But I’m Not Enough

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Confidence comes not from discovering greater things about yourself or tapping into your inner potential. Confidence comes from seeing how big and how powerful God is, discovering his purposes for your life and his commitment to carry them through, and then just getting swept up in them. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Have you noticed lately that lots of people look to self-help methods to boost their confidence? How many social media accounts are dedicated to telling you how to be a better person? There are countless books, seminars, and programs promising to help you unleash your inner potential.

And it's quite a business these days to the tune of over $10 billion a year. But today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. teaches us that we can't manufacture true confidence. Real confidence can't come from inside us.

So where does it come from? Let's find out as Pastor J.D. begins today's teaching called, But I Am Not Enough. Today I want to show you from Exodus 3 how the universal experience of insecurity, insecurity, I mean that feeling inside of you that you are not enough, not enough to face life's challenges, how that comes from a view of God that is too small. I tell the story of experiencing insecurity one night when I found myself standing face to face with a group of convicted felons. I am referring to a meeting that I had with some of our brothers in the prison ministry. One of them told me in this meeting that he'd always assumed that as his release day approached that he would just be overwhelmed by feelings of excitement and anticipation as he's getting ready to restart his life. He said, but you know, as this release day approaches and they're going to just open the doors and I'm going to be able to walk out a free man. He said, what I'm feeling is not excitement and anticipation.

What I feel is I feel overwhelmed by fear. He said, what if I don't have what it takes to function in the real world anymore? I mean, look what I did the last time. I messed it up. And what if now, you know, what 10, 15, 20 years later, what if I don't have what it takes to succeed? What if I just mess it up again? Insecurity is that voice inside of you that whispers, I am not blank enough. And you figure out what goes in that blank.

In fact, just ask yourself what most often goes in that blank for you. I am not good looking enough. I'm not athletic enough.

I'm not young enough, smart enough, funny enough, spiritual enough. Maybe you just got hired for a job and now you're not sure you can do it. And what's worse is you're pretty sure nobody else thinks you can do it either. And so you're sure that you're pretty sure that when you see other people, you know, gathered around the water cooler at work and they're laughing about something, you're almost positive that it's you that they're laughing about. Or maybe you just embarked on some new phase in your life. You just became a mom. Or maybe it's a new chapter in your career. Or maybe you're going into retirement and you're just not sure if you've got what it takes to really succeed in this chapter. Y'all, every parent that I know feels like this because there is nothing that destroys your sense of self competence like having a child. I heard a guy tell me one time that the only possible way, he was a mentor of mine.

He said, JD, the only possible way for you to be happy as a parent is to lower your expectations on everything. Maybe you just started dating somebody and you're not sure if you measure up to their family's expectations. One guy told me, he said, that every family dinner I go to feels like a tryout, like I'm being interviewed. I feel like at some point they're going to excuse me from dinner and they're all going to have a vote as to whether or not I get to stay around as a part of the family. Some of you are married, by the way, and you still feel like that's happening at these family dinners, right? Now, I know of one guy who told me that a girl broke up with him because she said he was too insecure. And he said, JD, what am I supposed to do with that?

I mean, if I was insecure before and then she breaks up with me because I'm insecure, where does that leave me now? Maybe you feel like God has called you to a ministry that you just feel utterly incapable for. I talked to a lot of our church planters and a lot of our missionaries who actually are listening right now and they say, that's totally me. I answered the call and then I got here and felt like I didn't know what to do. I felt like I just felt overwhelmed by the possibilities and impossibilities. See, all of us at some point experience insecurity. In fact, in the age of Instagram and Twitter, I think this problem is a thousand times worse because no matter what I do, there's always somebody out there doing it better. I refuse to go on Twitter and Instagram on Valentine's Day because no matter what I do for Veronica, I'm like, I'm happy because I got her a dozen roses and took her to her favorite restaurant. But then there's some friend of mine from college that got his girl a pony and took her backpacking through Europe.

