Is Grace Sufficient for You?

In 2 Corinthians 12 God tells Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness".

Paul's response: "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 was speaking about the "thorn in his flesh"; while Paul never comes out and says what his "thorn" is, many believe Paul to be losing his vision. Paul cries out to the Lord, three times, and asks Him to remove it, the Lord does not remove the thorn in his side.

How many times we find our own thorn, and we cry out, we pray harder than ever before, and yet the thorn stays where it is. We may become upset with God, or we may try to find a way out on our own, or we may even turn away from God.

We all have our own weaknesses, we take our fair amount of insults, hardships are always around the corner, and persecutions are inevitably on their way in the last days. The Lord God could remove them, but even Christ had to endure all these things. Christ prayed to God, asking Him to remove the torture, and death on a cross, but God didn't.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says that he will "boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me". Paul understood something many of us do not. While we are weak, while we endure hardships and persecution, God is with us. God is encouraging us to continue running the good race. When we feel broken, and admit we cannot go any further, God gives us the strength we do not have. God is made stronger, in our weakness, when we allow God to work through our lives and during those hard and difficult times.

I remember my mother lying on her deathbed, praising God. She struggled with a brain tumor for many years. When doctors said no more, God gave more. When doctors gave her months, God gave her years.

I could not drive a car, when my mothers brain tumor was first discovered. The type of brain tumor she had, could kill a person in less than a year if left untreated. It may sound like a television pastor quote, but my mother relied on God's treatment, and she lived to see what she had requested.

God gives us strength we do not have, He renews us daily, He provides joy that nothing else can give us, He can heal that which we thought could not be healed.

Is your thorn too big for God?