I’ve recently written several posts about “enough,” focused primarily on the combination of perseverance and contentment, always striving to grow but refusing to judge what is enough and what isn’t. We can spend our whole lives striving for the wrong “enough.”

But there is also a right “enough.” It is an enough we can never fully achieve but we have access to it. It is knowing our shortcomings while knowing we have access to a God who knows them better and constantly adds in the measure that makes us more than enough. He takes the sting out of others’ harsh assessments of us, not by placating us with surface affirmations as so many around us might do. (And let’s be honest: we like those affirmations much of the time because they build us up even if it is flimsy and temporary construction.)

God makes us more than enough not to placate us or build us up but to reveal himself. He has purpose in working through us. He knows we can’t, but he can. It might sound selfish to some: a God who works through us to reveal himself, but it is the opposite. It is selfless. He wants more for us. More than enough. The right kind of enough.

I struggled through something last week that made me think, “Perhaps I can redeem myself.” I didn’t say it aloud. In fact, I was glad that it was already uncomfortable enough just in my thoughts that I didn’t need to hear it spoken. Who am I to redeem myself? What power or wisdom do I have?

I have access to power and wisdom, and that’s different than owning it. I am not the source of it.

The next morning, I received an email from a friend. She forwarded a devotion, which in part included:

You and I are not enough—and that’s okay. Know that. Hear and acknowledge and embrace that…Let’s lay our striving down. May any good thing we offer simply flow from the joy of a heart that is eternally redeemed and forever thankful.