ME-ssentials – Steadfast – Day Ten
ESSENTIALS for Me to Be: Steadfast
September 10th, 2021
What’s your ESSENTIAL?
Essential: absolutely necessary; indispensable; the essence of a thing; inherent and intrinsic, vital
James 1:2-4, ‘My fellow believers, when it seems as though you are facing nothing but difficulties, see it as an invaluable opportunity to experience the greatest joy that you can! For you know that when your faith is tested it stirs up in you the power of endurance. And then as your endurance grows even stronger, it will release perfection into every part of your being until there is nothing missing, nothing lacking.’ (TPT)
Nothing missing; nothing lacking. Isn’t that an incredible goal, the ultimate highlight of a life well-lived?! I am reminiscent of so many whose life goal is for success and prosperity and status, and how many times we hear stories of those goals being reached but the unhappiness that ensues, the emptiness that still gathers and wails like threatening storm clouds and winds as a hurricane nears land. We can obtain prestige and have all the world offers and anything money can buy and still feel so incredibly unfulfilled and empty. But that is because contentment found in the world is elusive and evasive and never completely satisfying. The God of the Universe intended it that way as He built within all of mankind an emptiness that can never be filled apart from Him. There is a God-sized hole that only can be satisfied when saturated with Himself, and no matter what we seek and find, it will remain hollow and maintain a void until we allow Him to be our all.
That’s what ‘nothing missing, nothing lacking’ means. Sometimes we project on others in our lives something they were never designed to provide. Our expectations can be so great, and we place it on a significant other or friends or family members, perhaps a pastor or a therapist, and those people in our lives weren’t meant to carry that load for us. Only the Lord is able to hoist that burden on His shoulders and off of ours and carry it. We magnify the wrong things in our lives, and those people magnified bear expectations unfair for them to bear. If put in proper perspective though we can truly rest in placing our hope where it is safe. We find it is essential to be steadfast, sturdy, and someday soon we might declare the same, ‘Nothing missing, nothing lacking!’
