Am I good enough?

We're all flawed, right? We are sinners at birth and therefore we are condemned to hell.  Then Christ came and died for us and as long as we believe this we go to heaven.  This is the basic gospel.  Then we have to note that grace isn't an excuse to sin and if we really believed in God then we would try our best not to sin.  Since God is a just God, he'll give us what we deserve and if we aren't doing our best to please him then we must not really love him, so we'll go to Hell.  Then people start judging peoples relationship with God (even their own) and they start questioning if they are good enough.  Suddenly we have arrived at 'Sarah's most heart breaking conversation'.  Whether or not people believe in God, we all struggle with the same question.

Am I good enough?

It's hard to explain this non religiously, so i'm not going to.  All I know is that at the core of what I know about God's love is that we are enough.  Always.  At any time of your life - you are enough.  We are so quick to think that any issue is our fault.  'This relationship didn't work out because I'm not...'  "This did or didn't happen because I...." "If only I.... then...." Beyond this, we believe that every situation in life that is hard is God teaching us some lesson to make us 'better.'  It's like we're this mess that he has to clean up.  Everything about this thinking is not love.  No matter what or who we are, he loves us.  We ARE enough.  I AM enough.  You ARE enough.  I wish I could make people understand this.

The point of the gospel isn't to create this huge judgement game of "who is the best."  Most christian will tell you this, so why don't we believe it?  Why is there still comparing and still the overarching desire to be 'better'.

The point of the gospel is love. God said, "I want them to love me like I love them.  They are to caught up in being 'perfect' by trying to cover all of their sins.  They sin.  It's what they do.  I'll send them my son so cover all of their sins so they can stop worrying about being something they aren't. Then they will have the freedom to focus on our relationship and can spend more time with me.  Yes, this is a good plan.  I really like them and their company and this way it can work."

I'm not saying that God is pleased with sin or ignores it.  I'm not saying that we shouldn't care about sinning.  I'm just saying that our strive to be perfect is silly.  We aren't sinless.  Why do we try to be an then hate ourselves when we aren't?  God doesn't.

Bringing us back to the conversation of our desire to be 'better' and to 'change'.  Do you know the story of the giving tree?  The boy plants a tree and at first the tree is fruit. Then it is shade.  Then it becomes wood.  Then it becomes a stump for the man to sit on.  At every stage in it's life it was PERFECT for the boy.  It was exactly what he needed.  It changed, yes.  But never was it wrong.  In our lives we will change.  We may not struggle with a particular sin, but we'll struggle with something else.  We may never be sinless, but in each moment we are exactly what we need to be.  Life will change us.  We'll learn new things and transform.  We will have our sins and that is perfectly okay.