Latest / BECOMING | Biblical Truths, Purpose, Identity in Christ, Grow Towards God / 4. You are not enough
Transcript
- Ellie Nelly: Welcome to Becoming with Ellie Nelly. I am your host, Ellie Nelly, and I am so glad you're here. Today we are talking. About The statement you are enough. But are you really? That is what we're diving into today. So living in the lie, you are enough. I think a lot of times I have heard this personally on social media and from other people who are extremely mean. These people mean so well, but it's a lie that puts pride between us and other people, but most importantly, us and God. So it prevents this pride prevents us from using our weaknesses or allowing our weaknesses to be used by God for his glory and our greater good. So Looking at episode one, we said, Hey God, please we're asking you to use our strengths, use the ways that you have gifted us, the ways that we are already inclined to look more like Christ, but we didn't ask for him to use the ways that we aren't inclined to look like Christ. I know for myself personally, there are plenty of ways that I don't look like Jesus. And those weaknesses and the sin that I have in my life and the shame that I have around that sin, I put into this. tiny little box that I it's like a mental box it's not a real box it's a mental box that I call my shame box and it's really small and it's black and it's sad and I just like kind of shove all of my sin and my shame and my guilt and my weaknesses and I just shove all of that into my shame box and I leave it there and I don't think about it. I don't touch it I just put it on a little shelf very far in the very back of my brain space And I try to ignore it as much as I can. And that's not what we're supposed to do with our weaknesses. I personally have been handling my weaknesses, my shame, my sin the wrong way. I know that I'm completely forgiven in Christ, but for some reason I still hold on to it. And when I hold on to it, I'm verbing it because I'm doing something active. Holding on to my shame keeps me attached to it. And so instead of being attached to our shame and being verb to our shame, when we can give and release Our weaknesses, our sin, our guilt, stuff in our shame box over to the Lord. we are actually freed up, our hands are open to receiving something else from God that we are able to hold actionably and share with others, like being loving, being joyful, being compassionate, being devoted, being caring, being kind, all of those things come out of an open-handed posture of receiving from the Lord rather than a closed, hunched over, active posture of holding things. Hiding things from God, keeping things back from Him. And so that's what we're talking about today is not holding anything back, not the sin, not the shame, not the parts that if someone found out that they would judge you. Today, I'm gonna ask you: are you willing to let God use 100% of your imperfections for his glory and your greater good? Let's get into it. Okay, friends, today we're taking a look at 2nd Corinthians 12, 8 through 10. So if you have your Bibles, open on up to 2nd Corinthians 12, 8 through 10. And you can go ahead and read along with me. It says, Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, it being his thorn. We'll get into that in a sec. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, He being the Lord, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast boast all the gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Wow, what a bold statement by our author Paul to be saying. the first thing that I want to talk about is this thorn. Now, Paul in many of his books references this thorn in his side that keeps him drawn close to the Lord that he struggles with continuously throughout his ministry. Now, it's highly debated. Is this thorn? it could be a physical ailment or Something medically wrong with him. It could be a group of people or person who is harassing him. other people think that it could even be a type of spiritual or demonic attack on his life. We don't know. He doesn't explicitly state what that ailment is, what the thorn in his side is, but we know that Paul is struggling and he's being made weak by something. And so that's what he's addressing here, where he he's bringing up to this church of Corinth this conversation that he had with the Lord where he's like, Lord Take this away from me. I want to be made whole. I want to be better. I want to be my version of enough. And this is holding me back. And the Lord's response isn't, yes, of course I'll take it away from you. Thank you so much for asking. No, the Lord says, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness. Now, three things I want to establish before we move forward at all. First thing, we are not enough. We as people are not enough. Two. That is okay. It's okay to not be enough. And three, God redeems our weaknesses in a way that glorifies himself and it helps heal our shame. So often we ask God to make us enough, to be whole. Because this side of the garden and this side of heaven, right here, smack dab in the middle, we feel this tension in the world. We were made to be whole. We were made to be in perfect companionship with God. But because of sin, because of the garden, because of what happened with Adam and Eve, we're not enough. We're lacking. We're weak. We are more deficient where other people are more proficient. We feel This deep inequity inside us to be more, to be complete, to be made whole. And instead of looking to ourselves and