Good enough

Be still, and know that I am God. My grace is sufficient or you. (Psa46:10 / 2 Cor 12:9)

Do you ever feel plagued with failure and defeat? So consumed in trying to be ‘good enough’ that you smother yourself in grief because, no matter how hard or how diligent you are, you’ll never BE good enough? Come on… you know what Im talking about! When every victory is turned to loss – when every slip-up becomes a personal Mt. Everest. It wears you down! You wear yourself out, doing and going and trying, and the harder you go – the more you feel like nothing you ever could do will ever amount to you being good enough!

Well, guess what! The secret is that you dont have to be good enough. You dont have to be perfect, or beautiful, or any of those other things. God loves you regardless of how messed up, damaged, flawed, and broken you are. He created you, He understands you, and regardless of the good, the bad, and the ugly, He accepts you and He desires, more than anything, to have a relationship with YOU. He absolutely, whole-heartedly loves you without condition or cause. It simply does not matter what you have done – He loves you anyway.

Sure, there are things that we do or say, or ways we act, that He doesnt like; but that doesnt stop Him from loving us! That is His gift to us. Its free! All we have to do is accept it!

John 3:16… For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Pt. 8 ~ Faith

DO YOU WANT MORE?
There are NO limits to the amount of faith that we can have. If you are satisfied with your current portion, theres no need to continue reading this… just keep doing what youre doing and youll have the same results. However, if you want more – to have more – you can not expect to get different results by repeating the same actions. To have “more” you literally must do more!

To increase your faith, lets think of this as a steel door that has multiple locks on it. To get inside, ALL of the locks have to be unlocked. To do this, there is one major key to open up that dead-bolt lock, and then several other keys which will unlock the door knob and unhinge the chain-locks. The key to the deadbolt is vital to have. It is this: you must have a true relationship with the gate-keeper, Jesus Christ. Without this, none of the other keys are going to grant you access.

The key to unlocking the door knob is given to us in Romans 10:17, “So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” This is the key to understanding how the deadbolt (relationship) key works. In order to have a true relationship with Christ, you have to know Him and He has to know you. Remember here, a relationship takes two – one sided relationships never work out! Half of that is already taken care of though, since we know that He already knows what is in our hearts as He is the One who created all. But since we dont have that ability, to just naturally know such things, we have to put some elbow grease into action and, as you would in building any relationship, you must be willing and actually spend the time it takes to do this. And, because Christ is not manifested to us in a physical body, we have to go about getting to know him in a different way than how we would with a girl/boyfriend, etc., and that takes us to the above instruction. We have to be able to hear His Word. We do this by not only reading, but studying and meditating on His Word – given to us in scripture.

Once those first two locks open, if we turn the knob and push, we will notice that the door is cracked open but there are a few chain locks still in place, so now have to be able to get those open before gaining full access into the Throne room of Christ. The first of these locks is labeled with a tag, saying communication. We communicate with Him through prayer. The better our “people skills” (talking) are, the better we will become at hearing His small, still voice. Then as time passes, our ability to openly communicate with Him will increase. Even tho He knows what is in our hearts and what our needs are, He directly tells us to ASK Him for what we need and want. (James 4:3 / Matt 7:7 / John 16:24 / Joshua 10:12-13).

After we have mastered these things, we will come to the next chain on the door. This one is tagged as knowledge. By such things, we become bolder Christians (Heb 4:16) and as such, we begin to better understand (to gain knowledge of Him) and that allows us to walk in His love. Which, by the way, without that love, faith will not work! As love produces belief, faith without belief is useless. The greatest commandment He gives us is that we are to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and body and then to love others as ourselves, as Christ loves us (Mark 12:30-31).

Finally, we come to the last chain on the door. This one is tagged “Speak”. We increase our faith by speaking Jesus’ Word over our situation – whatever that may be. We are told what comes out of the mouth is what is in the heart (Matt 15:18). So, if what we speak is what we believe, and believing in His Word is what produces love, which produces belief, then our portion of faith grows. (Mark 11:22-24) That then only stands to reason that -as this door is now fully opened – all we have to do is walk through it (take a step forward) to gain the full access that we desire… and with most all things, the more often we do it – the better we become at doing it – and the more that increases, so does our ability to receive what He has for us (receiving being as easy as stepping past the open doorway) in knowing that (James 1:17) “all good and perfect gifts come from the Father.”