My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
Category Archives: grace
Inadequate
Inadequate.
It’s been circling my brain lately. In not such a good way.
‘You aren’t good enough to mentor high school girls. You aren’t experienced enough to find a decent dental assistant job. You aren’t devoted enough to be a good Christian. You aren’t selfless enough to love your husband right. You are undeserving, inexperienced, messed up, selfish, and broken. There is no way you can do that. You are inadequate.’
It plays on repeat. I try not to listen. I live my life despite it. But eventually it wears me down until I’m simply too tired to do anything but watch some Friends and laugh.
The thing is alot of it is true. I am broken, messed up, inexperienced, and selfish.
What I forget is the counter truth: Jesus.
He makes up for my inadequacies. He is everything I am not, he has everything I am lacking. And I have him so I am adequate. He is what makes me good enough to face life. By myself I’m not so great, and definitely not all that qualified for anything. But he is.
to be real
It has been along time. And my excuses are not that impressive:
I forgot.
I don’t write if I don’t have anything noteworthy to say. Which is a bad habit for any writer. Brilliance doesn’t come when you’re sitting around waiting for it.
I learned that depression is real and not made up by overly dramatic people. One result of continuous bummed-outness is a downward plunge in the desire to be social or communicative…even on blogs.
It’s not necessarily healthy to indulge my tendencies to seclusion; but being depressed doesn’t make it any easier to transform my introvertedness into something social…ish.
I hate admitting my struggle with depression. It’s far from the horrors it could be, and I feel guilty knowing my sadness can’t even compare to degree others suffer from it. Things in my life are actually pretty swell too so it feels like I’m overreacting to nothing. If anything I should be overjoyed with life right now.
But there’s no doubt it’s real. There’s clear moments where I know I’m not being silly, emotional, or exaggerating my feelings. My heart rate goes up, irrational fear fills me, and it feels like I’m watching myself do normal life from a dark dirty corner. Literally.
For years I firmly believed that depression was sin. Black and white. A person saved by Jesus should be constantly ecstatic. He has saved me, loved me, showed me mercy, grace and forgiveness literally without measure. He is so much bigger than my pain or problems. If sadness hits…it seems only true that God’s goodness in me should so dwarf my pain that dwelling on it would be wrong.
And maybe so…
But what about all those times in the Bible where Yahweh himself is sad:
Then the Israelites put aside their foreign gods and served the LORD. And he was grieved by their misery. Judges 10.16
Oh, how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved his heart in that dry wasteland. Psalm 78.40
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Ephesians 4.30
Then Jesus wept. John 11.35
Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it. Luke 19.41
And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. Luke 22.44
Jesus was in such emotional turmoil about what his circumstances that he even asked the Father if there was another way. Jesus was perfect.
God himself is sad and upset by the messed-upness of this world. The people he made in his very own likeness whom he dearly loves and adores live in a chaotic horrific world that leaves them broken at every turn. Not to mention the way we have relentlessly hurt his heart and abused his love many times over.
God knows better than anyone how well things will end. How at the end of it all, his church will be saved, and the world will be as it was supposed to be when it was made. He does not doubt his own plan, goodness, and love. But he’s still sad. The reality of goodness doesn’t mean we have to deny the reality of pain. Both are equally true.
And as far as my own little crying heart goes…that’s pretty much all it has figured out. To not deny the realness of the pain. And to recognize that there are legitimate reasons for sadness and even depression.
Still, joy is a learning curve. It takes practice, choice, and guts. And this I don’t have figured out. I can choose joy…but I squash the sad. Or I give into the sad and can’t choose joy. Both are wrong.
But I realize…I’m excited to learn. It may take years and years. But my Savior will not leave me treading water. He will teach me how to balance grief and joy and I will know him better for experiencing both.
…cody still holds true to his promise to never let me go a day without flowers . it’s 2 1/2 years…
hosea
‘How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger;
for I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and not a man,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.’
Hosea 10.8-9
So often I think of Yahweh as a justice first God. Zapping people with wrath. And when he does choose mercy it’s only because his nice side is required to show itself every so often. Not so much because he has real compassion in his heart.
In short…I assume he’s me. Someone messes with how I want life to work and…bam…I’m upset. Then I talk myself down and make up 5 reasons to excuse the behavior. The anger isn’t true justice. And getting myself over it isn’t true mercy.
God’s not me. His wrath is just and deserved, and often dealt after mercy. And his mercy is genuine. It’s born out of his compassion broken heart–which is his default.
god
God defined by God:
‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.’
{exodus 34.6-7}
God’s writing
‘Don’t you think it’s rather nice to think that we’re in a book that God’s writing? If I were writing a book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the story end just right–in the way that’s best for us.’
‘Do you really believe that, Mother?’ Peter asked quietly.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do believe it–almost always–except when I’m so sad that I can’t believe anything. But even when I don’t believe it, I know it’s true–and I try to believe it.’
Edith Nesbit
The Railway Children
grace:
the lavish, opulent, raw, untamed, scandalous blessing of God unearned, undeserved, illogical, disproportionate blessing of God – poured out through Christ, over every facet of your life; and the living presence of the Creator God deep inside you, poured out through the Spirit, in a flood of euphoric joy, transcendent peace, and limitless power, to be and do, and live up to God’s calling in your life.
Gallimaufry 