Have you ever felt inadequate? I have. In uncertain moments I’ve felt confidence ebb and it’s challenged my ability to deliver and ‘perform’ to my own expectations, as well as to other people’s also. Maybe you too have felt inadequate and at full stretch from commitments and obligations that life brings. The sense of duty and various responsibilities that one carries, can readily become an unrelenting burden that provokes the feeling ‘it will never be enough’. The good news is – in our own strength, we’ll never be ‘enough.’
Murray Smith
How is that good news? I believe that to feel a bit inadequate at times isn’t entirely a bad thing. Of course I’m not suggesting that a self-effacing, abject cringy sense of inadequacy which incapacitates us is useful. What I’m meaning is that if ‘brimming-over’ confidence isn’t tempered with humility, belief in our own infallible strength to be or do anything we set our hearts and minds to, can creep in. I’ve often heard that mantra and witnessed how it takes people to a place of self-confidence verging on arrogance.
The point is, for all our resourcefulness and abilities, we were never designed to be completely self-authenticating. We must provide room for the ‘God factor’ in our thinking. Trusting in God’s divine enablement can take our best efforts into another level all together. Jesus once spoke these startling words, “Without Me you can do nothing…” His statement alludes to producing an enduringly fruitful and lasting legacy that goes far beyond anything mere self-determination and human effort could ever deliver on its own. Of course we can do ‘things’ without reliance upon Jesus. People attempt that daily in every sphere of life – artistic endeavour, sporting or academic achievement and business to name just a few. But there is a better way.
Many years ago, an Albanian teenager year named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu felt called to help the poor. She did her training in Ireland and India. One day she approached her superiors with a long-held passion. She said, “I have three pennies and a dream from God to build an orphanage.”
Her superiors said, “You can’t build an orphanage or anything with three pennies.” Agnes smiled and said, “I know. But with God and three pennies I can do anything.”
For fifty years Agnes worked among the poor in the slums of Calcutta, India. In 1979 the woman we know as Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize. But did you know that Mother Teresa acknowledged struggling with deep feelings of inadequacy and ‘dark nights of the soul’? Sustaining her, was deep, daily reliance upon God.
Conversely, I remember at a very wealthy individual’s funeral, a large crowd gathered to honour this ‘self-made’ man. The envy of many, he’d achieved a lot materially in life – with scant regard for God. Business czars and stars present, paid tribute to the man’s ‘drive and self-determination’. When the challenging words of Jesus were read, “What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?” it was quietly confronting.
Our personal inadequacy and ultimate mortality are real. So is deep, daily reliance upon God’s supply of grace.
Flat Lay of the Holy Bible and Items on the Desk. Photo: Chris Liu, pexels.com
