The Sufficiency of Love

I was thinking back today to one of our outreaches in Mozambique. I remember how we had come, packed in the back of trucks, to this small village to peach the gospel of Jesus. For the first hour or two we had broken out into a massive African dance party with singing and shouting and excessive arm motions.

When it got too dark to see anyone, we played the Jesus film on a giant screen. Half way through the film the sound system stopped working, so we resorted to plan B... pray for the sick. Now I think as Westerners we think of missions and praying for the sick as this beautifully orchestrated and holy moment; all attention will be on the preacher and once the call goes out for healing, the sick will, one by one, come forward for prayer and God will supernaturally come through. That fairy tale was about to shrivel before my eyes...

The team stood backed up against one of the trucks as the masses pushed forward. Utter chaos was taking place and there was no possible way to pull things together. Everyone was talking over each other, pulling on you, pushing you, pushing others... I remember thinking, "this can't be right! People should be lining up for prayer. They are hurting each other just to get to us! I don't even know if they need prayer for healing. Half of them seem to be mocking us. And how am I supposed to pray for anyone? There's no way I can possibly get to a translator!"

In that moment I was faced with a question... Is love really enough?

We always talk about God's love being enough for every situation. But when you have hundreds of sets of starving, black eyes fixed on you for the solution to their problems, you begin to question what you REALLY believe. These people had no other options. They couldn't go to the hospital if our prayers didn't work. They couldn't just take some pain killers. Then you began to wonder, what do I have to give? In the face of that kind of need, when you are stripped from all sense of organization and control, you truly realize how insufficient you are. It's raw. It's real. And it's scary.

That night didn't end with some crazy miracle where everyone got healed and saved. There were some who got healed, but more than anything, I walked away with the question still burning in my heart - Is love really enough? Everyday we stare into another set of eyes or another scary situation where God's love HAS to be enough. Even if there seems to be other options, they are only good for a short time until the true need is exposed. At the very foundation of everything, if God's love isn't enough, there is no hope for this world. We can never be sufficient in our own strength or ability.

And now, as my adventure in Ecuador begins in less than a month, I think about that question again - Is love really enough? I cling to the truth, that it IS enough. It's what's holding me together when I think of how little I have to offer in of myself. Maybe I'm not qualified by the world's standards. But His love has qualified me.