Encountering Jesus in the past year has built this new way for me, this new path to knowing Him better and living in His strength and abundant grace and letting the Spirit work through me instead of striving.

But this new way actually is coming back to old things. We come back to the simple, common graces of what it means to walk with Jesus.

I have found this pattern in Jesus’s life, one I had never fully seen before.

• He says, I am the Bread of Life.
• He is the Bread of Life. We are not.
• He says, I am the Light of the World.
• He is the Light. We are not.
• He says, I am the Way, the Truth.
• We are not.
• He is enough. We are not.

I’ve lived so thirsty because I thought I knew where the water was. I believed it was on the other side of that ever-moving thick black line of expectations that begged me to cross it, and to get there I’d have to muster up the necessary resources from within me. I was trying to be bread and light and life and enough, and I couldn’t ever seem to do it.

But what I thought was a great disappointment was actually the greatest mercy God has ever shown me. See, we rarely go to drink unless we are thirsty. To feel our thirst is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. To recognize our need for God is the beginning of our finding Him.

He is enough, so we don’t have to be. In fact, it is downright arrogant to keep trying to be. The reality is that He is the enough we could never be. Lie He promised us in John 7 “If you are thirsty, come to me … I won’t only quench your thirst; I will cause streams of water to pour in you and through you.” All we crave in abundance is in Jesus…

• Because Jesus is enough, we can experience true fulfillment.
• Because Jesus is enough, we can live connected with Him and others.
• Because Jesus is enough, we can rest.
• Because Jesus is enough, we can risk for His glory.
• Because Jesus is enough, we can trade fear for hope.
• Because Jesus is enough, we can embrace grace.
• Because Jesus is enough, we can live out our true calling.

You can choose to live in these overflowing streams of His enoughness. Will you choose Him instead of living pulled along, missing your life, unable to take a deep breath?

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. – John 1:4

We cannot save ourselves. But this story has a hero. Will you let Him save you?

I am not enough. It is a terrifying phrase that goes through our heads on quite a regular basis about a plethora of things. Let me tell you a few of the stories I have heard just from my close circle of friends.

Bekah leads boot camps. As she leads neighbors and friends through workouts, she also has seen them through cancer battles and through difficult divorces. She regularly is given the opportunity to talk about Christ, but she wonders all the time if she is doing work that is important enough.

Sarah had a massive stroke and spends most of her days in rehabilitation, learning to speak and read and walk again. Yet she has found a way to communicate her worries that she is not a good enough mom to her three kids.

Jessie is in her sixties and divorced many years ago. Jessie glows with love for Jesus. Her kids are grown, so she has free time and recently came to a class on mentoring. But she never followed through. When I reached out to her about it, she said, “I didn’t think anyone would want to be mentored by someone who has been divorced.” Subtly saying, I am not enough.

I want to shake my darling friends. They are pouring out their lives in unique obedient surrender to God, and yet they cannot see that the narrative they are believing is all wrong. And trust me, on a given day they’ve wanted to shake me, too, for believing the same lies.

We are so often dragged along in the darkness, unable to save ourselves from out thoughts and from our shame and from our mistakes. We try to slap self-esteem tactics on our fears, but they don’t stick because well . . . . it’s true. We are not enough.

It would be a terrabily depressing thought – if it weren’t followed by the most freeing truth in all of eternity.

God knew we would never be enough. So He became enough for us. Jesus is our enough.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. – 2 Corinthians 12:9

The truth that we are not enough and Jesus is enough isn’t just good news on the day that God saves us. We need to preach that truth to ourselves and each other every day. We have been rescued from a life of striving today.

Water. No human can survive three days without it. No other resource is more essential to sustain life. None.

Here is the thing. The enemy promises water, but every time we go to his wells, they are empty. He gives us a sip of water, enough that we keep believing him. We have believed the lie that our cravings will be satisfied if we are enough and if we have enough. So we chase image, answers, things, people—and we wonder all the while, Why am I still thirsty?

God is clear in the book of Jeremiah about what is happening:

My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Jeremiah 2:13, NIV.

But there is water for you. Not just enough to quench your thirst, but an unlimited supply that will fill you and then come pouring out of you into a thirsty world. But the water you need is found in only one Source.

I’ll tell you right up front, there is no secret here. Just one answer to your thirst: Jesus.

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink,” He says in the gospel of John. “Whoever believes in me…streams of living water will flow from within him.” (John 7:37–38, NIV)

He alone is the source from which flows all the things we crave and hope to become. I love that I can begin here, making no empty promises. Because my single goal is to lead your thirsty soul to streams of living water, to Jesus. He always delivers.

Why go here?

Practically speaking, nothing I am facing in my life changed that day I came to this realization. And yet everything changed.

• I didn’t feel so alone.
• I felt relief.
• I felt loved.
• I felt like I could take a deep breath.
• I felt known.
• I believed Jesus more, that He forgives and is in this all with me.
• I felt the groundswell of freedom that comes from living with Nothing. To. Prove.