Not Good Enough
I have been reading in Revelation the section that describes the assault by “the great red dragon” (also called “the accuser of the brothers and sisters”). Furious with the woman (who gave birth to the One who is to rule all the nations, a.k.a. Jesus the Messiah) and with her offspring (those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus), he has gone to war against us!
We are intended to conquer the dragon, and Revelation indicates it as past tense: “They have conquered him.” What? This great evil angelic being that has it in for us with murderous intent? How can we conquer him? The loud voice proclaiming this says that the accuser is overcome “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” Let’s unpack this.
When we perceive the accusations against us, we are supposed to run to Jesus, whose blood was shed for just this! It’s not actually too hard to do this for our specific sins, though we work very hard to find sin-management strategies to keep us from actually needing the blood of the Lamb.
But what about when we are accused of not being good enough?
Ouch! This stings! Is not my greatest desire, my deepest longing, my heart’s eternal cry to be “good enough?” Are we not always looking for the “atta boy” from some superior, partner, or friend? Otherwise, why would the serpent, in tempting Eve, imply that she should be dissatisfied with herself? “If you eat this, you will be better than you are.” There was nothing wrong with what she was. She was less than God, not good enough to be God, and that was okay! It was how it was supposed to be!
In this accusation, the enemy twists the truth rather than simply telling an outright lie or a bringing a real indictment. It is one that tends to turn us away from our only source of true value! We scramble to justify ourselves out of a position we cannot bear: that we are not inherently good. It feels like death to relinquish the “right” to be “good enough.”
Is this not the core of denying self?
However, when we declare, “I am not good enough, but Jesus gives me His ‘good enough,” it is His blood that changes our status. When we bring our helpless, not-enough selves under the blood of the Lamb, and declare that our only defense against accusations of any kind is Him, we are entering the kind of death that defeats our enemy!
Not good enough, but still
Following Jesus every day in the everyday!
Christi
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