His Grace IS Our Sufficiency

For Paul, the grace of the LORD carried him through in spite of physical infirmity and weakness.:

"For this thing I besought the Lord, thrice, that it might depart from me.  And He said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." (2 Corinthians 12:8-9)

Whatever Paul's disability, it did not slow down the kingdom purposes that the LORD had planned for Paul. Paul was a "young man...whose name was Saul" (Acts 7:58) when his approving presence witnessed the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Stephen. Some brief time later, Saul came to know Jesus personally and it is believed that Paul, aka Saul, was in his early sixties when he was executed for his faith in Jesus, at which time his 30-40 years of working for the Lord, and for the increase of the kingdom of God, came to an end.

God's grace was Paul sufficiency.  God's grace was Paul's strength in the face of human weakness and trembling. It was God's grace that carried Paul all the way home to heaven.

Can God's grace do any less for us?  Might it be less sufficient in some way for us?

Or is God's grace God's grace and thus impossible to be less than is ever needed?

What exactly does it mean to have God's grace in our lives?

Since the word grace as used in the Bible means "unmerited favor," then for me God's grace in my life means that He "keeps" me as a favored child, often in ways I cannot see, and always for reasons I cannot understand. When the world has rejected you over and over and you begin to believe that you are worthy only to be rejected rather than that perhaps the wrong people have been in your life, it becomes so difficult to understand why God would both love us and favor us.

But God's grace means more than knowing that He "keeps" us because He favors us.  The flip side of grace is that God's favor towards us causes His chastisement to be on us whenever He deems it is necessary in order to "keep" us.  The rod of correction in our lives is almost always painful, just as the surgeon's knife cutting away the cancer in order to save our life is also painful.  But we know the analogy well, that without the pain that comes with that "pruning" away of those things that are leading us to destruction (aka eternal separation from God), we cannot flourish and be fruitful as we were meant to be when we were first chosen.

Let's look at the word "chosen" for a minute. Do we fully appreciate the meaning of that small word?
Are we careful to not neglect the great gift God has given us through His Son, Jesus: our salvation.  And all because He "chose" to open our eyes to the truth of who Jesus is.  We did not do that on our own.  We might have made the decision to receive Him into our hearts, once we learned of Him.  But we could never have learned of Him, without God's favor shown to us by being chosen to receive the Truth. It is an awesome revelation of who God is when we grasp, truly grasp, that we have been chosen....by God...Almighty...One and Only...True GOD!

Why did God choose you?  Why did He choose me?  Are we smarter than others?  Are we more eloquent?  Are we better looking?  Are we more spiritual? Are we more submissive? Are we more aggressive?

None of the above, because God's grace is "unmerited" favor, meaning nothing we are or have done or will do is why He chose us.  Had nothing to do with us at all.  Had everything to do with who God is.  He is sovereign.  He chose because He can.  He has the right to choose us or not to.

We don't ever want to think about God NOT choosing someone, we want EVERYONE to be saved.  But everyone won't be saved.  The Bible tells us that in the book of Revelation.  Some are cast into the lake of fire.  Do we understand that God selected us to NOT go there?

And if we say we understand it, are we remembering to be thankful, grateful, all out blown away by that knowledge?  If we say we are grateful, then in what ways does God see that gratitude in our lives?

At times, my own life doesn't show such gratitude very well...

...AND YET....

I know He is not finished with me.  I know He is working this out in me.  I know that I will understand patient waiting much better when He is done with me.  I know that I WILL appreciate what He has done, much much better than ever before.

Jesus IS the author, and He IS the finisher of my faith.  Jesus was the beginning of my faith walk, and He will be the end of it as well.  I WILL end it with Him.  Somehow, I know this. 

Not because of who I am, but because I do remember who He is.

I believe it is His grace that prompts me to remember. And for that one thing at least, at this particular time in my life, I AM grateful.

For that one thing, I am thankful that I can say that His grace is sufficient for me. 

Lives That Declare Christ's Sufficiency

After quite a long battle with grief and depression, fought not with the drugs that the medical world suggested repeatedly that I take, and which at times I thought I was crazy not to take, I have finally emerged battle-worn, but victorious.  Yet not I, but the LORD.

And it occurs to me, now that I am out of (or at least beginning to come out of) this lengthy mental fog that can only be called sin, that the battle often is truly fought in our minds, which the bible refers to as the "heart." The enemy wants to claim for himself the glory that belongs only to the LORD. He accomplishes that through us, if we allow him to, by turning our "hearts" ("thoughts") away from God and onto things of the flesh.

Eve allowed the enemy to take what was not rightfully his to take; more importantly, so did Adam.  So have we all at one point or another, even if only before we came to know Christ.  Sin, which persuades our minds increasingly from birth, can only ever be overcome by the blood of Jesus Christ. Even then, temptation can draw us back into sin, if we are not on guard.  And even something as natural as grief can become a temptation if not moderated by the Spirit of God.  If our flesh takes hold, and we do not bring it into submission to Christ, then we might lose the battle.  But we can never lose the war.  Not when we belong to Christ.

For always there is this confident hope we have that our shepherd, Jesus Christ, always goes out to seek that one lost lamb that belongs to His flock.

