My Grace is Suffient #2

"...but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in your weakness.' So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may well in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak I am strong." 

 

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

 

What does this verse mean to you?

 

"In my weakness" simply means I have exhausted my human efforts and have no other place to go but to the Lord. When I am weak I have no option but surrender myself and trust and depend completely on the Lord. The irony of this is that is exactly where God wants me. For when I trust and depend on Him He is free to work in me without obstruction. He can demonstrate his grace and transformational power without my humanness getting in the way. Therefore, when I am weak that is when I am the strongest. For in my weakness I discover "His grace is sufficient for me."

The reality of the matter is that God is present in me. However, the question that remains is that will God do His work through me or in spite of me.
John


God calls us into situations where we must rely on Him. When we find strength in ourselves, we are building our kingdom, not God's. We must be pushed into Him more and more, and that's only possible when we see that the world around us is lacking. We are lacking.
We become holy by relying on the one who is holy. We become transformed into the image of Jesus through trust, and that trust is tested and strengthened in struggle where we must free-fall into Jesus Christ and trust that we will not fall or be destroyed.
God's grace is all we need. And it is in our weakness and outside our comfort zone that God reveals that truth to us---He is sufficient, He is power, He is strength, He is all we need. Nothing else matters. We think we are so big as children, but in our weakness we see how much we need (and always will need) God. And as we our brought back to this realization through suffering, through persecution, through weakness, He is always there, eager to embrace us and transform us in the radiance of His glorious love.
Rebecca


"Paul is in the process of defending his reputation against the judaizers by saying that they live to give themselves a good reputation, when true apostles should be using their lives to make much of Christ instead. So to me, it means that the supreme purpose of my life (that which will bring me the most joy and have he greatest impact on eternity) is to put God's greatness on display, even though that often happens through circumstances that make me look "weak" and "unsuccessful" to the world. As long as the primary aim of my life is to bring God the highest honor, then even when that requires "weakness" on my part, I am "strong" in that I am achieving the life most worth living!"
Sammi

 

"In life, there are so many things that you aren’t sufficient to handle on your own. As a rule, human beings are transient and powerfully emotional creatures. Sometimes all it takes is coffee on a white sweater or feeling awkward at a dance party to set us over the edge. Without God, we are fragile and paper thin, living only in consequence (be it good or bad) to the situations around and affecting us. Point being, we have fragile natures permeating our earthly bodies and must live according to those weaknesses.

Here’s the cool thing, however. In every weakness there is a way to deal with it, and many people choose many different paths. You can run from weaknesses, avoid them, exploit them, or wallow in self-pity over them. You can read about them, pretend they don’t exist, or even try to strengthen them on your own. But imagine strengthening them with the help of someone who created you; someone who knows the depths of your innermost being and weaved you together, faults and all. When you clear out your own tools and simply allow God to see and respond to your weaknesses and your need for Him, several things happen.

First off, you get closer to Him. To the Lord. This guy (God) who created the whole entire universe but still longs for your love more than you could begin to imagine or understand. When you rely on God to strengthen your weaknesses, you are admitting that you can’t do things all by yourself (which is scary, especially for independent people that want to be able to tackle the world and say they did it without any assistance). No one wants to be dependent upon anyone, because we don’t know perfect love on earth. Dependency on your parents ends, dependency on your friends is conditional, and dependency on the world and your circumstances is fickle. Dependency on God is absolute and unwavering. He wants nothing more than for you to lean on Him, for you to call on Him in not only moments of joy and exuberance, but in moments of uncertainty and confusion. When you don’t know where to put your feet and you look to God, you grow closer to Him in a two-way relationship. The more you talk with Him, the better you get to know Him and the more you start to trust Him.

Secondly, you get stronger. When you are weak, then you are strong, because you realize your weaknesses and let God replace them. Imagine that. Your weaknesses are reinforced by God’s golden bondage, reinforcing you and allowing you to learn lessons from your daily experiences. When you ask for God’s guidance and assistance, He gives it to you ten-fold, even if it’s in ways that you can’t recognize or appreciate. In your weaknesses, you are made stronger, because you begin to lean on God and act through him instead of through your own warped rationalizations. Not that human intuitions are always warped, but they are when strangled by a response to fear. God will literally remove or repair your weaknesses when you call upon Him for guidance and help. How could anything be stronger than a person acting with God living in and through them?
Let God’s strength dwell through your weaknesses. Where you are lacking, He will pick up the slack, if you only ask. When you acknowledge your shortcomings and appreciate why you have them, God moves in them and creates beauty and power that you never would have known you had within you. Maybe because God really likes to surprise us and send spurts of unexpected joy. Hardships give you character, depending on how you handle them. Or should I say, how you let the Lord, the Lover of your Soul, lead you through them, holding your hand every step of the way.
Jessie