Sufficient?

According to the Bible, God is sufficient to meet all of our needs, and Christ’s death was sufficient for the sins of God’s people.  Those two statements are incredible if we even try to comprehend them. 

But what if we verbally or outwardly claim that our God is sufficient, but live our lives as if He isnt?  The book of 1 John says that if you say you belong to God but yet you live otherwise without sensitivity to sin and continued repentance that you are a liar!

If we truly believe that Christ is sufficient, and that true satisfaction of the real and lasting kind comes only from God, then we need to live a life committed to fighting to rest in it.  Since we as human beings are naturally sinful and wayward without the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit, this is not something we can attain outside of heaven.  But it is a Christian’s duty to continue to press on towards 100% conformity to Christ.  Jesus was clear that following Him would cost us everything.

One of the marks of a true Christian is a progression away from the things of this natural world and a progression towards the things of God: prayer, good works, evangelism, healthy doctine, etc.  We become more and more like Jesus and less like the world.

I firmly believe that when we as God’s people live other than our calling, we grieve God, and make a mockery of the faith in the midst of an unbelieving world.  Bringing dishonor to the holy name of God and disobedience to God’s Word are both sin and unbecoming of those who have been bought with a price.

So how do we practically live this out?  Here’s what I’ve been thinking about:

When we’re tempted to sin, we are to remind ourselves that God is sufficient, and that he withholds from us no good thing based on the God-breathed authority of Scripture, and to deny His sufficiency denies the very foundations of our faith! 

As John Piper wisely said, “God is fully glorified in us when we are fully satisfied in Him.”