going, well, like, am I enough? I I'm enough. I'm so enough. It puts, if we have the mind the mindset of I am enough, it puts our problems back onto other people. It puts our problems back to our friends, our family, our coworkers, our classmates, our teachers, our coaches, and saying, if I'm enough and I'm having problems, it is clearly somebody else. And that is a very, very deeply prideful mentality that puts a block between you and everyone else you're interacting with if you genuinely believe that you are enough. And what Christ is saying here is you're not, you're not enough. There, you are never going to be enough this side of the garden, this side of heaven, for what he has planned for us. But his grace is sufficient for me, and his power is made perfect in my weakness. Now. I read that and was like, okay, cool. So that's like a bunch of very religious language. What are we talking about here? Which is so awesome. So I want to put together I put together this like kind of poetic illustration that I want to read to you guys because I was trying to think of how to explain it and our brains are wired to work in stories, work in poems, to work through storytelling. So I just figured I would put together s little something for you guys and hopefully That would help paint the picture of what I'm trying to say If a gardener were to grow a beautiful rose, who would be surprised? If the finest chef were to make a tasty tart, who would alert the news? If a wise carpenter were to build a sturdy home, who would even notice? When God moves, he moves where we could never, so that the only reasonable explanation could be God. So if a carpenter with no taste buds were to make a tasty tart, it would be the talk of the town. If a chef with no patience were to grow a bundle of roses, they would surely be on display for all to see. And if a gardener who had grown old and weak were to build a sturdy house, who wouldn't want to see it for themselves? The extraordinary grabs our attention, and God happens to be anything but ordinary. Our weaknesses partner with God's power to make the extraordinary happen. And that is why we can be long, we can long for God to be glorified in the fact that we are not enough. Because our inability provides an opportunity to partner with the God of all heaven and earth, of all creation ever, to do something so extraordinary with our weaknesses, with our shame, with our deficiencies, that we can't help but share with other people what God has done in our life. Not only does he redeem us, he heals us, but he gives us a reason to shout his praises because he has been so good we could not possibly keep it all bottled up inside. So let's take a look at what God tells Paul. God says his grace is sufficient. So our weaknesses we hide, our shame we hide, our junk we hide, the weak parts we hide, we like gather it up. And like I said, hiding it is taking action that could be used for something that would glorify God. hiding stuff that's in our shame box, hiding stuff that we could be using to be compassionate to other people, to be loving to other people, it's taking our actions and it's not living an open-handed life. And so when he is saying, when the Lord is telling Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, it is a Greek word. This Greek word, and I might butcher it if you if you know Greek, is ajaknon, spelled H I K A N O N. Now this Greek word in this context specifically, sufficient means Adequate, powerful, and protective, providing the exact strength and empowerment needed to endure weakness rather than just scraping by. And so we can choose to activ actively exhaust ourselves in this process of hiding and withdrawing and holding back from God, our baggage, our junk, or we can let his grace be proactive in providing strength, in protecting and empowering our hearts in the midst of our weakness. So What the Lord is saying to Paul is, hey, it's not that I need your weaknesses to go away. It's that his grace is more than enough to cover our shame, our sin, our weaknesses. The fact that we aren't enough is completely covered by his perfect power, is completely sustained by his enduring love. There is nothing that we have to do more or make more of ourselves to be present with him because his grace has covered it all. There is nothing more we need to do. To be in the presence of the Father, weaknesses and all, junk and all, garbage and all, baggage and all, there is nothing more we need to do because his grace is completely sufficient for everything we need and for everything we're bringing to the table. The second thing is he says his power is made perfect in our weaknesses. If we're waiting to be enough, if we're waiting to have our strengths perfected and then Promptly we sweep our weaknesses under the rug. We pretend like we aren't there. We're we're missing out on offering a part of our lives to God for Him to redeem them. We're saying, hey God, here's all of my attributes, here's my my resume, my list of things that I'm really great at, that you've totally provided for me. I mean, you made me all these awesome things. Look at this. And then we take our weaknesses and we're like, yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, we should really just focus on this God though, because I feel like we're really you gave me a lot to work with here. You gave me enough to work with, so let's just keep rolling on that. And it's kind of thinking lesser of God that he couldn't make even more of our weaknesses than he could of our strengths. I