Good morning and a Most Blessed Thursday to you! This is going to be a relatively short devotion because I want to share a word with you that is the antithesis of what we receive in the world so often. This was brought on when I was listening to a podcast or watching a documentary (I can't remember exactly the context), but I do want to share a word with you:

You are not perfect, and you are not enough. And that should be very good news to you! Because you are not perfect and you are not enough, you do not have to strive to be something that you are not. You don't have to strive to earn something that you cannot earn. But there's even better news, because there was One who walked this side of Heaven, Who came from Heaven and lived a perfect life, and He alone was and is enough. And He gave that "enoughness," that perfection, to you when He died upon a cross, bearing all of your imperfection, all of your sin, all of your "not enoughness" upon His shoulders and shed His blood for you.

We know that His perfection was given to you and His sacrifice for you was received and accepted because His burial tomb is empty and remains empty. And He is no longer dead under the weight of your sin, of my sin, but He lives, conquering death, conquering our sin, conquering our imperfection, our "not enoughness."

Of course, you know I speak of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, who walked this side of Heaven in order to live the life that we cannot live, in order to be the "enough" that you and I cannot be. He did this out of His love for you.

In the first letter that John wrote, in 1 John chapter 4, we read: "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. If we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us."

You are not perfect, but God is perfect, and in His grace, He has called you to be His redeemed child. He has called you to have His own Spirit abide within you, and He has called you into that perfect love so that His love may continue to be perfected in us as we grow closer and closer to Him and are transformed by His perfect love to be more and more like Him every day.

You are not perfect. You are not enough. And praise the Lord! Praise the Lord for this, because we are free from striving to be something that we are not and striving to be someone that we are not. But we are granted, by His grace and His mercy, to live in His perfect love not only today but for all eternity. And by His grace, we have been redeemed, and we have been made perfect.

So, I hope that that's good news and that you can share that with someone today—that you can tell someone else that they are not perfect, and they can be freed from the burden of this false pretense that they need to be perfect or that they need to be enough. Because it is Jesus who is perfect, it is Jesus who is enough, and it is Jesus who lives in us.

Let's pray:

Heavenly Lord, we thank You so much for Your grace. We thank You for Your perfect love, and we thank You that we live in this perfect love. Help us to love others as You have loved us. Help us to share the good news that we are perfected in You and that today is but one day in all of eternity in Your perfect love. Lord, thank You for the opportunity that we have to share this good news with others, and open our eyes to see those that You have brought into our lives that we can share this good news with today. Lord, we lift this to You in the blessed, perfect, and Holy Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

I look forward to worshiping our perfect Lord and Savior this week with you, and until then, I hope you have a wonderful week. God bless!