And I'm like, oh, please don't let my wife see that. Well, see, Exodus 3 opens up with Moses as a pretty insecure man. He had started out life pretty secure. He was a good looking guy with a lot of confidence.

He had a high paying job. He was Pharaoh's adopted son. But then in his early 20s or so, he felt like God was calling him to do something. Namely, he thought God was leading him to deliver Israel out of Egypt. And so when he tried it, things went bad. The Jewish people mocked him and rejected him.

Pharaoh, his adopted daddy, disowned him. And then he ended up killing a man. Now, y'all, that's a bad day at work, right?

Can we not agree? Everybody hates you, your boss fires you, and you kill somebody on the way out to the parking lot. That's a bad day. Well, Moses flees into the desert where he ends up marrying a nomad girl and spends the next 40 years tending the sheep of her father. I mean, talk about a life fail.

Y'all, when you're in your early 60s and you're tending your father-in-law's sheep and still living in his basement, that is a serious failure to launch. Exodus 3, verse 1, that's what opens up this chapter. Now, Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law. You just should read that and then read in your Bible, right?

Life fail, right there. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness, and he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it didn't burn up, so he turned aside to go see it. Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight.

Why? The bush does not burn up. And God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses. And Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer, God said.

Take off your sandals. For the place where you're standing, Moses, is holy ground. Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. At this Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.

I've heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians. So now, Moses, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I? Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?

Now hold on just a second. When did the conversation turn to Moses? Up until that point in the conversation there in verse 11, we've been talking about God and what God wanted to do. But now, we're talking about now Moses very subtly makes himself the point of the conversation. Commentators say that this reveals the deep insecurities that Moses was carrying around from his previous failures. In fact, commentators point out that that statement, who am I, is an echo of the very question that the Israelites had thrown back in Moses' face the first time Moses had tried to rescue them. If you go back to chapter 2, verse 14, when Moses had shown up the first time to try to rescue them, the Israelites had said, who are you and who do you think you are that you could come and actually pull this off?

Moses' repetition of this question shows us that their doubts had seeped into his soul. Maybe that's happened to you. Somebody criticized you for so long that you started to believe those things about yourself. Maybe it was a dad. Maybe it was your dad that put that kind of doubt on you.

Maybe it was a teacher or an ex-spouse or maybe an abusive boss. That's what happened to Moses. Verse 12, verse 12, but God responded to Moses, Moses, I will be with you.

This is really important. Notice how God deals with Moses' insecurities. He doesn't do it the way that we usually do it in our day and age. He didn't pull Moses on a talk show and reinforce him with positive thoughts or help him discover his inner tiger. And Moses visualized yourself walking into Pharaoh's court and experience the feelings of taking Pharaoh down, now look into the mirror again and say, I am Moses.

None of that. God just subtly shifts the narrative back to himself. He says, Moses, I will be with you.

Why are you talking about you for? You see, that's because this, and write this down, that's because confidence didn't come from a better assessment of your potential. Confidence comes from a clear view of God. So God doesn't start talking about Moses and say, Moses, you just not seen yourself the right way. He says, Moses, right, eyes here, look at me. Moses still doesn't get it, so he keeps talking about his deficiencies. Notice verse 13, Moses says, well, what if this happens or what if that happens? What should I do?

What should I do then? Verse 14, kind of humorous, God totally ignores Moses' questions. Instead, he spends the next nine verses focused entirely on what he, God, has done, is doing, and plans to do. He says, Moses, this is not about you having what it takes. Moses, this is about me accomplishing my purposes. You've got a role in that, Moses, yes, but the power, the success in this, that belongs to me. Moses, I don't need you to be a victor. I need you to be a vessel. I'm the victor.

I'll work through you. So let me say it again. Confidence comes not from discovering greater things about yourself or tapping into your inner potential.

