More Than Enough

 

  “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.” Romans 12:1(NLT)

by Alexandra Copeland

Someone recently said to me that God doesn’t necessarily call the qualified; He qualifies the called. This is really good medicine for those of us who sometimes feel we are too this or too that to do anything significant for the Kingdom. The one thing that we can all be sure of is that each of us has been called to serve the body of Christ in some way. We should never feel as though we are deficient in talents, skills, or abilities; or that we have nothing ample of which to offer God. This simply is not true.

Romans 8:10,11(NLT) says, “10 And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. 11 The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.”

Verse 10 tells us that Christ lives in us. The spirit that indwells us after we accept the Lord Jesus as our personal savior is the same spirit that was in Christ as he reconciled humanity back to God. This is good news indeed! This spirit invigorates us with life. So many of us are guilty of not having the excitement and zeal that we should about the Christian life. It is truly the most exciting and rewarding life imaginable, but there are many Christians who do not see it this way. They busy themselves looking at what others are doing and thinking what exciting lives other folks live; and those individuals do know the Lord as we do. Well God wants us to know that the action we’re craving in our lives comes from not only knowing Christ, but doing the work that He has called us to do.

In Matthew 10:7, Jesus Christ commanded the disciples to give as freely as they had received. He told them this because they, the disciples, has something of quality of which to give. The same can be said of us. Through Jesus Christ, we have everything that we need to live a quality life—a life that is filled to the brim and oozing over with good stuff. Ephesians 1:3 (NLT) says, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” You and I have been blessed with EVERY spiritual blessing. “Every” means every! We are not lacking anything in this category.

When it comes to the boundaries of life on earth, there is absolutely nothing that we cannot achieve through our faith in Lord Jesus, but we have to realize that God didn’t give us all these extremely wonderful blessings to sit around twiddling our thumbs. No. We’re to do something. Jesus Christ has commanded us to give, to pour into others, and to make an ample investment into their lives.

But what if you’re feeling down about yourself all the time? What if you don’t believe in yourself…you’re insecure and have a low self-image? Do you wait until someone makes you feel special before you can start living a great life? Well, if this were the case, you might be waiting a very long time. In Matthew 16:19, Jesus Christ declared that he has given us the keys to the Kingdom. This is an inside job. Internally, we are complete in Christ. We have all that we need to get the job done.

We need to visualize Christ literally taking a set of keys, placing them in our hands, and then closing them. Then, we need to visualize ourselves using these keys to unlock a door of unlimited potential and infinite possibilities. Walking in, we see that the room is filled with good stuff on the shelves; love, joy, confidence, wisdom, strength, courage, generosity, compassion, patience. Every spiritual goody that we can imagine is on a shelf for the taking. Of course, a terrific Giver is one who is thoughtful enough to provide instructions with the gift. So on each goody is written: “God produces character in you through this. INSTRUCTION FOR USE: Throw off everything connected with your old sinful nature and your former way of life. It’s rotten to the core. It’s got to go! Then, put this on in your mind and heart. Saturate until it becomes a part of you. RESULTS: Renewed mind, God-fashioned life. Ready to spread!”

God has given us extraordinary tools and building materials of which to craft a life. We’ve got His Word, the example of Jesus Christ; and to top it off, He’s given us the internal reality of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The spirit is our helper, our guide, and he will only tell us information he hears from the Father. He will only guide in the direction that pleases God. So we can’t lose with these extraordinary gifts.

You may not know exactly what to do with all that you’ve received, but our instruction is to move out boldly on His Word. We are to be confident that whatever deficits we feel we have, the Lord will make up the difference. Romans 12:1 says, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.” This is God imploring us through the Apostle Paul to present every ounce of our being to Him, because He knows how to make the most of our lives.

The bottom line is that God is building you up as you put on His Word. He has empowered you to live a fantastic, holy, and fulfilling life; and we have the potential to present this back to Him through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There was no way that we could make ourselves righteous, holy, and acceptable before God. He did all of this for us through our blessed Lord. So we can have every confidence that we can give, bless, and help others. We can love and pray for them through our faith in Lord Jesus, and this is always more than enough. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.