The prison of “not good enough”

Recently a friend mentioned to me that she was tired of the Marie Kondo phenomenon. Her exact words were, “It’s just one more thing that makes me feel like I’m not good enough, like I’m doing yet something else wrong.” Another friend attended a women’s conference a week ago. While there, they did an activity where they wrote on a handheld mirror the lies they’d been believing about themselves. In a group of about 25 women, my friend said that nearly every single person had written something on their mirror about not being good enough or lacking self-worth or feeling like they were not valuable.

I know, most of the time, we probably don’t question whether we are good enough for God; we are more concerned with feeling like we are good enough and acceptable to others, or sometimes even just ______ enough for life. The sad state of things seems to be that we are all sitting around feeling not _______ enough together, it’s just that some hide it better than the rest of us.

There are so many things that can make us feel “not _______ enough.” I, too, struggle with this every single day.

As I’ve been pondering my friends’ experiences, another message has been hitting me through song.

As Christians, I think that we sometimes forget how much power Jesus’ words have. Especially if we’ve been around for a while, it is easy to become so familiar with certain scriptures that we lose sight of just how life-changing they are. In Crowder’s song Red Letters (referring to Jesus’ words in the Bible), the chorus says,

Then I read the red letters
And the ground began to shake
The prison walls started falling
And I became a free man that day

Crowder, “Red Letters

I feel the words convict my spirit. When people read and hear the words of Jesus, it can feel like “the ground [begins] to shake” and “the prison walls start falling.” Jesus’s words HAVE POWER. His words have the power to CHANGE LIVES. His words have the power to change MY LIFE.

There is FREEDOM in Christ – His word releases us of all that constrains.

In another song, “Raise a Hallelujah” by Bethel Music, the worship leader declares,

There’s a song written on your heart that only you can sing. And when you sing, enemies will flee; when you sing, prison walls come falling down. When you sing, heaven invades the earth, so just begin to lift up your hallelujah…

Bethel Music, “Raise a hallelujah”

When we sing, when we praise, when we lift up the name of Jesus, walls come falling down. We are no longer imprisoned by our own destructive thoughts or our tortured perceptions of ourselves or our circumstances. When we are worshipping Him, we can escape from the bondage that society – and ourselves – have created.

Do you see it? Do you see the only solution to feeling “not _______ enough”?

HEAR THE WORDS OF JESUS and PRAISE HIM.

We can only break free of the prison of “not ________ enough” if we focus our hearts and minds on what HE says about us and on who HE is.

Jesus tells us that every hair on our heads is numbered. That we are His friends, His brothers and sisters. Jesus tells us that He died for us. He tells us that He is our peace. He tells us that we can abide in Him. He tells us that we are saved. Jesus tells us that He came to give us life and life abundant. Jesus tells us that we can know His voice.

We are precious children of God, co-heirs with Christ.

Jesus is the light of the world. He is the good shepherd. Jesus is the bread of life. He is the resurrection. He is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the truth, the way, and the life. He is the son of God.  

The author of Hebrews summarizes it this way,

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

Whenever we are feeling not _______ enough, we need to fight back against those lies with the words of Christ. We need to look in His face and see the radiance of God’s glory, and let His words wash over us.

Jesus, the One who calls us friend and sister is not just anyone. The source is trustworthy – He is the exact representation of God Himself. And God cannot lie. What God – and Jesus – say about us is the truth. Our hearts do not speak the truth – they are deceitful above all else; our minds do not speak the truth – we can be double-minded hypocrites.

Only God can tell us the truth about who we are in Him.

You are perfectly enough exactly as you are. You are worthy of love exactly as you are. You are valuable exactly as you are. Even if you did absolutely nothing of significance in this life, you would be loved and treasured.

I am sorry that you don’t see that. I’m sorry that I cannot always see this in myself. I’m sorry that I cannot always see that in others. But, nevertheless, the truth remains that we ARE enough.

So, friends and sisters in Christ, listen to these songs and let their lyrics speak to your soul. Read this article and pick out one or 2 (or 3 or 10) verses that hit you hardest. Write them out on notecards and post them all around your house. Write them on your mirror. Make them the screensaver on your phone. Memorize them. So that when you have one of those moments, or days, or weeks, when you are feeling weighed down by the burden of not being _______ enough, fight back with God’s word, let those prison walls fall, and raise your hallelujah for who He is and who He has created you to be.