Is God Enough?

Is God enough? This is a question posed to me by a friend in east Texas. When everything is going wrong, when your heart is breaking, when you have lost hope, is God enough? Is what you have in a relationship with Him enough to sustain you in the tough times in life?

When cancer grows, the tumor is inoperable, when you are behind on your house payment, when the business deal falls through, when the rain doesn’t come when you need it or when too much rain comes when you do not need it, is God still enough?

That’s where the Lord wants us to be. He wants our relationship with Him to be so profound and of such substance that like Job even in the hardest times we could say, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” [Job 1:21] Or we might say to the Lord, “Though You slay me,I will hope in You, nevertheless I will argue my ways before You.” [Job 13:15]

When the tears will not dry, when the emotional darkness will not lift, when heartache will not heal, when the marriage is not restored, when the fog of confusion will not burn away, and when the grief does not depart, is God still enough? Can He really be counted on to help us through such misery?

Each of us will most likely stand face to face with this question at some point in our life journey. Many have built their faith on a house of cards of Sunday School answers, clichés, and busyness. When walls crumble in on top of us like they did for many in Haiti during the recent earthquake, if all you have are pat answers learned from rote but you do not have the substance of a vibrant and close relationship with the Lord, your life will crumble. In myriad ways your life will shout out to a watching world that God is not enough.

I have watched many people suffer over the couple of decades I have been in ministry. Some do so kicking and screaming mad. Others endure suffering with joy like Christ endured the cross. When all the crutches of life get kicked out from under us like our health, our loved ones, our financial well being, and our emotional equilibrium if we have not found a firm foundation in the Lord will collapse in a colossal manner. [Matt 7:24-27]

I have witnessed those battling cancer knowing their days were limited stand firm in Christ and use their last days to point people to Him. On the other hand, I have seen others with lesser trials abandon the faith and turn to sin and the pursuit of wicked pleasure as a way to cope. Few people who have ever lived suffered more than Paul and what did he think? “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.” [Phil 3:7-8]

Until we learn that God is enough, period and end of story, our faith will be shallow and our passion will most likely ebb and flow with the challenges we are facing. I want to be like Paul when he said knowing Christ was surpassing value. That means lucrative and profitable. Not financially but something of infinite more value. No matter what happens if Christ is our foundation and we know He is enough, we can endure. Right now, no matter where you are and what you are up against, is Christ enough for you? I pray so for all of us.