His Grace is.............

sufficient for me


Its 4:45 on Sunday afternoon, I head off to volunteer in the café. I walk in with a smile on my face but a knot in my stomach. The others make the job look easy, take an order, press #5 on the blender, and wala an instant smoothie to quench the parched crowds of my church. A twelve year old calmly chats with her other pre-teen friend about whatever kids that age talk about….meanwhile I'm frantic. Did I get the order right? A frappe is a cold drink, not a hot drink, that lady who ordered the non-fat soy latte with a drizzle of carmel looked at me funny. Does she think I'm a loser that is not adequate to take orders? Did I blend the smoothie enough, am I taking enough initiative, am I making a difference? All these questions swarm through my head while I'm serving. Sounds like a lot of fun, and then I began to think about it. This is NOT FUN!

I lay in bed the other night with similar thoughts barricading me from a good night sleep. What if I made this mistake again? what if my life is a big disappointment? What if my messy ways of doing things just make me a BIG FAT FAILURE? Then like a beam of hope in the night God whispered to my troubled mind "His grace is sufficient for me". Not my churches grace, not my friends grace, not my parents grace. God's grace is sufficient for me. Let's face it sometimes the grace people offer us can be ridiculously critical, demanding, and unrealistic. We give our best efforts but we always come up short, or perhaps we make up these ideas we have to have everyone's approval to be worth something of value.

The thing is we won't always get recognized by our good deeds, we will keep making mistakes and learning, we will not always get it right, but the grace is knowing….it's okay. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” What a perfect promise. In our weaknesses God is glorified because we can't do anything without Him. We wouldn't know of grace without Him. God knows how much we want approval from others, how much we want to make our lives GREAT, how much we want to be valued. Yet he sweetly reminds us we have all we ever needed because he gives us grace and that is enough.

Grace because he gave us this day, the chance to live, the opportunities to make a difference. He knew we would experience all the things we do, for he experienced them himself but the hard part is relying on Him alone. He freely gives us a gift to be unconditionally loved regardless of what we think of ourselves or what others think of us. The more I learn about Jesus, the more I'm in love with him. Today I'm thankful for the scars of my failures because without them I wouldn't have fully experienced the grace of God and that it is truly sufficient for me.

So here I come 4:45 Sunday afternoon to volunteer at the café. Smile on my face, head held high, #5 on the blender, wala an instant smoothie. Non-fat soy latte with a extra drizzle of carmel, how can I be a light to this lady today? I blended that smoothie great, I'm serving with my heart, I'm making a difference, and Gods grace is sufficient for me.