How to Know God Is Enough

God is enough… Isn’t he? Have you ever wrestled with this question? I know I have.

Usually, what I really want is God + a physical solution.

Call me weird, but I like happy endings. If you are a fiction author and have me on the edge of my seat waiting for two people to finally realize their love for each other yet fail to bring it to pass at the book’s end, I will be pulling for your speedy career change.  Be a plumber. Sell insurance. Anything but dangle hope in front of me only to rip it from view in the end.

I often become so obsessed with resolution that I skip to the end of the novel to ensure it does indeed happen. I’m sure that statement just triggered some avid – and more patient – readers out there, but I’m living proof of Proverbs 13:12a, which says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” And I’m guessing you’ve experienced this heart sickness as well. Sometimes, it’s the hoping that seems to yield the most hurt.

God is enough…isn’t he?

I’m forced to wrestle with a question I don’t enjoy asking – Do I require physical or emotional restoration for a self-approved story ending?  Must I understand the purpose of my pain in order to accept its validation? Or is the spiritual redemption I have experienced in Christ enough? 

Because maybe my healing will never come.  Perhaps my prodigal never returns home.  Or maybe my pain has no purpose but to remind me that I am broken. Maybe my tears don’t become a river of living water for anyone else but myself.  I can think of a dozen Christian book titles that would argue against these sentiments.  I can think of lines I’ve written declaring there must be more or all is for naught. 

But what if the pain never produces the fruit Western culture promises me it will?  What if the pain only produces a connection with another individual nursing the same wound?  A moment with a fellow victim rather than a multitude of converts?  Or even more privately, a moment of connectedness with my creator when I consider the suffering he left his throne on purpose to experience so that he could save me in mine, but perhaps not out of mine).

In her book, This Too Shall Last, counselor K. J. Ramsey writes, “We live in a conqueror culture…fixed on gnawing our sorrows into stories of success. If we can’t protect ourselves from pain, we’ll overcome it. We’ll search high and low for its purpose, and having found it, we’ll show the world God’s strength.” I am slowly learning that the problem with this theology is that God doesn’t always give our earthly stories recuperative endings. John’s head was served on a platter at the whims of a teenage girl and her conniving mother.

Where’s the conquering Savior in that story’s end?

I’ll tell you where. He is at the beginning. When John says, “behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world”, and declares Jesus a man “whose sandal straps I am unworthy to even tie.”  From the start and until the end, God was enough for John. John’s pain and earthly ending were not the story’s focal point. Jesus was.

And where is the great healer in Paul’s life when he is left with a thorn?  Again, He is at the start of Paul’s story on the road to Damascus when Jesus calls out to him, “Why are you persecuting me?” and Saul humbly acknowledges Him as Lord. And He is present in every messy place from there on out. The thorn changed nothing except a deeper grasp of his dependence on God. God is enough for Paul, who boldly states, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Upon my dad’s death from cancer at age 60, my mom introduced me to a passage of scripture that has been life-changing for me. Found in Habakkuk 3, verses 17-19 declare, “Though the fig tree does not blossom nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” My mom aptly paraphrased these verses well, “God, even if you never bless me again. You. Are. Enough.”

God is enough.

I’ve spent countless hours, days, and years longing for my suffering to count for something. Longing for a happy ending to various stories where they have not been promised. Oh, that I will spend that time rejoicing in my Savior, longing for His presence, and taking joy in my salvation. I’m still on the journey to make this prayer a practice and to fully live out my belief that God is enough. But I know it to be true and thus, worthy of my utmost pursuit.

I mentioned Proverbs 13:12a earlier, but I can’t neglect the second half of this verse: “but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” This practice becomes a reality only when Jesus is my soul’s desire and the soul object of my hope.

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