God Is Our Sufficiency

We were created by God to enjoy Him, to be His friend, and to live through His incomparable glory! This statement is shocking to some because they have been taught that God is angry, and that He punishes His people. This is not true. 1John 4:8-9(NLT) says, “8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.” God didn’t just talk about His love, He demonstrated His love for us by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to save us! This shows how much He values and loves us. His love for us is real love, and He wants us to know that we can count on Him no matter what we face in life.

The Apostle Paul said in 2Corinthians 3:5(NKJV), “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.” In and of ourselves, we are not competent or qualified to do anything. Our qualification comes from God. He is the Only one that can make us sufficient in anything that we attempt to do. Everything within us, from the least to the greatest level of skill, talent, and ability, was made possible only because God ordained that it would be baked into our DNA and destinies. Acts 17:26-28(NLT) declares, “26 From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. 27 “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

Most of us begin our adult years by leaning our own efforts or the resources and efforts of others. We are taught by society to do this, and we respond to difficulties and challenges by looking everywhere and to everyone other than our Heavenly Father. Inevitably, we will discover that people, organizations, and things will fail us. We will not be able to trust any of these to sustain our lives, or to restore and repair any issues we may face. God tells us in Proverbs 3:5-6(NLT), “5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” We are the children and He is the Father. He is the only One that can help and show us the path of life.

Through our biological parents, God teaches us that the relationship between parents and children is one that will never be altered. We will always be our parent’s children. When we accept Jesus Christ as Lord over our lives, we became God’s children, and this will always be our reality.

Jesus Christ said in Luke 6:40 that students are not greater than their teacher. God is the Leader and we are the followers, and this is an order that we must never overlook. We learned this from Adam and Eve, who choose to no longer walk in friendship with God, but fell for the enemy’s scheme and lost the standing of holiness and glory that God had given them. From their colossal mistake and the demise of their standing with God, we can understand a reality that is essential and central to our identity and being. It is that our faith in God’s Word is required to have a relationship with Him.

Hebrews 11:6(NLT) tells us this. It says, “And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” God wants us to have a fully persuaded, sold out belief that He is who He says He is, and He will do what He says He will do in His Word. Hebrews 6:18 tells us that it is impossible for God to lie, so we can count on the promises that He’s made us, because they are absolutely fail-proof. We must get off the hamster wheel of doubt, fear, and unbelief. We must also learn to depend on what God says rather than depending on our feelings to tell us what is real and what is not.

Colossians 2:10(NLT) says, “So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” We are complete in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are filled to the brim and overflowing with his strength, power, love, and authority, but if our feelings tell us something different that this, many of us will believe them. For some of us, if we arise in the morning feeling bad, we will allow our feeling bad to dictate our entire day. God tells us in Psalm 118:24 to wake up each morning and rejoice in the day He has made and given us. Feelings were given to us to help us grow closer to God, but they were never created to have a seat of government over our existences. We must choose to walk in our wholeness through Jesus Christ and not be swayed by emotions to turn our backs on our faith in our Heavenly Father.

God is our sufficiency. It’s up to us to renew our minds to God’s Word and not allow them to wander in places that keep us separate from His grace and blessings. Revelation 21:3(NIV) says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” We are connected to God through Jesus Christ in a unity and bond that defies human understanding. He delights in being with us, and He desires that we lean on Him for everything, and that we trust Him with our whole hearts. So, don’t let anything keep you from praying and talking to God as frequently as you possibly can. He is listening, and He is always willing to help us and bless us as we acknowledge that He is our sufficiency, and only He can show us the way.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

4TheChristianMan

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