Is God Enough?
Is God enough? Not for most people. I know
that because there would not be as much infidelity, pornography
addiction, chemical dependency, physical abuse, sexual addiction,
codependency, suicide, compulsivity, and on and on. Many mental
disorders have as their base a physical deficiency similar
to non-moral physical diseases that need to be addressed, but
the reality is that God is ultimately the source of all healing
whether through medicine or cognitive and behavioral changes.
There may not be enough AIDS anti-virus in this world to be
given to every human on this planet who is affected by AIDS,
but there is enough of God’s love to heal every person that ever
lived at any time! God’s love is the antidote to the pain
that all of us have experienced. It doesn’t numb from pain,
it heals pain and the only side effect is the peace that passes
understanding. Now that is a powerful love. That is an amazing
love. That love costs nothing monetarily. Still, there are many
more hurting, broken and wounded people searching for God’s
love in the most unloving of places. Why is that? Receiving God’s
love doesn’t cost anything, but it costs everything. You
have to be willing to enter your pain with the belief that God’s
love can heal it, and most of us are far too afraid of pain.
Our unwillingness to receive God’s love does not affect
the fact that everyone is on a journey. Our journey ultimately
will lead us to God. Even those who do not consciously regard
God on this earth will end up facing Him. We will all stand before
Him one day and the reality of our eternal destination will be
determined by whether we believed He is enough.
God is enough to cover every single sin of every single person
who ever lived. Somehow that seems easier for most people to
believe than that God’s love can heal every single pain
that any of us suffer. Henri Nouwen wrote:
“You have to trust that your experience
of emptiness is not the final experience, that beyond it is
a place where you are being held in love. As long as you do
not trust that place beyond your emptiness, you cannot safely
reenter the place of pain. ” [1]
All our pain has at its core the experience
of not being loved. Not having a sense of being loved is the
mission behind all of our dysfunctional behaviors and lifestyles.
The first place we look for this kind of love is from the people
who inhabit our world. We cannot give the love that is really
needed to each other. The kind of love that centers you through
pain and enables you to believe that there is a place beyond
your pain can only be found in God.
Is God enough? I cannot absolutely guarantee many things in this
changing world, but I can absolutely guarantee that He is and
that His love will not be denied to anyone who asks. You must
believe that He is greater than any pain you have, or any fears
you can’t release before you will feel the love that Paul
describes in Romans 8:37-39:
“No, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced
that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither
the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height
nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to
separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our
Lord.”
Yes, God’s love is enough.
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