Confidence comes from seeing how big and how powerful God is, discovering His purposes for your life and His commitment to carry them through, and then just getting swept up in them. It reminds me of a story I heard one time when I lived in Southeast Asia as a missionary, an older man who was a neighbor of mine told me a story that he said happened when he was in, you know, when he was 10 or 11 years old. It's sometime in the 1950s, he said. He said there's a group of Southeast Asian fishermen from their country there that were discovered off the coast of their island floating, hanging on to the wreckage of a ship, a small ship, a small fishing vessel. And he said that the coast guard rescued these guys and these fishermen complained about a cow that attacked them from heaven. And so they just, their version of the coast guard was like, surely this was some kind of drug deal that went bad, some kind of smuggling, something illegal.

So they put these guys in prison and they printed the story in the paper. Well, this older man told me, he said about a week later, a group of American servicemen very sheepishly came forward. There's a base not far from where I lived in Southeast Asia and Americans have a runway, a little strip out on one of these islands. And this guy said that these American servicemen said we had our B-52 bomber and we were planning to take off. And as we were ambling down the runway, a cow walked across the runway and we thought, hey, this cow doesn't appear to belong to anyone. We'll just take him with us to our destination. When we get there, we'll slaughter the cow. We'll all have prime rib tonight.

It's going to be a fantastic evening. So he said, we didn't really have room, you know, up in the cockpit for the cow. So we put him in the bomb area. And since when we crossed, you know, 10, 15,000 feet or whatever, something happened and the cow just lost his mind. The cow started, you know, kicking.

I don't know if it was the altitude or what, but we didn't know what to do. He said, so he was standing right above the bomb door. So we did what you would think to do.

We just opened the bomb doors. Now, I have no way of verifying whether or not this story is true, but this old man from Southeast Asia told me it was true. And if it is true, all I can think about is first, what was going through these fishermen's minds as they're looking up and they're trying to describe, is that a cow dropping to us from the heavens, right? And then I wonder, what was like the last thing going through that cow? I mean, these fishermen are like, we better move, you know, and the cow's like, you know, cow's like utter destruction ahead, you know, like this. And sorry, I got to milk this analogy for all that it's worth. But if it happened, if it happened, I don't know. The other thing I wonder is, I mean, you think about the cow, poor cow just walking, you know, through the field eating grass, happens to make his way across the runway.

No idea where he is. When all of a sudden he gets swept up in forces beyond his comprehension and beyond his imagination. What Moses is experiencing in Exodus 3 is a little bit like that, because suddenly he is just kind of, as he's minding his business, he gets swept up in the purposes of God. You see, the way that you find confidence in life is not getting God on your side. The way you develop confidence in life is you begin to live out the purposes of God that you discover from Scripture. Many people make a critical mistake in reading the Bible. They assume the Bible is primarily about them. That it's a manual of spiritual tips for helping you achieve your spiritual purpose and helping you find the will of God for your life. The Bible is primarily about God. It's not about you. Page after page reveals who he is, who he is, and only when you come to an awareness of who he is can you discover who you are.

Only by becoming confident in his purposes are you ever going to be able to become confident in yours. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. You know what? We appreciate you. Yes, you are listeners.

It's an honor for us to be able to be a source of encouragement for you every day. Did you know that these Summit Life broadcasts are only one of the ways that you can keep up with Pastor J.D. 's ministry? Did you know that you can follow Pastor J.D. on social media?

Why not get some biblical insight as you scroll? Just search for Pastor J.D. Greer on Facebook, at Pastor J.D. Greer on Instagram, and at J.D.

Greer on Twitter. Follow along on all your favorite social media platforms and stay up to date with this ministry while filling up your timeline with encouragement from God's Word. Now let's get back to today's teaching right here on Summit Life. Many of you have tried to find the will of God entirely in the wrong way. You've focused on what is the will of God for my life and you've put all the emphasis on the word my. You don't discover God's will by narcissistically looking at your life. You discover God's will. You discover what he's doing in the world and then you align your life with his purposes. Some of you have approached God trying to see how he can help you achieve your purposes.

