When your best is not enough
Friday June 22, 2018
Let’s face it situations will arise in your life when your best will not be enough. It isn’t that you don’t want to deal with the situation. The problem is that the situation is far bigger than your talents, abilities, knowledge, and resources. So, what do you do when your best is not enough? If you ignore your situation you will absolutely guarantee your failure. Now, what happens when you feel a desire in you to become the right person or to do the right thing but you know that it is completely outside of your reach?
God is an expert at putting us in impossible situations. He called Gideon to fight an army of 135,000 well-trained and equipped men with just 300 men with no training or weapons of war. He called Nehemiah, a young Jewish man exiled in Persia and cupbearer to the King, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which had been torn down some 70 years earlier. Keep in mind that Nehemiah had never been to Jerusalem and had no knowledge or resources to rebuild the city walls. He called Moses, an ex-Egyptian Prince now an old man and shepherd of sheep to liberate the people of Israel who had been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. These men were put into situations in which their best was not enough yet they triumphed anyway.
I am quite sure that God has not called you to go to war against a formidable army or to rebuild the walls of an entire city, or to liberate a nation enslaved for 400 years. I am however sure that God has called you to be a part of what he is doing in the world today. I am sure he has called you to become the right person. I am sure that he has called you to participate in what your local church is up to. I am sure he has called you to lead people to Jesus. And, I am sure that whatever it is that God called you to become or do, your best is not going to be enough.
So, what do you do when your best is not enough? When God called Moses to become the liberator of the people enslaved in Egypt, He asked him a simple question, “what is in your hand”? A staff replied Moses. God said, throw it to the ground and when Moses threw it to the ground it came alive, but whenever he picked it up it turned back into a lifeless piece of wood. The staff represented Moses’ best, it represented his identityas a shepherd, his influence over the sheep, and the incomehe earned tending to the flock. It is obvious that Moses’ identity, influence, and income were nowhere near enough for the calling, but here is the takeaway, if we give God our very best, he will do the rest.
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:26 NIV
In your situations, your family, your finances, your health, in whatever you feel God is calling you to do or become, no matter how impossible it may seem, give your best to God then sit back and watch him do the rest.
