“Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong”’ – 2 Corinthians 12:8-10.

THE THINGS THAT have the power to destroy us are the very making of us. Look at where Paul learned that God’s grace was sufficient for him: in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. Ponder over each one of those words for a moment or two. Can it get any worse than that? They encompass everything that would challenge to undermine our faith in God. There, there – it’s THERE in the blackest of the blackest moments where we encounter God’s grace. The miracle of God’s grace is that we can stand and walk under the very things that would wipe us out. You can’t tolerate this evil no longer and of course you can’t because you don’t have it in you to be patient in tribulation; you can’t bare this pain no more and rightly so because you are too weary in and of yourself to bear it; you don’t have the will-power or strength to be content in the ‘hell’ on earth you’re feeling – but in God’s name, His grace will enable you in ways that will blow (astound) your mind to be more than conqueror through it. Oh yes it is – when we are weak and frail and feeling good for nothing, trusting not an ounce in ourselves or our abilities, it is then by God’s grace we are made strong and made most useful in His hands. God’s grace never builds our ego; before we encounter it we will be torn down, but in such abasement God is after one thing and that is to be built up in Him and in that building up comes our healing – healed from pride and all manner of self-sufficiency to where God becomes our sufficiency.