At a worship service on the day I was to graduate from seminary, The Rev. Dr. David Bartlett made a profound observation. “You are all good,” he said of the students gathered, “but only God can make you good enough.” That comment has stuck with me over the years in part because it is so freeing. Ultimately it is not up to me to succeed in the ministry. If I do it is because God has given me the talents and the skills to do so. Only God can make me—or any of us—good enough to do what God is calling us to do.
Paul would agree. “…(O)ur competence is from God,” he writes, “who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of the spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:5-6). God had called Paul and his fellow believers to a new form of ministry, one based on the new thing God was doing in Jesus Christ. But God had also given them the tools they needed to succeed in the tasks at hand. Only God could make them good enough.
Nor is this claim reserved for ministers. It applies to all who seek to answer God’s call in their lives. Whatever it is that God has sent you to do, whatever role it is that you play, whatever part of the whole you represent, it is only God who can make you competent to carry it out. For this reason we do not lose heart. God’s grace abounds, and by that grace God’s ministry is accomplished, not because we ourselves are able to do so, but because God alone has made us good enough.
Prayer: Lord, help us to do that which you have called us to do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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