Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines sufficient as enough to meet the needs of a situation or a proposed end. One dynamic that has excasserbated every aspect of this current crisis is the lack of sufficiency at nearly every level.
Individuals and businesses lacked savings to survive a month with no income. Hopsitals lacked sufficient PPE for nurses. States lacked suffient resources to deal with demand for assistance, testing and unemployment. The federal government has not been able to provide a sufficient number of test kits and even the business loan portion of the 2.2 Trillion dollar relief act was not enough for the demand.
Self sufficiency was once a very American ideal. Think of the early colonists and later those who pioneered during the Westward expansion. The homesteads, family farms and Today we rely on others to do everything and make everything for us. Why do we struggle to produce ventilators and masks in a nation where Ford produced a car every 69 seconds during World War II? Why do we import roughly 90% of our medicines in the nation to first succesfully mass produce penicillin? We have become less and less self sufficent.
The greatest insufficiency that afflicts most people is a spiritual one. Many who claim to trust God and profess faith in Jesus have a shallow insufficient faith. The habits and distractions engaged in by so many only serve to obscure this insufficiency.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 Paul writes:
But he said to me,“My grace is sufficient for you, formy power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul experienced a vision of Heaven, he trusted Jesus and gave his life to preaching the Gospel. The outcome of this was a sufficency of God's grace in his life. A grace that made Paul content in the midst of sickness, pain, persecution and crisis. Is your relationship with Jesus Christ strong enough to give you this same sufficiency? Do you panic in the moment of crisis? Do you question God in the moment of pain? Do you reject Jesus at the first taste of persecution?
The next few blog posts will be focused on the sufficient Christian life. The insufficient Christian is an unfruitful Christian. You can't give to others what you don't have enough of for yourself. God's grace is sufficient, but too often our commitment, faith or obedience is insufficient to obtain it.
James 1:2-4
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
We are in the midst of a trial and if we allow God he will use it to build us up and to build His Kingdom.
Trusting in God,
Matt Layton
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