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Chapter 14: "You’re not doing Enough"

This chapter has been shortened for the bible app.

Psalm 57: 2 says, “I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me. He will send from heaven and save me; he will put to shame him who tramples on me. God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness!”

In the last couple of weeks of college, I was sitting with a group of high school teens my roommate and I helped disciple. The leader asked every college senior to share what they were doing after college. Around the room it went, and there were plans to get married, move to another country, travel the world, plant a church in a hurting neighborhood, and so much more. When it came to my turn, I cannot deny the insecurity I felt when sharing my future. A future that included going back to my hometown without a fiancé and starting a residency at my home church. After hearing all those big plans, I felt like mine were small, and I was not doing enough.

Although they may mean well, the people around us can pressure us to do something impressive instead of something that is for and from God. What I mean by that is I knew, without a doubt, God was calling me back to my hometown to serve. The Lord is not a God of confusion but a God of clarity.

In the Bible, a woman named Hannah went through a very long state of feeling like she was not enough. Hannah found herself in a society where women found their main value in having children, placing her whole worth in procreating. However, Hannah could not conceive. Scripture says, “The Lord closed her womb.” She could not have children, and she was taunted by another woman named Peninnah for her misfortune. Hannah was deeply depressed, so much so that when she went into the temple to pray, the prophet Eli thought she was drunk. She responded in 1 Samuel 1:15-18,

“Oh no, sir!” she replied. “I haven’t been drinking wine or anything stronger. But I am very discouraged, and I was pouring out my heart to the LORD. Don’t think I am a wicked woman! For I have been praying out of great anguish and sorrow.” “In that case,” Eli said, “go in peace! May the God of Israel grant the request you have asked of him.” Oh, thank you, sir!” she exclaimed. Then she went back and began to eat again, and she was no longer sad”.

Hannah felt like she was not doing enough, so she turned to the Lord, who remembered her plea, and later, Hannah would conceive a boy and named him Samuel. In the state of not feeling like she was enough, Hannah expressed her grief and called on God to help her through the lowest point of her life. We can learn from this passage that God had a plan for Hannah, even though she may not have understood it amid such deep pain. We can also learn from a woman named Penninah, who belittled Hannah about her most immense hurt instead of comforting her. If you have a friend that feels insecure about what they are doing, we are told to carry their burden alongside them, not add to it with insecurity.

Later, Hannah would give her son Samuel back to the Lord in the temple, expressing that the gift she received was never hers, to begin with, but always God’s. When we recognize that our gifts are from God, we do not feel the weight of responsibility to do more and more. These are God’s gifts for him to use through us when the timing is right. If we force it for our own vindication, we could miss God’s extraordinary plan for us. God will provide you with opportunities to do enough for him if you want him to. So how will you know it is from him? You will have peace doing what you do without needing other people to think you’re impressive or some type of superhuman. It can be easy to feel like what you are doing is not spectacular when other people do not see you doing it. But we are not doing it for them; Hannah did not have a baby for Penninah; she had a baby for God, a baby who would become the last judge of Israel and the first prophet after Moses. God fulfilled his purpose for her and her son.