You've gotten it all wrong. We are supposed to approach God surrendering to his purposes and that's where a real sense of confidence comes from. Well see, that's what God is trying to very patiently show Moses.

He's trying to say, I've got a purpose and I want to use you in it. And he drives this point home by introducing to Moses a name. Verse 13, Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and I say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they asked me, what is his name?

What shall I tell them then? God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites.

I am has sent me to you. The irony of course is that the name that God uses is not really a name. It's a verb. In Hebrew it is and it literally means I am or it means to be. It's a cognate of the verb to be. Now we write it. Now we say it is Yahweh or Jehovah.

That's how we usually transliterate it. What God is saying to Moses is Moses, I don't really have a name because I'm not like anything else you've ever experienced. I don't come from anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. I didn't have a beginning. I'm not going to have an end. I don't have needs.

I don't require any help. I don't get tired. I have no limits. I am unbounded, unchanging, always and forever the same.

And that means I'm not intimidated by Pharaoh nor am I limited by Egypt's power. The burning bush is supposed to give us a glimpse of God's eternal self-sustaining nature. The fire that burned in the bush burned continually without burning up the bush. Well see fires need fuel, right? And when the fuel is consumed the fire goes out.

But the fire that Moses saw was self-sustaining. It did not require any kind of fuel. In the same way God, the eternal I am, needs no external fuel. Nothing precedes him.

Nothing sustains him. Nothing contains him. And so God says to Moses, if I, the eternal I am, the all-sustaining one, is on your side, Moses, do you really feel like you need anything else?

Is there anything else you need beside I am with you? All those places in your life, Moses, that you feel like you are not, I am. You know when you step back and you think about it, Moses actually did have a lot of undiscovered potential. And when you think about it, Moses had no idea what happened. Moses had been uniquely equipped to accomplish this task that God had called him to.

I mean think about it. For the past 40 years, Moses has led sheep through the very wilderness that God is now going to have the children of Israel escape through. You know what that means? That means that Moses knew the terrain. He knew the trails. He knew the mountain passes. He knew the watering holes. Plus as a herder of sheep, he knew something about managing unruly crowds. And as a former son of Pharaoh, he's learned how to read and write legal documents. He's seen firsthand how to set up a government and so forth. He's been uniquely equipped for this.

This should have been. This should have been his, for you children of the 80s, his karate kid Mr. Miyagi moment. Remember that scene, Mr. Miyagi, after he's had him sand the floor and paint the fence and wash the car, he thinks he's been wasting his time. But all this time, Mr. Miyagi has been teaching him the basic moves he needs to defeat Johnny in the karate tournament.

Right? This should have been Moses's Mr. Miyagi moment where he realized all this last 40 years, it's all been divinely orchestrated to prepare him for this very moment. But Moses can't see that. Moses can't see that because he's so focused on himself.

And listen to me, whenever you focus on yourself, whenever you focus on yourself, you will always find yourself overwhelmed by insecurities because you will always end up finding some obstacle that is greater than what you bring to the table. In time, Moses is going to come to see the things that God had done in his life and he's going to appreciate God's sovereign preparation of him for the task. But what is most fascinating to me in this passage is that God, in trying to give Moses confidence, doesn't point any of those things out even though they were true. He doesn't say, Moses, wake up. I've been preparing you the whole time.

You do have what it takes. Instead, all he says is, Moses, I'm with you. Walk forward in confidence, knowing that what I have called you to, I will supply you for. And as Moses does that, he starts to see how God had indeed been ever present in his life and had indeed been preparing him all along for the great work that he had for him. My question for you is, what if you looked at your life with the eyes of faith? What if you started to believe that literally in everything, in the good and the bad, the exciting and the disappointing, the tragedies and the triumphs, there had been a sovereign, loving God behind it all, preparing you for his purposes, just like he said he was.

