I’m not good enough. Do you ever feel this way?  I know I have.  There are so many times when I try and try, but always seem to mess up! I fall short, make mistakes, have bad thoughts and disappoint both myself and others so often that I have simply felt, I’m not good enough.  Not good enough to be loved and not even good enough to earn God’s grace.  

If we listen carefully, we’ll hear way too many people say, “I’m not good enough.” I knew a man who felt this way all the time, so just in order to feel better about himself and somehow, hopefully feel more deserving of God’s grace, he walked around with little rocks in his shoes, that would cause him pain and blisters, and by doing this, he thought it somehow earned him forgiveness.

So the question is, why do we feel like, “I’m not good enough,” and what can we do about it?  To understand the problem, let’s first consider how our society seems to demand that we earn what we get.  After all, we earn our grades in school, earn our paycheck at work, earn trust, earn loyalty and earn our reputation. In fact, it has been said, the only way to enjoy anything in this life is to earn it. Bottom line – if you want to feel good about yourself, you better earn it. If we follow that line of thinking, it only makes sense that we need to earn God’s grace and earn the right to go to heaven too.  

 ​Satan loves to lead us down this path.  He tells us if only we could be moral, friendly, giving, and thoughtful enough, we can earn our way to heaven.  Then, and only then, we can feel like we are good enough. Ah yes, but he is so sneaky that pretty soon he leads us to think, “If I tithe, follow the Ten Commandments, and say 943 Lord’s prayers, then, finally, I’ll be able to feel good about myself!

Of course, Satan even stands up and cheers for some super religious people who take all this self-righteousness even further. . . They might put rocks in their shoes to suffer for Christ, or give all their stuff away, or even become fearless missionaries in order to earn Christ’s love.  Can you feel the spiral?  It’s as if Satan is encouraging us for more – more – more – all for the wrong reasons.  He tells us that our 3.67GPA simply isn’t good enough, and only 4.0 Bible scholars make it to heaven.

When we put it this way, we can see how ridiculous this thinking really can be.  Furthermore, the one commonality of this approach is that I am still at the center of my universe. Every good thing I do is still, ultimately, about me.  Me earning it. Me feeling good enough.  About me trying to save my own skin from hell as I earn my way to heaven.

And speaking of heaven, that’s another reason why this scenario doesn’t work. Because even if I do lots of good things, I mean REALLY good things, I’m still a sinner. Even if I only ever did one bad thing in my entire life, that makes me imperfect. God is perfect and his kingdom is perfect. So, just by entering heaven with my one sin, I now make it imperfect. It just doesn’t work! It is simply impossible for me to ever be good enough.

Perhaps this is why the prophet Isaiah says that all our righteous deeds – including his own deeds – are like filthy menstrual rags (Is 64:6). He understood that our good deeds cannot somehow cover up our bad deeds. Sin is like putting a nail in the wall and then pulling it out and trying to cover it up.  No matter how hard we try, the holes are still there.

The problem is when my good deeds are really centered around me so I look good, and feel good about myself, (or I think that God owes me) then I’ve truly exposed my selfish heart and can see how filthy I truly am. I might even be able to brag to other people about all the good things I’ve done, but wouldn’t I seem pathetic bragging to the God of the universe?

So, what then, is the answer?

The opposite of “earning” is “receiving a free gift”. When we give our children our time, treasures and toys we do it simply because we love them – because of who they are and whose they are. They are our children. So, we give. And notice how freely they receive!

In the same way, our Father loves us so much that he sent us the free gift of life through his Son Jesus! It is because of God’s amazing grace and love for us that we are blessed with the opportunity to accept the precious gift of Jesus.

What an amazing gift. What an opportunity for us to have a heart of thanksgiving towards God. It’s not what we do. . . It’s what God has already done. When we accept this gift, we will never again say, “I’m not good enough” because Jesus thought you were indeed good enough to die for, and good enough to save.

When we experience God’s amazing love, it changes us.  It simply makes us want to love him back.  It is no longer about earning anything.  We love, because God first loved us (1 John 4:19).