It is something that I have really been praying about lately and I can't help but come across verses like 2 Corinthians 3:5-6 which says "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but out sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives live" and realize, my sufficiency or my adequacy is not based on myself but on God.
There are a couple of observations on this text I would like to point out in hopes that it would encourage you if you ever feel inadequate as well as give me something to refer back to when I feel the same.
First of all, none of us are adequate to be the type of father/mother, husband/wife, son/daughter, youth leader, pastor, businessman, student or human being that we should be in our own power and strength. We all fall short. We all miss the mark. Why? Because we are all sinful and therefore can't.
Second of all, when we find our sufficiency in Christ and realize that in our weakness, His strength is made perfect (2 Cor 12:9), then we will realize that we are sufficient but in Him and in Him alone. We are adequate when we depend on His power and His mercy every day. When we trust Him to guide us as a father or son or daughter or whatever and we don't depend on ourselves, then we can truly rest in His adequacy and not our own. When we trust in His word and not our own when we are teaching a youth group or a small group or a church or a friend from school. When we realize that His word comes with power and our words have no power, then we will learn to depend on His Spirit to do a work that only He can do.
Finally, if you do feel adequate in your own power. If you do feel sufficient in your own strength and think you have "arrived", read the book of Romans and pray. Therein lies the danger of self-sufficiency. When we think we have it all together. When we think that we can handle things on our own. It is at that point where we find no need for God. However, our frailty is meant for us to turn to God. If we didn't feel frail, would we ever turn to God? If we never felt that we were "that bad" and we were over all a "good person", would we ever think we had a need for a Savior?
1 Corinthians 1:26-31 "For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."
Lord, I pray that I will find my adequacy in you and you alone. Please help me to continually see my inadequacy in my own power and fall on my knees and ask you for your help. Let me live and your church live in such a way that the only explanation for anything that happens is You. And through this all, may your strength be magnified and your name glorified in my frailty.
