In a recent sermon, Pastor Steve Elliott shared this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“I have discovered that having God is enough.”
Steve went on to say, in part:. “If you find your meaning in work, family, et al, when it all goes away where will your find your meaning? God gives us himself. It is more important to have Him than our circumstances. God presence is all the meaning we need.”
If you are like me, your response to the question “Is God enough?” is a reflexive “Yes, of course.” For Christians, the question and answer falls into a category of “how could you answer any other way”. The problem isn’t getting the answer correct, the problem is living our lives consistent with our answer. I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks.
Here are some ideas, quotes etc I have come across in the course of considering “Is God really enough?”
It seems to me that we can only truly know that God is enough when we are faced with the gallows/altar (i.e. Bonhoeffer, or Abraham sacrificing Isaac). In the absence of the gallows (hopelessness), we can only say we believe God is really enough. We will cling to our illusion of independence and self sufficiency until there is no other choice. Even in our sincere belief that God is enough.
“We are the ones who appear to not believe in the God we say is real. We are the ones who seem to be forcing ourselves to believe with bigger shows, bigger celebrities and bigger methods of manipulation.”
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/reatheism
1 My heart is not proud, LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have calmed myself
and quieted my ambitions.
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.
3 Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore. Ps 131
God gives us hope by meeting us not at the lofty summits of human achievement but at the point where all purely human hopes have shrunk and collapsed; it is here that exhausted human hope can be remade out of inexhaustible possibilities of God’s love.