personally love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love the woman at the well story, where Jesus goes and he tells this woman and she runs away and she says, I met the most amazing man. He's told me everything I've ever done. He is the Messiah. He has come. Like, and she cannot shut up. People, she's told everyone she's ever met after she met Jesus. I met a man who told me everything I'd ever done. And this woman had lots of shame. She was not living a culturally appropriate life. She was not at the place or time at the well that all the rest of the women, she was completely ostracized from everyone else in her town, from her culture, from her society. She was alone. because of her sin, because of these things that brought her down, that brought her shame. She was seen by others as completely inadequate. And that's the person that God Chose to reveal Jesus being the Messiah to the whole world. The first person he admits it to is her. And it brings her from this place of deep shame and restores her honor. And i in our Western lenses, we have a horizontal culture where it's like good is on one side, bad is on the other, we're going from bad to good. But in Jewish Eastern culture, it's a vertical, vertical scale of honor. At the top and then shame at the bottom. And so Jesus sees her in her shame, as low as she could be, and then brings her up and honors her because of her weakness. If she was living a completely righteous life and she said, I met the Messiah, people would be like, Cool, okay, you're a great person. Sure, of course you met the Messiah. It's awesome. But it's this woman that has no right to be the first person, and yet that redeems her, that brings honor to her. It brings so much honor to her that she won't stop talking about everything she's ever done and how Jesus told it to her. Because it totally redeemed the brokenness, the weakness, the the downcast parts of her life, the pe other things that people saw as unequal or less than or inferior, just brings it right back up to the top. And so wouldn't it be so great? Here's what I'm thinking. Wouldn't it be so great if our deepest, darkest secrets, the stuff that we don't want anyone else to know, was so perfectly redeemed by God's power? That we couldn't help but tell people because the redemption story is just too good to hide, to keep to ourselves. That we feel so compelled and so redeemed in our shame to tell people about our darkest junk and garbage going on in our lives, that we just have to share it with people because God was so good there. Wouldn't that be so awesome? I feel I would I would love that. I think that would be so amazing. I would hope one day I could look at the stuff that I've been hiding in my shame box and go, man, once I gave that over to God, like I feel completely comfortable talking about all of that in front of anyone who asks because the Lord totally 100% redeemed my imperfections. He made me new and he made me new and he made me whole. in such a unbelievably him way in such an extraordinary fashion that I can't help but tell other people. Something that I never thought I would share with even my closest friend. I'm shouting from the rooftops, God's goodness, because he has totally redeemed this part of my life. Because he has told me that his grace is sufficient for me so I don't ever have to be enough. I can come to him with all my junk, all my garbage, my shame box overflowing. And he looks at that and goes, My grace is sufficient for you and my power will be made per Perfect in your weakness. He looks at our weaknesses as an opportunity to glorify him and redeem us. It's l a win-win when we come to him. It's literally a win-win. It's so, so good. So all that to say, I don't want you guys to be actively holding your hurt. I want you guys to be able to let it go to God. I don't want to be a person and I don't want you guys to be the people. Where his grace and power isn't enough. I want his grace and power to be so prevalent in your lives that it's proactive, protective, enduring for our broken hearts that you feel so comfortable going to the Lord. There is no reason to not, because his power may be perfect in your weakness, and his grace is so, so sufficient for you and your needs. disclaimer, I am not saying to put your darkest secrets on blast. I don't feel like that's a wise decision for anyone, really. I just don't think that's a good idea unless you're feeling compelled by the Holy Spirit. Would not do that. secondly, I'm not saying to do things you know are wrong because grace can abound, because the Bible says. By no means should we continue in sin so that grace may abound. That is not the point of grace. The point of grace is for the stuff that's already happened. Let's not do that again, but there is grace to cover it. There is grace that is completely perfect and sufficient that you will not need to feel any shame for that ever again in the presence of the Father. And lastly, to think of the question that we asked in the first episode and build on that, because I was thinking about it. We wrote down things that if we were as close to Jesus as we can possibly be in this lifetime, what would we look like? How would we be experienced by other people? and what would what would that look like for our hearts to be changed in that? And that highlighted, you know, all of our strengths and a lot of things that we're already, you know, leaning towards Christ in those areas or we're already feeling like we're being formed into Christ in these areas of