120 - God's Grace is Sufficient

“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.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

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God’s grace is sufficient, and in that sufficiency, we learn to release ourselves from the burden of self-reliance. Especially during times of despair, when situations seem beyond our ability to endure, He is with us and will carry us through. These things happen so that we might rely on Him to deliver us, and He will deliver us. Our hope and trust in His faithfulness grow. In this, His power is perfected in us because, in our need and weakness, we look with an ever-increasing reliance on Him and not ourselves. We learn to trust Him, and our understanding of His grace to aid us in our difficulties evolves to comprehend, on a deeper level, His ability to save us.

In relying on God and His grace, we move closer to stepping aside, to letting go, and to loosening the grip of the anxieties and fears that come from what is unknown and unseen. In our weakness, we come to acknowledge that God is greater than all and that He knows all; nothing we go through is out of His sight and daily care. His grace teaches us that we can, with a growing confidence, in and through our weakness, be still and believe in His power working to bring about His good in all things.

In our weakness, God’s power shines through. When we trust in Him through our struggles, it becomes evident that what is being wrought in us is by His hand and not by our own power. In that evidence, we begin to see that His grace truly is sufficient. Our focus turns to entrusting ourselves to Him. Within the sustaining power of His grace, we move toward trusting Him with all our heart. All we feel, all we experience, all that is within our hearts and minds can be placed into His faithful hands. God’s care for us is not just an emotion because we are His beloved children; more than that, He is actively caring for us, a very present help in times of need.

We begin to grasp a comforting assurance that we can truly allow ourselves to fall into the arms of a loving God, whose grace grants support and security to every aspect of our lives, every moment of every day. This reality shapes the way we approach even the most difficult times with a lighter heart and spirit. Through His grace, we release ourselves from ourselves, a self-sustaining mindset that hinders our seeing and being grateful for all we have been so richly blessed with in Christ. We are released into the freedom of an outward focus. Within His strength, our minds are set on things above, and the love and grace we have received overflow to a world in need of the same freedom.