Have You Ever Felt Like You’re Never Enough?

I grew up with a heavy emphasis on the Thou Shalt Nots of the Bible. I don’t know if that’s something my church emphasized as I was growing up or whether it was just something my brain latched onto, but I always felt like I could never measure up to God’s standards.

I didn’t really understand that that is sort of the whole point. When I accepted Jesus, who paid my debt to God as a result, Jesus paid for me because I couldn’t. He offers that to anyone who will believe on Him as their hope & reconciliation to God because no one can live up to God’s standards. In fact, the 10 Commandments themselves are in place to show us our NEED of Him.

But I always tried to be good enough to earn the gift freely offered me. My whole life was a constant struggle of feeling like I was never good enough.

Hands on the Hips & Disapproving Raised Eyebrows

I felt like God was up in the sky, hands on hips, shaking His head at me pretty constantly, as if to say to me, “Nope, you’re still not good enough.”

Now, a part of me knew & understood that this was the whole point of why I need Jesus.

But still, I felt like God expected me to be perfect in exchange for offering me Jesus & I constantly felt like beating myself up because no matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to fall short of that.

It’s one thing to know in your head that it’s all, only Jesus that could save me & another to understand that He paid it ALL, even my constant inadequacies.

This doesn’t mean I should just mock Him by living however I darn well please. But it does mean I am a work in progress & will fail & miss the mark sometimes & that my salvation does not at all rest on my perfection, but on HIS.

Imprisoned by the Need for Perfection

I even got to the point where I craved getting drunk because I was just so tired of caring 24/7 about every little everything. I was trying to juggle my own goodness & never able to do it well enough & was constantly beating myself up for it.

I felt imprisoned by a perfection I could never quite live up to.

Fast forward to my time in college & for the first time, I started to see all around me examples of Christians living in freedom—seeking to live for God, but knowing they needed to be relying on God for this & not putting all the pressure on themselves to achieve what they could not.

But even with that influence, I was always tempted to ADD TO God’s grace… as if a “just in case” measure of extra grace would be required of me to secure God’s grace to me because I knew I didn’t deserve His grace, but I wanted to be worthy of it.

A Time Where I Couldn’t Feel God Near

Fast forward again to a year out of college & after 3 years of influence & encouragement in my faith at Liberty University, being on student leadership & just feeling God’s presence & leading like I had never known before (because all my focus was on Him for once), I hit a dry period in my faith.

If you’re a Christian, has this ever happened to you? Where, no matter how hard or how often you pray, you just cannot feel His presence or His leading in anything? As if you are praying to an empty void?

Well, coming from a time period where my life was immersed in feeling His presence & lead in my life, this was jolting.

My first inclination? “I must not be doing enough.”

I Thought I Had to DO MORE to Feel God in My Life

I thought that maybe because I was dedicated “enough” at Liberty, that maybe I wasn’t doing enough now & God was not listening to me because I wasn’t doing enough anymore.

This began my many attempts to rectify that.

I read my Bible more. (Check!)

I tried to pray more. (Check!)

I went to an extra church service a week. (Check!)

I tried to listen to & sing along with worship music more often & more emphatically/whole-heartedly. (Check!)

I tried to serve more. (Check!)

I thought I was doing well to earn God’s favor tenfold, but still… silence.

God Had Never Left

This didn’t make sense. I was trying to be the best, most dedicated Christian I could be, & yet it STILL didn’t seem like enough to get God to pay attention to me or come near to me.

Nothing I did was good enough.

STILL.

Well, this went on for some months & I was growing more & more exhausted & disheartened, as if God had just left me & had no intention of ever coming back because I just wasn’t enough to be good enough for Him.

And one night, frustrated, sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, I prayed & asked Him why I was never enough… why He would leave me….

The answer surprised me.

I Was Building a Bridge God Had Already Built

In my mind popped up the image of me building a bridge to God, but every time I got discouraged or slipped up the least bit, Satan would take that & knock down my bridge, as if all of my efforts had been completely pointless. But I kept trying again. I kept building. And it kept getting knocked down, tossing me back always to where I had started. I was tired & frustrated & wearing down.

But then, clear as day, God reminded me that He promises to never leave me nor forsake me… that I never had to earn anything… that I could not earn anything from Him. That Jesus paid it all. (Deuteronomy 31:6)

I didn’t have to build. Jesus built.

It was already done & it had nothing to do with anything I could ever add to it.

That I needed to merely rest on the FACT that whether I “felt” Him or not, He WAS THERE & I could 100% count on that no matter how I FELT. My problem was not whether or not He was there or whether or not I did enough to merit Him being there… but that I doubted His Word… of what WAS, whether I felt it or not.

God’s Grace Is Enough, I Don’t Have to Supplement

What a huge leap that was for me in understanding that God’s grace was ENOUGH. I don’t have to supplement.

Living for Him is not about measuring up or earning anything He has offered… it’s about living to please Him just because you know it pleases Him… to honor Him simply because you know it honors Him. Because you love Him, not because He needs you to, but because you want to.

I don’t have to earn what God offers freely to all who believe on Him. (John 3:16-17) If I don’t feel God, it’s that I need to trust He is there regardless of how I feel, not because I need to do more to earn His favor, because nothing I could ever do would ever be enough… that’s why… JESUS.

Shine HOPE by trusting God at His Word, even if you don’t “feel” Him… & by trusting that God, through Jesus, is ENOUGH… you don’t have to supplement.

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