My Grace Is Sufficient

Paul had a "thorn in the flesh," some painful trial he begged God three times to remove. God did not remove it. Instead He gave Paul a promise that proved better than removal: My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness. The thorn stayed, but grace came, enough grace, sufficient grace, grace precisely matched to the need. And in the place of his weakness, Paul discovered the strength of God made perfect.

This is a promise for everyone whose hardest prayer has not been answered the way they hoped. Sometimes God removes the trouble; sometimes, in deeper wisdom, He leaves it and gives sufficient grace to bear it. And there is a hidden gift in that: "My strength is made perfect in weakness." Our weakness, which we resent and would banish, becomes the very stage on which God's strength is displayed. The thorn that we want gone becomes the place where we experience grace we would otherwise never have known. Paul learned to say he would even "boast in his infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon him."

Whatever weakness or unremoved thorn you carry today, the promise stands: His grace is sufficient for you. Draw on it, and find His strength perfected in your weakness.