Thursday, September 6, 2012

GOD'S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT by Vicki Taylor


Is God’s grace sufficient for me? His Word says it is. Second Corinthians 12:9 says, “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.”

What is grace?  I decided to dig. (In case you haven’t noticed, I love to dig and research things).  I started with the dictionary:  Definition of Grace: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification. Well, that was wordy. Next definition: a virtue coming from God. I like that one better. Ok, so this is what the world thinks grace is. Let’s see what God says about grace…

God says His grace is sufficient for me… Grace covers my loss and soothes my pain in order for me to continue daily life. Without God's grace we could not travel through the valleys of sickness and death. It is His grace that carries us through. It is His grace that transports us into His very heart and heals us, comforts us. Grace loves. Grace protects. Grace died for us. Grace wraps its arms around the grieving soul and pours in God’s love and healing balm. Grace helps us survive.

His grace is sufficient...  I looked up the word sufficient in the Strong’s Concordance and to my surprise in the Greek it means “be enough.”  God has been teaching me lately, as I am going through my own valley of sickness, that He is enough for me. He’s enough in that I don’t have to lean on my own understanding, but I can depend on Him for everything, because He is “my enough.”  I love knowing that He is enough/sufficient for me. I don’t know about you, but that comforts and strengthens me.

His power is made perfect in my weakness… Now I do understand what it means to be weak. I have an autoimmune disease that leaves me incredibly weak at times, so weak I cannot get out of the bed. On those days I pray and ask my husband to pray for God’s strength just to get up. However, I believe that in this section of scripture, this weakness is a spiritual weakness, a something we “set our hearts on” weakness.  He gives us the power to resist, the power to say no to the “sin/weakness.”

I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me…  Christ knows my spiritual weaknesses better than I do. He also knows I cannot do anything in my own power. I must allow Him to work in me and through me. According to Strong’s Concordance,“I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses” means giving a “nod” toward someone, or something. In other words, I am acknowledging or "nodding" that it is because of Him that I am weak in order to be strong in my spirit. In other words, He gives strength to the weak (in spirit) to be bold/strong for Him. We don’t have to depend on ourselves to do God’s work - just Him, because His power will rest on us.

I don’t know about you but I sure do like it when Christ’s power rests on me and I get out of the way. What about you?



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