I’m a huge list person. I’m a big APPLICATION person. If any of you have done my devotionals, you know I’m huge on practical lists of applications to biblical passages.
Now, this is great and all . . . but sometimes I can be too practical.
When I get to lists like the Beatitudes or the fruits of the Spirit, it’s easy for me to be like Oooooh okay I’ll just make a cute chart and try to work on one every day and bam I’ll have that checked off!
And, yes: we can’t just read Scripture, close our Bibles, and move on with our days. We have to let the Bible connect with and change our lives.
But no amount of worksheets or cutely-designed devotionals or prayer journals or notecards or Bible stickers or stationary can do the work of the Holy Spirit. God has been working in His people’s lives from the beginning of time, and get this: He didn’t use PDFs or coil-bound notebooks.
I’m a designer. A visionary. A problem-solver. So everything I read in the Bible is begging to be illustrated or digitized or hand lettered. But . . . I have to remember that the Bible is sufficient on its own to change us. And, in fact, it is changing me even right now.
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
The Bible in and of itself is enough to make us “complete” and “equipped for every good work.”
COMPLETE | EQUIPPED | IN PROGRESS
We are complete.
This has the idea of being whole and perfect. We’re always looking for our plus. Scripture plus enlightenment; plus a perfect “system” of drawing out life-altering truths; plus a verse that will look good in my Instagram feed. Plus cute notebooks and pens and sheets and charts and highlighters.
This verse says it’s not Scripture plus. It’s SCRIPTURE. We don’t need anything else except the Holy Spirit’s guidance in showing us how we need to be changed.
We are equipped.
The pressure is off! *sighs* God doesn’t expect us to come to His Word with our own power and write a dissertation from Hosea or rush off to perfect each fruit of the Spirit. He loves humility (Matthew 5:5) and He will fill in the places where we are lacking.
It’s not reading the story of Ruth and deciding to become a grain-gleaner. It’s showing up, doing devotions, and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide your thoughts. It’s letting the Holy Spirit make you a better person, piece by piece, daily.
We are in progress.
Another thought that has been impressed on my heart is that all these lists of items are being accomplished in our lives as we speak by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We don’t perfect virtue by ourselves and then start adding knowledge (2 Peter 1:5-7). The Holy Spirit is empowering us to live a life characterized by all these. The fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) are overwhelming because who can say they perfectly follow each one every day of their lives? That’s not the point.
The point is to live, acknowledging both our own weakness and God’s strength. To live one moment, one choice at a time, asking for God’s grace and wisdom. And, as we do, He is working in us and perfecting in us all these items in these lists.
Lists are to show us just how much we can’t, contrasted with the enormity of how much He can.
God is working in you, beloved. Trust His grace and strength
This really resonated with me, and I’ve actually been thinking about this lately. I get so focused on changing that I sometimes forget I need God’s help. I’ve found it doesn’t work to go about this on my own; God has to do this work in me!
Aw wow how cool that we’re on the same wavelength! So so true. It’s a good place to be: trusting in God for what we can’t do. (And even what we think we can, haha)