Do We Have Enough? Is It Sufficient?

Guest post by Mary Sparks, Pastor’s wife, Hope Baptist Church, Joplin, MO

Sufficient?

While pondering on the phrase “God’s grace is sufficient” my mind kept wondering …is it really?

What is sufficient?  Is it “just enough” to meet your need?  Is it a “little more” to meet your need and have some left over?  Does it lack slightly below the “filling mark”?

Think on these things:

When your car is near the empty mark and the yellow light is on and the fuel light is on, and you are perhaps 30 miles from any station (you are guessing ‘cause you really don’t know how far it is).  Would one gallon of fuel be “sufficient” to take you 30 miles?  Would you need more?  Would you need less?  My guess is your answer might be, “I would need more than one gallon because I don’t know how far it is to the next station.”  And your answer would be correct.

When you are sewing an outfit for your daughter, son or grandchild, the pattern instructions might say you will need “3 yards of 42” material to complete this project.  If you go to the counter with your material in hand to ask for it to be cut and the clerk says, “We only have 2.5 yards of 42 material.”  Is it sufficient?  Your answer would be, “No, it’s definitely not enough.”

When you think of your daily provisions for your body, how many meals a day do you eat?  Most of us eat 3 meals a day.  Would 2 meals a day be sufficient?  Most likely the answer would be “yes”.  Another thought…would 1 meal a day be sufficient?  Well, I think we could agree that it might be sufficient, but we would probably get pretty hungry before the next meal.  Oh, and one more thought…would 1 meal per week be sufficient?  Well now, this is a different story and a different situation.  Definitely your answer would be a resounding, “No, it’s not sufficient!”

Now, let me propose some other thoughts.  How many times a day should we pray?  The Bible does not specifically say how many times to pray, but it does say “pray without ceasing”.   Also, does the Bible say how many times we should assemble ourselves together in church?  It does say, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.” But again, there is not a definite number of times to do this.

This leads me to a thought that I’d like you to ponder deeply…if we cannot have “sufficiency” in one meal per week, how can we assemble ourselves together only once during the week and feel it is “sufficient”?  Is not the Word of God “food for our souls”?

Is sitting under the Word of God while it is preached a time to refresh our souls and rekindle our minds and spirit, to uplift and encourage one another?   How can we feel we have “sufficiency” with just “one meal” per week?  Hmm…yet when we neglect to be faithful Christians in “feeding” [hearing, singing, praying] do we not lack “sufficiency”?

The purpose for this post is to illustrate to you the need to be MORE FAITHFUL than we have been before…don’t let yourselves get to the “empty” mark (as in the illustration of the car) …just attend church faithfully and say, “Fill ‘er up, I’ve got to have a sufficient supply to get me to the next meal.”

Now, you can go out rejoicing and say, “I have sufficiency to last me until the next meal [God’s Word and assembling ourselves together]!”  God’s grace to get you through the week, through the trials, through Satan’s temptations, will definitely be “sufficient”.

PS: I know there are circumstances that prevent some from attending church on a regular basis. The Lord knows all about that situation. But I feel that, somehow, there are times when we just “become complacent” and just stay home by choice. The Lord knows this also.