Not Good Enough?

We often mistake the things that God wants from us for what we want to give to God. It seems that as humans we find it difficult to believe that in order to love God, we are not responsible for anything but to follow His leading and trust in His providence (John 3:16). And the Accuser stands ready to make sure we do neither. It seems that in our attempts at justification, we try to produce something that we think is worthy to present to God. That could be a prayer, or a response to a charity, or attending to someone in need or a multitude of other truly good deeds. Not that we shouldn’t continue in those expressions of our heart, not at all.

Yet how often are we ready to listen to that insidious little whisper giving the thought that what we’ve done wasn’t enough or that we didn’t pray long enough, or some other such deception. And to top it all off, we fall for it. The other big lie we are all too ready to fall for is that when something bad happens in our lives or of those close to us, it is because of our inconsistencies, our doing something substandard; something that did not measure up or was outright wrong. Again, not that we should continue in those things.

What scripture does tell us is that as with Abraham, it is simply and solely our belief and trust in God that he wants from us (Rom 4:3, Gal 3:6). Nothing more and nothing less. Would that it were easy.