Will It Be Enough?

My first sprint triathalon. 10 weeks of training. Four to six days per week of swimming, biking, and running. The day before the race I was plagued by the question, will it be enough?

The nervous butterflies were justified. At the age of 53, this was my very first race. I am not particularly athletic. I exercise out of necessity. I can hold my own swimming. The bike my husband bought me for Christmas 10 years ago had, maybe, 10 miles on it. To say I detest running doesn’t quite convey my sentiments. But I had committed to doing this race with a friend. And I had committed to it for myself – something I needed to do. Or die trying. Kidding. Sort of.

To help my training, I used an app that planned out how much of each discipline I needed to do each week in order to be physically prepared for the event. Each day I input my progress and the app kept track. As I accomplished a daily goal, the app would shade that discipline’s progress bar green. Any part of the goal that I didn’t achieve remained gray. I started two weeks late. So I had a lot of gray to make up.

The night before the race, as I reviewed my training, the app said I fell far short of the recommended totals for each of the disciplines. I looked at the graphic and, instead of focusing on the green for confidence, I saw only the gray. The undone part. The not achieved part.  Doubt seeped into my mind that I wouldn’t be able to make it. Will the training I have done be enough to get me to the end of the race? I would not know until I crossed the finish line. That’s how it is with races.

Honestly, life feels like a race doesn’t it? We strive, plan, and prepare, and still wonder, will it be enough? Will whatever I have done in this life be enough – enough to finish the race here on earth – enough to get to heaven?

We evaluate our, worth, our holiness, our spirituality, by our accomplishments. How well we hold our tongues, how much we give, and how well we help our neighbor. We fall into the trap of believing more is better, ever striving to feel like we have done enough to be worthy in God’s eyes. We are haunted by the realization that we fall short. If there was an app that measured our progress toward salvation, there would be so much more gray than green.

Satan wants us in the gray. Focused on the undone, our failures, and the gray part of our lives. This is where doubt takes root. Plaguing us with the questions – am I worthy enough? Have I done enough for God? Am I really part of God’s family? Am I destined for glorious eternity with God? Or will all my gray areas keep me out?

God’s invitation is that “everyone who believes in him [Jesus] will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his son into the world, not to judge the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17). Thankfully there is no “salvation app” keeping track of our worthiness. God does not see gray and green. Apart from Jesus, we are all living in the gray. Faith in Jesus changes everything to green. Jesus is not looking for us to have achieved a certain level of anything first. He accomplishes everything for us. Nothing is left undone.

The Apostle Paul reiterated this to the young Ephesian church when he wrote, “But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins [all gray and no green], he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) … God saved you by his grace when you believed [all green, no gray]. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (Eph 2:4-5, 8-9 NLT).

When I expressed my doubts about my training progress and my ability to finish the race to a friend, she looked at my app and said, “you’ll be fine. Don’t look at the gray. Trust your training.”

In other words, trust the green.

Faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior assures us that there isn’t an “enough” we have to be worried about. From the moment we confess our sins and believe in and profess Jesus as our Savior we can be confident of crossing that finish line, victorious. All of our gray, undone areas become green, accomplished in Jesus. The race will be messy along the way, but the outcome is secured. Nothing else we do adds to what Jesus accomplished on the cross. Nothing we don’t do puts us in jeopardy of not finishing. Faith in Jesus is enough.

Unlike my sprint triathalon, which I did successfully finish, we don’t have to wait to the end of this race called life to know whether or not we have done enough to enter eternal life with God.

If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, the answer is yes. Yes you have!

Trust your green.

This article was first published in The Christian Community News Magazine through Papa’s Pantry. I encourage you to please jump over and check out how this amazing ministry is impacting the cycle of poverty.