“My grace is sufficient…”

 

	“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
	—2 Corinthians 12:9

Hopefully your day yesterday went well. Perhaps, after you finished your work, you watched a sporting event. Or, maybe you participated in a cookout with family or friends. I hope you took time to consider how very blessed we are to live inside the circle of those deeply loved by God.

Even in times of weakness, God remains a fortress of strength. Note these words of the Apostle Paul writing about the affliction he called “my thorn in the flesh” from 2 Corinthians 12:8-10:

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Paul sets an excellent example for us. We should rejoice in our hardships. Each of us may well have our very own “thorn in the flesh.” Like Paul, we should pray and ask God to take it away from us. But, if He decides that “thorn” serves some purpose for our ultimate good, then we should receive that hardship and, depending completely on the power of the Holy Spirit, accept it as a sign of God’s perfect will at work in us.

With God’s help, we can fall back into His loving arms and release our sorrow and disappointment into the ocean of His grace.

 

_{Copyright © 2014 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

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