“You may never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” Corrie ten Boom
As I have thought on the above quote over the last few weeks I have asked myself if in my life I am content at the thought of just having Jesus. For those unfamiliar with her story, Corrie ten Boom and her family endured the trauma of the holocaust and spent time sorting through the meaning of it all while imprisoned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her life after the war was one of declaring the truth that Jesus really is all you need regardless of your life or circumstance. I wonder how many of us really believe this though? Many reading this would say that Jesus is the focus of their life and that as long as they have Him nothing else matters. We say this (I include myself here) while spending our days worried that the things we REALLY care about will be taken away.
A good thought exercise to do from time to time is something like this: ask yourself if you have an identity IN CHRIST that exists apart from:
-Family relationships
-Community connections
-The job that you love
-The other “stuff” that defines you
The question is this: “If you lost all of these very important things, would you still hang on to Jesus as truly ‘everything you need’?” Only when we get to the point where we can answer “yes”, are we able to truly live!
While everything else in life will come and go, Jesus, our Savior, is eternal. He is bigger than any loss and “will never leave us or forsake us” regardless of what happens in THE world or in OUR world. Only when He is enough can we truly live because only then will we take the big risks and live the big faith that personifies the one who has an abiding relationship with their Creator.
I cannot answer this for you, but I know that I want to live a life that loves deeply the people that I have around me, is grateful for the blessings of work and provision, but places none of them above Jesus. I want to live a life unmoved by the changing tides of life because I am securely in and identified by my Savior!