hospitality and joy and kindness and Sharing the gospel, whatever those things were for you. But at least for me, I looked at that and I went, that's only half of me. There's there's the other half that has all the junk and the problems and all of that that I'm not dealing with, that I'm not offering to the Lord. And I don't want that to be the case for you or for me because we're preventing an opportunity for the Lord to his power to be made perfect in our weakness and for us to experience grace that is sufficient for everything that we've ever done. Like the woman at the well. And so I want to live in the light of that grace, and I'm sure you do too, and I want that for you. And so that's why I felt like this episode was really important for us to talk about at the beginning is because we can come to God a hundred percent imperfect and he's gonna use that. And I don't want you guys just to bring the parts that you think are good enough for him, because sadly and truthfully, none of us is good enough for God who is perfect. But he loves us anyway. And even the things that we think are the most best precious parts of us that we're like, look at how good we're doing. The Bible literally says, and I know this is kind of disgusting, but the Bible says it, so I'm not pulling my punches here either, folks. The Bible says the best that we can do are but bloody menstrual rags at the feet of the Father. Yep, sit on that. I've thought about that. It's really disgusting, really disturbing, but it puts into perspective what I think my best is, what I think my being enough is for God. And it's not enough. And that's okay. Because God's power is made perfect in our weakness. So our growth work for this week is identify what you are hiding in your shame box. Now you can call yours something else. It can be packaged up, something really cute inside your little brain, but in my little brain, it's a really sad little black box that has a little box on it and a sad face. That says shame and I keep all my junk in there and I don't like to look at it. And so this is forcing me, even if I'm the only one who does this, it's forcing me to look at myself realistically because my sin is real. God sees it, I know it's there, and not addressing it helps no one. So identify what's in your box, take it out, look through the pieces, share that with God. I mean he already knows it, but he just wants to be in conversation with you about it and To tell you that his grace is sufficient for you in everything you have in that box. And if you even want to, I would encourage you to make a list, whether it's a mental list or it's an actual physical list of things that are in your box that you're ready for God to redeem, that you're ready to give over to him, because once you're ready to give it over to him, you're gonna look back at that list in 10, 20 years from now. It's not gonna be a fast, expedient process. Becoming someone new is never a fast expedient process, but you'll be able to look back at that list and be like, wow, some of God's greatest hits of my whole life are things that I offered up to him on this list that he's totally redeemed. And I just think that would be really cool to be able to look back at and be like, wow, I didn't used to feel this free in the sin that I was living in. I used to feel a lot of shame in that, but now I'm free in Christ. And that's super cool. So just do that for your future self if you want to. Second thing is ask And pray for the things that make you feel far from the person you want to be, far from who Christ created you to be. Because Christ has covered all of that and his grace is sufficient for all of that. His power is made perfect, perfect, complete, 100% good in your weaknesses. Like it's not something that you have to be ashamed about, but it's something that you can be thankful that God is redeeming and be excited to share. And excited to glorify him in that. And then the last thing is our junk is real. Just a disclaimer, our junk is real. God sees it. We don't need to pretend it isn't real because we want to be enough. Because the fact of the matter is we are not enough. So I want you guys to live in a way that is freed from the expectation that you ever need to be enough. Because you know the one whose power is made perfect in weakness. And so much so that one day You will boast of the junk in your shambox because God works something so extraordinary in it that you can't help but tell other people about it. So I'm hoping that for you, I'm praying that for you guys, that this is an episode where afterwards, you know, this might not be exactly what you planned on hearing this Thursday or whenever you're listening to this, but that it actually is a freeing episode, that it lifts a weight off of your shoulders, that you're able to take a deep breath after this, knowing that. God's grace is sufficient for you and that his power is made perfect in your weakness. And I hope you guys have an amazing week. I can't wait to see you guys next week. And if you guys have anything else, verses you want talk about, all that stuff, I would love to hear from you. Please DM me on Instagram or TikTok. The episodes are live on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music. So if there's anywhere else that I'm missing that you really want to listen to, let me know that too. if not, I'll see you guys next week here on the podcast. May God bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, and may he give you peace this week. Amen. Love you guys. Bye bye.