all circumstances, even when it feels like we don’t “need” to be sustained by Him. We cry out to God when we feel we have nothing left, but the truth is that we must always be in his presence, no matter how things are going in life. I want Christ to be enough for me – He will if I just allow him to be.
Perhaps someday in the future I’ll be asked the question again.
“Am I not enough for you, Sarah?”
And I pray that with confidence I will be able to answer, “You are.”
