Today’s AMI QT Devotional is provided by Claudia Robbie, a native New Yorker who transplanted to Atlanta.  Claudia is married to Trevor and they have two children, Isabelle and Owen. She is the admin and women’s ministry leader at JCA, Atlanta.

Devotional Thoughts for Today

“You are not enough”

2 Corinthians 12:9-11 

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH… These words ring in my head all the time. This thought has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. It highlights that I am weak and drives my desire to prove my own strength and my own worth.

As I get older, the thought has become more subtle and harder to identify, but in the end, most of my struggles come back to the foundational thought that I am not enough.  When I don’t fulfill the expectations of those around me as a wife, a mom, a staff person, a daughter, or ultimately as a person, I am faced with this idea that I am not enough.

This world tells me that I can have it all, and at the same time leaves me with the feeling of failure when the “all” doesn’t match with the glossy magazine covers of perfect looking women and the amazing lives depicted in social media or marketing campaigns. I see quotes on empowerment encouraging us to remember that we are enough and we have the power within us to do great things in the world—leaving us in a place of want when we do not see the change we so wish to see in a broken world.

The truth is, I am weak and I can’t do anything apart from God. I cannot possibly juggle marriage, motherhood, and ministry on my own. I have tried for years to do it all and to get everything just right, but in the end failing at it, feeling exhausted and at the end of my rope, with no hope of being good at anything.

However, the end of my rope is the start of where God met me. When I dealt with infertility for 2½ years before conceiving my daughter, I constantly felt inept and inadequate as a woman. My emotions were so volatile that I was extremely difficult to live with. I was once again a failure and not enough, but God met me where I was. He used that season to teach me how to submit to His plans and to give my weakness to Him. He prepared me for the seasons to come so that I would bring glory to Him.

Do you hear that you are not enough? In whatever you are doing, that thought can push you to rely on yourself to dig deep and be strong. But I urge you to submit your weakness to God, because His power is made strong in your weakness.

Prayer:  Lord, thank You that I can come to You with all my brokenness and weakness because You are the strength of my life—You are enough for me.  Help me to incline my ears to Your voice, and not to the voice of the world.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Bible Reading for Today: Hebrews 6-7