One evening during a particularly demanding season in my life, I stood on the church steps feeling fully expended. As I contemplated the immediate future I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own insufficiency. I did not see how I could go on doing what I was doing. "The grace has left me." I confessed.

I got in the car and drove home. Later that night I went outdoors for a prayer-walk and continued to pour my complaint out before the Lord. I had the immediate awareness of His loving rebuke: "The grace has not left you. You leave the grace when you stop fellowshipping with Me in the present moment."

The words turned me from projecting myself into the future to realizing afresh the source of my sufficiency. As John Newton wrote, "It's grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home." When we stop fellowshipping with the Lord in the present moment and move out independently to contemplate the uncertain future, we meet fear and lose faith.

When Moses was commissioned to go before Pharaoh that he might bring the people of Israel out of Egypt, he immediately felt disqualified due to his personal inadequacies. He found it difficult to imagine himself gaining the trust of the Israelites and suddenly convincing them that he was a spokesman of the God of their fathers. He inquired, "If they ask me, what is your name, what do I tell them?" The Lord God answered: "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

God reveals Himself in present tense terms. His Name is "I AM WHO I AM" . And Who HE is, is what you need Him to be. The Psalmist found Him to be "an ever-present help in trouble." (Psalm 46:1 NIV). His grace is present in the present moment. His supply is sufficient for every demand.

Jesus of Nazareth shows us the Great "I Am" . To the spiritually hungry He says: "I AM the bread of life." To all those looking for the way to God the Father, He says, "I AM the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." To all of us who are in the valley of the shadow of death, He says, "I AM the resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Who is He now? All that you need Him to be. Your strength. Your supply. Your comfort. Your adequacy. Do not leave the grace.