Good Enough...

Let me start by saying I am a fan of Oswald Chambers. To date, I have not read a devotional that speaks more clearly to my life. With that being said, the content of my post relates to yesterday’s devotional from My Utmost for His Highest--

"So often we impair God’s designed influence, which He desires to exhibit through us, because of our own conscious efforts to be consistent and useful. Jesus said there is only one way to develop and grow spiritually and that is through focusing and concentrating on God."

As an individual who desperately wants to be of use to God, not out of some vain conceit, but out of my feeble attempts of showing love to Him, this statement knocked the wind out of my sail. If many of you are readers of Chambers, you know that usually the most impactful of his statements are the simplest ones. (And how many times are most truths found that way?) Statements like this always seem to reorder my worldview and allow me to see my part in the grand scheme.

Nothing I do will ever be good enough.

Looking at this from a worldly perspective is disheartening to say the least. We all want to be useful in some way—to contribute, to know we have an impact. But a sentence like the one above does not allow room for our contributions in the conventional sense. However, looking at this from a spiritual perspective offers hope. Control of design and efforts are taken out of our hands and placed in the One who has true control and who should be guiding. This allows for more freedom in our spirit, because we don’t have to constantly be worried about how to structure our efforts so that they are the most useful to the Creator of the universe. When looking at the previous sentence, it almost seems silly that we would ever approach it from a worldly perspective as Christians.

How many areas of my life have I screwed up trying to devise a “plan of action” for a goal that God has revealed to me? (the answer—countless) Looking at it objectively, I see myself as the pesky little kid trying to help her father build something—only, I don’t know the complete design. My heavenly Father has revealed components, snippets of a complete design and I eagerly raise my hand to assist. This type of assistance is only useful when He guides me and devises the plan, not when I come up with one of my own. I often wonder to myself “what can I do to align my day as service to God?” Chambers begs us to ask a different question… “how can I focus and concentrate on God today?” God will use me, not because I have a grand or creative idea about something, but because I stay focused on Him. Bottom line—everything else flows from my focus on God. How easily I seem to forget this at times…