Enough

(The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday’s message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/hear-a-message)


I've been working at my full-time job for nearly eight months, and while I like it, sometimes I feel--and know, really--that I'm not the best at it. There are others who have been doing a similar job for many years, and they have got it down. They know just what to do when an odd situation comes up, how to handle people who can be tricky to work with, the right people to call when they need something done. In the normal day-to-day of work though, I don't always think about the "advantages" they seem to have. But when I stop and look at the people around me, I start wondering if I am, in fact, good enough for this.

Maybe for you it's in your parenting or classes at school or on a sports team or in a variety of other places. Those other parents always seem to have happier, more well-behaved kids. When papers are handed back, you look with dismay at the grades of your classmates, seemingly always a letter or two higher than yours. Everyone else on the team seems more coordinated and always scores more points than you. It's easy to allow these comparisons to overwhelm us, to let the idea creep into our minds that maybe, since we don't seem to be as good as the people around us, God sees us that way too--not quite enough for him to use. 

In the story of Mephibosheth, told in 2 Samuel 9, maybe he felt not enough for anyone. The Bible refers to Mephibosheth being lame in both feet on more than one occasion, and it's not hard to imagine that his life had not been easy because of it. When the servant Ziba originally told King David about Mephibosheth, Ziba didn't even refer to him by name--he simply referred to Mephibosheth as "a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet." Upon meeting King David, Mephibosheth goes so far as to refer to himself as a "dead dog." It seems evident that Mephibosheth did not consider himself enough for anything. 

Yet King David invites him to live in Jerusalem, gives Mephibosheth all the land that belonged to his grandfather, and insists that Mephibosheth and his son always eat at the table of the king. "Like one of the king’s sons," 2 Samuel 9: 11 reads.

There wasn't anything about Mephibosheth, besides whose son he was, that qualified him to sit at the table. He didn't have a list of awards, a shelf full of trophies, a wall full of diplomas. He didn't have enough of anything to sit there. Like Mephibosheth, we don't have enough to earn God's favor. We will never be good enough at our jobs, perfect enough parents, smart enough students to earn a seat at God's table. Instead, it's an open invitation. 

Our worth shouldn't come from being more good-looking or smarter or funnier than other people--our worth should only and always come from the fact that we have been invited to the table as children of God. We are not enough because of what we do, but because of what God says we are--his.

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. Words are some of her favorite things, which is why her hobbies include reading, writing, and talking. She also shares on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com/ and tweets @bwitt722.]

Pre-Qualified

Welcome to the Midweek Encounter!

(The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday’s message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/hear-a-message)

I’m a high school English teacher, and about once a year I endure The Dreaded Confrontation. Now, one does not maneuver through The Dreaded Confrontation with grace, nor does one emerge from the experience unscathed. Every time it happens, it leaves behind a wound that is slow to heal. An attack of The Dreaded Confrontation might look like this:

Me: “Here I am saying intelligent things about a text that we are reading. Intelligent things coming from my mouth. I am so smart. Listen to what I say and write it down. I am the best. Write that down.”

Student: “Um, excuse me, but I think you’ll find that a simple Google search will disprove everything that you have just said.”

Me: “Oh, but Google is so unreliable. So many idiots out there posting falsities. I am right, the Internet is wrong.”

Student: “Well, I’m actually on the author’s site, and she claims that you’re the falsity.”

Uh-huh. Pause.

We’ve all endured that moment where someone—perhaps a classmate or teacher or colleague or parent or spouse—makes it clear that we are ridiculously unqualified for the task at hand. During the summer before I began my first year of teaching I would tell people that I obtained a real teaching job and, inevitably, acquaintances would reply with “really?” or “you’ll be a full time classroom teacher?” I didn’t much care for their tone.

Insecurities hold us back from too much in life. We’re afraid that if we change careers we’ll be somehow worse off—we won’t like the new career or it won’t earn enough money or it won’t have the right hours—so we stay where we are. We’d really like to move out of state after college, but we’re afraid of living alone in a new place. We’d like to tell that friend about Jesus, but we’re afraid of seeming self-righteous or judgmental. We’d like to tell a marginally Christian friend about Jesus, but we’re really afraid of seeming self-righteous or judgmental.

Luckily for us, Jesus holds all of the qualifications for us, and he invites us to share in his success. Because he already defeated our deficiencies, we can act boldly. Because he already conquered our past and our future, we can face today without fear.

I talk to my high school students a lot about their futures. I teach mostly seniors, and they’re giddy and nervous over the prospect of college, careers, finding a spouse, and also smaller-but-no-less-important tasks, like finding a date for the prom. But they always feel the need to qualify their responses to me with phrases like, “Well, I don’t know if it will work out, but I would really like to be pre-med at U of M.” Or, “Hmm, in a perfect world I would…” Or, “My family runs a business so I don’t know about…”

Christ has crushed our insecurities and has made a way for us. What’s left for us to do is to believe in him and to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it’s a nagging, recurring thought, and other times what we ought to do is blatantly obvious. What’s left for us to do is to read our Bibles, listen intently, and respond in faith.

[Kristin vanEyk attends Encounter Church (myencounterchurch.org) and teaches English in Grand Rapids, MI. She is 29-years-old and likes to run, drink bold coffee, talk about Jesus, and spend time with her husband, Dirk, and her two kids, Lily and Colin. She can be reached at kristinvaneyk@gmail.com]