Proverbs 28:26 reads: "He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered." I will never be enough. They won't teach you that in school, but it's the truth. Sometimes it's hard to hear. The lie is much more palatable: "Believe in yourself." "Self-confidence will take you far." The Lord loves us enough to tell us the truth. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). As a family man I have to remember, for my own good and for the good of my family, that I am not enough. More of me is not what they need. I remember the brokenness that led me to repentance. I was killing me. But, God offered me His Spirit. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:5-6: "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."
No matter how intensely I love my wife and kids, I'm not enough for them. They need the Spirit of the Lord living in me. I am not supposed to be God to my family. But, like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:1, they should be able to "imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ." The perfect, invincible love that my family needs can only come from the Lord. There is peace and joy to be had when we trust that knowledge, leaving our embarrassed pride behind.
"For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh".-Philippians 3:3