Estimated reading time: 4 minutes:-)
I haven’t been feeling great this weekend, so I’ll have to keep this post short:-) But God made me realize something this week that I wanted to share with you.
I stumbled across a worship song that touched my heart last week, called “Jireh” by Elevation Worship and Maverick City. Some of you may be familiar with it, some maybe not. I don’t think it’s super mainstream.
The lyrics go something like this:
“I’ll never be more loved than I am right now
Wasn’t holding You up
So there’s nothing I can do to let You down
It doesn’t take a trophy to make You proud
I’ll never be more loved than I am right now, oh
You are Jireh, You are enough
Forever enough
Always enough
More than enough.”
I listened to the song thinking “Jireh” was just the Hebrew for enough, but after I looked it up later I realized it meant something much deeper.
“Jehovah-Jireh” speaks of a profound attribute of God. It comes from Genesis, when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac, but God provided a ram in his place so he wouldn’t have to kill his son. When Abraham found the ram in the bushes (which is such a beautiful, cool image of Christ!), he responded by naming that place “Jehovah-Jireh.” It means, “The LORD will provide.” (Read the story here🙂
Recently, it’s been difficult trusting God to provide in my life. While I’m on the path to be the author I want to be, I’m not at that place yet, and it can be frustrating. While I have a vision for where I want to be, it’s frustrating to be patient with that vision. And while I trust God knows what I need, I’m also impatient to meet my future husband, if God has that in store for me.
What I mean to say is, you can hear “God’s got this” or “Trust God” or “He’ll take care of you” over and over again, and those things ARE true, but living it out and truly believing them is an entirely different thing. It’s hard.
But this story ropes me in to the promise of God’s provision. I was talking with a friend yesterday, and I realized something as we talked about the worries we have in each of our lives.
If I am not fulfilled in Christ now, I won’t be fulfilled when I reach the place I want to be.
If Jesus isn’t enough for me now, being a bestselling author won’t be enough for me one day.
If Jesus isn’t enough for me now, being married won’t be enough for me. Having a family won’t be enough for me. Being a grandma won’t be enough for me.
If Jesus isn’t enough, nothing is enough.
And of course, He is enough. I don’t say this to sound like He isn’t. I say this because this is often what we believe in our hearts, even though it isn’t true. We put marriage, or success, or a dream career or a family of our own on this pedestal, and we convince ourselves we’ll be happy when we reach that place.
But what about the meantime? What about all the boring things we have to do to get there? What about all the unanswered questions and discomfort and frustration now?
If I believe I’ll only be fulfilled when I “make it,” the journey is arduous and long and awful and hard. The journey is not something to be celebrated.
But if I believe that Jesus is enough now, that Jesus will be enough no matter what season I’m in, I can rejoice in the unrejoiceable. I can celebrate the journey, no matter how mundane or boring or hard or frustrating it is. Because God is in that journey, and He is working. He is providing. He is fulfilling me. He is everything, every moment, every day.
I’m learning to celebrate the unanswered questions and the discomfort. I’m learning to worship anyway in the frustration, in the hope deferred, in the time “in between.” Because Jesus is enough for me now.
And I don’t want you to misunderstand Jesus’s enoughness. When I say Jesus is enough, I don’t mean you don’t need anything else. Our souls were crafted for community, and we need help. We need to eat and drink. We need rest. That ache you have in your heart to be married someday, that is testament to the way God made you. Our hearts were made to long for intimacy.
When I say Jesus is enough, I mean you don’t need anything else to be whole. You are whole in Christ. You are saved in Christ. That is enough.
I pray Jesus is enough for you today, and for the next day, and the every day after. I’m learning to lean of His sufficiency myself; it’s not always easy! But I will forever repeat: Jireh, Jireh, You are enough.”
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ~ “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”