kick Not Enough to the curb

Forget butterflies. My stomach-jitters felt more like a drop-kicked beehive. Ten weeks of training. Four to six days per week of swimming, biking, and running. The day before my first sprint triathlon, the question will it be enough? chiseled chinks in my confidence.

I’d downloaded an app to guide my training regimen. Its interface provided goals to achieve for each discipline and when I checked off an activity, the app shaded that discipline’s goal green. Anything not accomplished remained gray.  

The day before the race, I fell far short of the app’s recommended achievements. Instead of gaining confidence from the green I zeroed in on the gray. The undone part. The not achieved part. Doubt seeped into my mind. What if I hadn’t done enough?

Sometimes I find myself wondering the same thing about life – am I enough? As a mom, wife, friend, the woman God created me to be? How often do we close out the day, head hitting the pillow with our minds ruminating on all of our not enough moments, shading an imaginary God app gray?

If we all fall short of God’s glory, as the Apostle Paul assures us we do in Romans 3, how can we know we’ve done enough, or are enough?

The specter of not enough may have infiltrated the thinking of the young Ephesian church prompting Paul to remind them of God’s perspective in Ephesians 2.

“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) … God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (v:4-5, 8-9 NLT).

Satan wants us focused on the undone, fixated on the gray space that is our life before Christ. Certain that faith is not enough. There must be more to do.

Not so, says God. Faith is enough. We cannot add to what Jesus accomplished on the cross and in Christ, not enough gets kicked to the curb. If God had an app, it would be all green from the moment we declare faith in Christ as our Savior. Our not enough becomes more than conquerors (Romans 8:37).  

The truth God desires to deep-soak into our hearts is that enough begins with faith in Christ. Our future is secure. This is the confidence he desires we live from.

In the midst of those doubts about my race, a friend encouraged me to trust the green. We can let go of the doubts that we might not be enough in life because we are already enough in Christ. When not enough threatens your confidence, trust God’s green. Jesus is our enough.