Job 13:15, “though he slays me, I will hope in him. . .” 

“God will clobber you to make you humble. He will do whatever he has to do to make shipwreck of your pride” — John Piper

I can act surprised. I can pretend I didn’t see this coming. But what a liar am I.

The past few months have been hard. Not physically. Not financially. Nothing major happened that shook my foundation, though I kind of wished it had so it would make more sense in my feeble brain. But in my heart and in the depths of my soul, the past few months have been hard. The past few months have brought with them a constant bombardment of “You are not good enough.” in every way imaginable. The veneer I held up only served to make this message ring loudly and clearly in my heart. When someone would offer encouragement, or a sincere compliment, all I heard were the criticisms from others. The encouragements outnumbered the critics greatly, but they were softer. Nothing would drown out the failures that echoed inside. The world is loud. The world pressed in deeper and deeper until it nearly crushed me. My shoulders were physically hurting under the weight of the burden I was placing on myself. There was a heaviness to my soul that I couldn’t explain and couldn’t shake.

Friday morning, February 14, I sat in the back of the auditorium of a local church broken, spent, and exhausted and heard these words,

“If knowing you is my delight. . .If in your midst all joy is found
Won’t you come and break this old heart of stone.
Start a fire in these broken bones.
Here’s my soul it has been exposed to you
O God of ages past, convince my heart at last
Come and tell me of all I have in you”

The tears which had been flowing for several days, came harder. But they were different.

The song ended, and Tullian Tchividjian began to speak.
“We will never understand our need for deliverance until we understand our desperation”. I was desperate.
“Because of Jesus, I am free from the demand to measure up”. I certainly wasn’t measuring up.
“Failure is nailed to a bloody cross. . .Because Jesus succeeds for me, I am free to fail”.
“We are frantically searching for something we already possess”.

Oh what a freedom I felt. What a  salve those words were to my weary soul. The one place that offers constant relief, constant refuge, and constant respite was the one place I was running from. In my need to become “good enough”, I was overlooking the One whose worst is better than my good enough. God delights in my present, with all of its brokenness. He doesn’t only delight in the me that I will become, the me that will hopefully be more like Jesus. He delights in me now, in this very moment.

And that is enough.