It was the week after I’d taken a very challenging history exam. I waited impatiently for my professor to grade my test, and he finally did. After a torturous period of waiting, I discovered my grade. And I instantly felt disgusted, dissatisfied, and disappointed.
You see, after studying for ten hours with the hope of getting an A, I only made an 80.
An 80.
You may be thinking, “Oh, hush. That’s not bad at all. You could’ve failed.”
Yes, that’s true.
But I studied 10 hours.
And I was 10 points away from an A.
My disgust was great. What did I need to do to make an A? Did I need to wake up earlier, go to bed later, and skip every single meal to study history? Did I need to withdraw from my other classes to focus on this class alone?
How much studying would be enough?
This semester, I’ve really been struggling to get A’s. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t make perfect grades.
The struggle to make good grades reminds me of our struggle to be “good” Christians. We try so hard to do everything perfectly…yet we still fall short. We try to do and be all the right things…yet we still fail.
Will we ever be enough?
The beautiful truth of God’s Word is this:
We already are.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8 NKJV).
Before we had done anything good, God loved us. Before we had even attempted to do good, Christ died for us.
He has already earned goodness for us. We can’t study hard enough or work hard enough or be enough to earn it for ourselves. He lets us have the righteousness He had and has.
What we actually earned was death. Because we sinned against God, we deserved to pay for it. But He paid for it instead.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NASB)
Love that we could never earn. Grace that we would never deserve. A debt forgiven that we could never repay.
You may not be enough for your parents, spouse, teachers, friends, siblings, children, boss, classmates, church members, or co-workers.
But you are enough in God’s eyes.
If you feel discouraged about working incredibly hard for someone and not getting what you think you deserve, remember God’s grace toward you. We deserved death. We had earned eternal sorrow and shame. But before we had even sinned, Christ gave us the abundant life—free from sin’s shackles—that He had earned.
So, friend, because of Christ, you are enough.
Tizzie's Tidbits of Truth 