I am Nothing

Today, I spent the majority of the day deep cleaning my house because that is part of the duties of a stay at home mom (or perhaps any mom).   

I have been doing a biblical counseling bible study and it is rocking my world in good and bad ways. Bad because it is a self confrontation manual. Do you like confronting your self? The real you? It is making me look at the ways I don’t align with Scripture. I told my friend, “It is tearing me down, man.” But maybe there are things within each of us that need tearing down and then rebuilding. I have been a Christian for a long time, but it is challenging my thoughts, my way of living, and worldly beliefs that have snuck into my life. 

One such belief is “I am Enough.” This statement is in one sense true and in another false. Therefore, it is not true. A true statement is always true. 

I have been using the fighter verses app in conjunction with the study. The fighter verses app is for Scripture memory. You can add your own or stick to the five year plan created to memorize passages of Scripture each week. The point of fighter verses is to arm you with truth when you are weak. About a month ago, the fighter verses led me to memorize Psalm 103. These verses are to remind you of God’s goodness. 

Verse 14 says,

For he knows your frame, he remembers you are dust. 

As I dusted, I was reminded that God pieced me together out of the very particles I was cleaning up. Those dust particles are nothing but dead pieces of me or dirt blown in by daily activity. They have no ability to come together and form anything. Yet, God made me from the dust as the Bible says in Genesis 2:7. He breathed on the dust and it came alive with a living soul. I have zero ability to breath anything into existence. I am nothing, not enough to create, or even to uplift my own soul apart from the God who lives in me. 

I am not enough, not worthy of praise. No, it is the God living in me who is worthy of praise. 

“Apart from me, you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Saying “I am Enough” may be used within a Christian context in a way that helps a Christian because we are enough for God’s love. But reading Psalm 103, He loves us because we were nothing and had need of Him. Not because we were worthy of His love or praise or adoration. So even in this sense it is a falsehood. 

Saying “I am Enough” will never help an unbeliever to the truth or magnificence of God’s love for each of us. It will be a false gospel so Christians should be weary of using it.

But if we ponder on what we all know in our hearts to be true – I am not Enough, I am Nothing, and realizing that God stepped down into our nothing with a steadfast love that is incomprehensible apart from Christ and His completed work in the cross, we will know the immeasurable value we have to the Father, calling us His children, Heirs with Christ, and giving us His riches. 

He did not desire us to stay bogged in the mire of our lack, of our incompleteness, or our feelings as though we are less than others, so He became nothing in Love. This Love draws us into completion and gives us the value we cannot sustain ourselves. 

Not only did He breathe life into us, forming us out of dust, breath, and His words, He breathed upon the Scriptures (2 Tim 3:16) such that they too give life to the weary human. The Word is a mirror onto our true selves (James 1:22-25). All else is deception. 

Pondering on how I like to build myself up and thinking about how Scripture says that I am nothing has challenged me in how the world is telling me I am Enough on my very own. Scripture never says I am Enough. 

The Bible says: I was made good. I was made fearfully and wonderfully. I have purpose. But God made me, shaped me, and all of my enoughness and goodness comes only from Him. I am not enough. I am nothing. But God’s love shows me I am adored despite being nothing. He is indeed too wonderful and good to us.