Inadequacy

Yesterday I was blessed by six one-on-one fellowship times with three brothers and three sisters in Christ. Each one was innately unique, special, and encouraging. Although such a social day can be wearisome, I finished the day with a great smile on my face for I had heard six accounts of what God is doing, six accounts of lives being transformed, and six accounts of inadequacies.

By the conclusion of the evening, I came to understand the common theme of our stories, which are complexly interwoven on various points: we are inadequate, we have failed, but we have hope.

In the words of one, "...my self-focus limited by ability to love myself and consequently love others."
In the words of another, "...I was ashamed that I had not stood up for what I knew to be true..."
And yet the words of another, "...I am inadequate, but may my inadequacies be found in Christ."

Our stories are not all that different. Sometimes we forget that when we have our "self-focus" perspective. We tend to think we are the only one's struggling with this or that, or that no one understands, or that somehow our perspective is inherently unique. While there are aspects of each of those statements that are true, our stories still are not all that different. We each struggle with failure, we each have inadequacies, and we all know these truths, but do we believe them for ourselves?

On a practical level, nothing changes except our perspective. We still have regrets, we still have inadequacies, and we still fail. Perhaps we need to be reminded of the most complex aspect of our faith: Jesus Christ died for our inadequacies because He loves us. Even better, those inadequacies died when He died and we are now adequately alive in Him.

Hearing the stories of our friends, our families, and even strangers should entice us to examine how our stories are intertwined in the story of Christ. What an encouragement that we share that story so that we may fellowship, rejoice, mourn, grieve, laugh, and celebrate our lives together as brothers and sisters!

As one of my dear friends told me yesterday, "...my heart is heavy with the weight of inadequacy and failures...thankfully I am not alone."