And that that same God was now calling you forward, telling you to trust the one that faithfully prepared you would also be the one who would faithfully see you through. That is where confidence comes from. God does not deal with Moses's insecurities by teaching him anything about himself, even though Moses had a lot to learn. In this moment, God dealt with Moses's insecurities by calling him to focus on who God was.

Because again, confidence doesn't come from a clear self-assessment. It comes from a clear view of God. So when Moses responds, which he's about to, God, I am not eloquent enough, smart enough, successful enough. God responds, I didn't choose you because you were any of those things, Moses.

I got enough of both of those things for the both of us. Moses, it is true, you are not, but I am, I am God enough. In fact, throughout scripture, we're going to learn that God usually doesn't choose the guy that says, oh, I know exactly why you chose me. I was so talented that you just had to have me on your team.

You see, that kind of guy almost always clogs up the line. And when he or she accomplishes something great, they just say, finally, the world is recognizing my talents. God prefers instruments who are broken, instruments who feel insufficient, instruments who know that they have to lean on God, instruments who, when they accomplish something, say, I have no idea how it happened.

It must have been God at work in me. That's why Paul in the book of 1 Corinthians says, it's not many mighty, not many noble, not many wise, not many strong. God chooses the weak and the despised so that the glory will go to him. I would actually go so far as to say it this way, feeling inadequate is a prerequisite to being used by God.

And if you don't feel inadequate, he's not going to choose you. So Moses says, but God, I'm not good enough. And God says, I know I am.

And God, I'm not skilled enough. I know I am. God, I'm not confident enough. I am.

So find your confidence in me. God says, Moses, I am the God of very, very unpromising material. Moses, you may not be, but I always am and my amness overcomes your notness. I told you that throughout Israel's history, God would re-invoke this I am name whenever Israel was in a time of great need. And then what God would do is he would attach to that name Jehovah or Yahweh.

He would attach to it whatever it was that Israel lacked and whatever he planned to supply for Israel in himself. In fact, that name Yahweh, Jehovah, appears in your Old Testament 6,519 times. In your Bible in English, it's written as capital L-O-R-D. Whenever you see capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's always signifying it's the name Yahweh or Jehovah. This is who Jesus wants to be to you.

He is that I am identity from the Father. He has your hope and salvation. What an encouraging message from Pastor J.D.

Greer here on Summit Life. If you happen to join us late today or if you'd like to catch up on previous messages in our current teaching series, visit us online at jdgreer.com. So, J.D., our current teaching series is called Not God Enough. It's an intriguing title for sure, but tell us what did you want us to understand by choosing this title? It really was a way of saying that for many people the problem with their faith is that they have a reduced view of God, and they think of God as a slightly bigger, slightly smarter version of themselves.

We're not talking about somebody with just a little bit more intelligence and a little bit more strength. We're talking about somebody whose wisdom defies every category we try to put it in. So, I'm excited to be able to share that with our Summit Life audience. We're continuing to offer that resource along with it that I think is a great application of this.

After you discover who God is, you've got to tell somebody. This book sent Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus explains how you can do that, how you can become the kind of person who effectively reaches out to and shares Christ with others. We'd love to get you a copy of this resource.

We'd love to start a conversation with you and have a relationship. What we do here at Summit Life is dependent on the generosity and the faith of people like our listeners. So, head on over to jdgreer.com to find out about this and a lot of other stuff too. We'd be honored if you would support us with a financial gift of $35 or more. And as our way to say thank you, we'll send you a copy of Scent Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus by Heather and Ashley Holliman. Today and tomorrow are the two last days to receive a copy of Scent with your donation. So be quick. To give today, just call us at 866-335-5220 or visit us online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. Be sure to come back tomorrow as Pastor JD reveals the proven cure for insecurity. That's Friday here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.