“We frequently talk about the sole sufficiency of Christ, but I’m afraid that it is often little more than a religious cliché. Though I had often affirmed its truth and preached sermons on the topic, I never really knew that Jesus was enough until I was confronted with the fact that he was all I had left.”

All of us experience, at various times in life, what I call “defining moments.” I’m talking about those occasions when, much to our surprise, we discover some previously unknown truth about reality or about ourselves that is truly life-changing. I had one such “defining moment” on January 5th, 1976.

I was in my third year at Dallas Theological Seminary and we had just a couple of weeks earlier moved into a new apartment complex. It was the dead of winter, well below freezing. Ann was asleep. I was up late, studying. Suddenly I heard the word “Fire!” echoing in the parking lot outside. I jumped out of my chair and ran outside, only to see my worst fears realized. A few doors down from ours, a fire was raging. I could see flames leaping out through the front door and the windows. We later learned that a lady had become enraged with her husband and decided to seek vengeance. She piled all his clothes and other belongings in the middle of the living room floor, doused them with lighter fluid, set it aflame, and then walked across the street and sat down on the curb to watch it burn.

My first reaction was to awaken Ann and get her out to safety. By the time she had escaped and we moved our cars away from any danger, the fire department had arrived and cordoned off the entire complex. Any hope of my running back in to salvage something has ended.

It was there in the parking lot, around midnight, that I learned an important and very painful lesson about myself. It was almost as if the flames that engulfed the apartments also served to shed a very uncomfortable light on my own soul. As I stood there, mourning what I anticipated would be the loss of all our earthly possessions, it suddenly struck me how attached I had become to material things. My sinful dependence on earthly stuff was exposed. If you had ever accused me, before that night, of being materialistic, I would have bristled with self-righteous denial. If you had suggested that my happiness was in any way suspended on having stuff, whether furniture or electrical appliances or clothes or TV’s or books, I would have laughed at you.

But as I stood there, close to freezing to death, I was suddenly shamed by the painful realization that my happiness was so closely tied up with what I owned.

Here’s my point. We frequently talk about the sole sufficiency of Christ, but I’m afraid that it is often little more than a religious cliché. Though I had often affirmed its truth and preached sermons on the topic, I never really knew that Jesus was enough until I was confronted with the fact that he was all I had left. Now, it actually wasn’t that bad. I still had Ann and we both had our health and good friends who stood by us. But in that one chilling moment in 1976 it suddenly dawned on me in a way it never had before: Jesus isn’t simply necessary; he’s also enough.

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