A Different Label
You would think that at 52 years old I would not wrestle with questions like, “Am I enough?”, “Am I good enough?”, “Am I doing enough?” But I do often. Just the other day I asked my wife, “When do you think I will stop feeling inadequate?”
Maybe you can relate.
As a disciple of Jesus I need to be reminded that simply abiding in the love of the Father is “enough” when it comes to my value. The problem is that our culture says something completely different.
Almost everything in life is teaching you that you have to be good enough and busy in order to be considered valuable. It starts early and keeps going.
In the book The Search for Significance, Robert S. McGee writes that the lie we are led to believe is that “Self Worth = Performance + Others’ Opinions”. When we put our lives in that equation, we will never feel like we are enough.
For Example:
You get picked last for the team on the playground = I am not athletic enough.
You try out for the school play and don’t get a part = I am not talented enough.
You interview for the job but don’t get it = I am not qualified.
You get a bad performance review at work and get laid off = I am useless.
Your life is not packed with activity = I am lazy.
You don’t work long and late hours = I am not doing enough for the company.
Eugene Peterson puts it like this, “We get labeled early and frequently in non-relational terms: first-grader, smart, cute, average, short, second string. As we enter adulthood nonrelational labels continue…”
Peterson goes on to say, “These labels are inevitable and in many ways useful but the common element to them all is that they are impersonal and partial; when they become all-encompassing…they distort our core identity.” Robert S. McGee goes on to say that the correct formula to see our lives through is, “Your Worth = What God Says is True about You.”
For the Christ follower, life is defined by a different label that has nothing to do with how good you perform or how much you do. The label is Love. We are loved by the Father in Heaven and that is all we need to be “enough”.
In our pursuit to make disciples of Jesus, central to our task is helping people live by that truth of John 15:9 , “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”
We do this by providing a safe consistent community where it is ok to be imperfect.
We do this by inviting people into our own struggles of imperfection.
We do this by sticking with people even when they think they are “unworthy”.
We do this by simply telling people “I love you”.
In a world that is so deeply defined by whether you are “good enough” or not, you have the privilege to tell them the truth.
They are loved by the Father. That is enough.