Such was I for more than two years now. Sometimes we know we are sinning, and other times we can't see clearly enough to know anything.  Here's what told me I was losing the battle, even though I felt powerless, for a season, to change it:  I stopped hearing from God.

Before this new trial, His small still voice woke me up most mornings:

"Seek ye first the kingdom...." might be the words I would hear in my half awake/half asleep state, words that would propel me out of my bed in a hurry to see what the LORD was giving me today.  Grab my bible, find the verse, read it all in context, and come away knowing that the current financial worry, for example, to which God was speaking in my life, was going to be just fine in His hands as long as I left that to Him and focused instead on the kingdom of God...focusing on His concerns rather than my own.  And while I am taking care of that which concerns Him, or HIs desires, He will take of that which concerns me, or my desires. His desire is to see His kingdom grow.  And when we are focused on that, instead of focused on our own needs whether financial or otherwise, then here is our confident hope:

"Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.  Is not the life more than meat, and the body, than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.  Are ye not much better than they? ,,,,Therefore, take no thought saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?...for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6:25-34)

Such was the blessing with which many of my mornings began.

But I hadn't heard that still small voice waking me in quite some time.  I had slowly muffled it with the sound of my own tears.

I grieved over a lost love, a love that lasted 23 years and then in a day was over, but not for me.  At first, being so close to the Lord and still hearing from Him, my grief was in moderation and probably healthy in some respect.  But then something else took over.  Was it fear?  Was it loneliness?  Was it rejection? Was it all of this and more?  Everything has its root in fear, I believe.

Whatever it was, that's when the lost love became the "god" in my life, for that is where my time and energy and focus remained.   Suddenly there was no more room in my life for the LORD. And no matter how much I recognized it, I couldn't seem to get out from under it. 

I felt trapped. 

Utterly and completely trapped.  Helpless to do anything other than cry out to God, "Help me!  I need your help!  I cannot remain in this and live! Yet I cannot get out of the death grip that this grief has on me!  Help me, please, I am begging even though I feel that I have no right to even beg, because in so many ways I made this bed that I am now lying in.  Please forgive me! Please help me! I need your mercy and your grace.  Please, God, please, please help me!"

And finally, this morning, after more than two years, I heard that voice again.  His voice saying this to me:

"I gave you My authority so that your life would be a witness of my glory, as you lived a life that would declare to the world that I am sufficient for you."

Busted!  That's what I felt.  This was truth from the mouth of God that cut to my core, because my life had not been a witness of God's glory for a good part of the past two years.  I had been wallowing in self-pity and fear.

And even though great was my conviction, yet so much greater was my relief!

There it was!  His voice!  Speaking to me again in what was both a statement of facts and a challenge as well.

Had Jesus Christ been sufficient for me?  Had I not declared those words many times over during the course of forty years of knowing Him?  Had I not spoken those very words in jail cells to sin's captives who desperately needed the hope that only Jesus could give? Had I not written them in letters written to those captives? Had I not taught that precept in women's bible studies many times over? Had it not been by His authority that I had walked into those prisons and spoken to folks who either needed to hear about Him for the first time in their lives or else just needed to be reminded of His love for them even though they had walked away from Him?

I could never have faced them without Him going before me, without Him sending me, without Him giving me the very words to speak, for no matter how much I tried to prepare ahead of time, He always changed it on me anyway. And while I am not a quick thinker, I quickly learned how to submit to His Spirit's leading.  I couldn't have done any of it without Him.  Not possible.  Not for me.

So what was different about this morning?  Why had I struggled for two years now?  And yet this morning, it seemed so easy, so simple!

It was because with this beloved voice that I had so longed to hear again, came that special thing that I desperately needed to be reminded of in my battle-weary state:  that I am loved because God is who He is.  Not loved because of the number of my works or successes, not judged by my lack of works or failings, but loved simply because God's faithful love is unconditional to those He has "called out" to be His own.  And He will finish the work He has begun in them. 

I heard all of that and more: 

You are still mine.  I am not done with you yet.  Yes, you've fallen down, bruised yourself badly with the fall, and I know how much it hurts, but just get up and let's go forward again.  You can do this, because I am here to lift you.  I am here.  You are not alone and never have been for even one moment.  You have not been rejected, no matter what lies you have believed from the enemy.  You have been chosen.  Long ago.  That choosing never changed, never ended.  Now get up and let's get going again. There's still time left.  There's still my energy for you to draw upon.  There is still my strength.  This is not the day that you die.  Let's go.  Are you ready?

I am so ready and I am so grateful, so filled with joy, so at peace now that I have heard His voice once more.  Nothing has changed in my world, and yet everything has changed.

Yesterday, everything seemed insurmountable.  I felt trapped in a life that I could not get out of.

Today, I have been set free...again...and have received the power to overcome again just by hearing His voice speaking to me once more.  Power to break the chains of this grief and sorrow and self-judgment I have been carrying for so long.

Because Jesus Christ is sufficient for me.  He is all that I need. 

And He will direct my steps so that my life declares this truth to all the world around me.

If I will let Him.

Thank you, Jesus.  Yes, I am ready....

I am ready to go forward...

but only with YOU!