Sustaining Grace - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, January seventeenth. All believers live under the umbrella of God's grace. That protection helps us weather even the most severe storm. Here's part one of God's sustaining grace. What's so amazing about grace is that not only does the grace of God take care of our sin through the cross, but also it takes care of my daily life, my heartaches, my burdens, my trials, my sicknesses, my fears, my doubts, all the things that you and I go through. That's what grace is all about. Because you see, people say, well, I want the mercy of God.

Do you know what you're asking for? You want, listen, what you want is you want God to be merciful to you. That is, you don't want what you deserve. But in grace, what does He do? He gives us what we don't deserve. And the amazing grace of God, we sing about it, but oftentimes we limit that to sin, forgiveness of sins in our life. But so, you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.

He forgives you of your sin. Now, you have the Christian life to walk. You face the same difficulty, hardship, pain, suffering, and trials that people who are not Christians face.

Because life is life, humanity is humanity, sin is sin. And we all have to face these things every day of our life. And so, the question is, as a follower of Jesus Christ, how do you face them? Do you face them triumphantly? Do you moan and groan and complain and you doubt and you get discouraged and you get down in the dumps and you want to quit and walk away?

How do you respond to life? Well, that's what grace is all about. Not only the forgiveness of my sin, but enabling me, strengthening me, encouraging me, listen, enabling me to face life as it is and face it with absolute confidence that my heavenly Father is watching over me, caring for me, enabling me in every circumstance of life. Well, if anybody was a good example, there was an apostle Paul.

And I want you to turn, if you will, to Second Corinthians chapter twelve. Now, remember what we said grace is. Grace is God's undeserved, unearned favor and love and kindness that He bestows upon us in spite of the fact that we don't deserve it. We can't deserve it.

We don't earn it and we don't deserve it. And yet He is gracious and kind and loving to us anyway. Well, the apostle Paul certainly understood what grace was all about. And when we talk about sustaining grace, and that's the title of this message, we're talking about the grace of God that upholds us, that lifts us, that enables us, that strengthens us, that will not let us sink. That is, it's the kind of grace, it's the kind of loving, caring goodness of God that enables us to face anything and everything in life with confidence and assurance and boldness. And in the process of it, we profit from it and we grow in our personal intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

So beginning in this twelfth chapter, look, if you will, in verse six. He had been talking about how God had been working in His life. And then he says, For if I do wish to boast, I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from this, so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, that is, truths that God has shown him. For this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself.

Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that He might leave me. And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. And He says, Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. I wonder how many of us could sign that. If we wrote out that statement and said, This is what I believe and sign that. Listen, I am well content with weaknesses, insults, distresses, persecutions, difficulties, for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Most people would say, Now, wait a minute.

That's not real. How am I to be content when I'm weak, when somebody has insulted me, when I'm just distressed and just worn out, and when I'm being persecuted and rejected and insulted and hurt, defamed, with difficulties, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, or whatever it might be. How can I sign my name to say to that that I'm content? Well, when you begin to understand what Paul is saying in this passage and the tremendous awesome indescribable provision that God has for every single one of His children through His grace, then when we understand that, we'd say, Yes, I can sign it.

Yes, I can sign it. I can say that in the midst of all these things, indeed, I am content. So that's why it's so important that you listen carefully. And I want to say to you who are listening, I want to encourage you to get your pad and pencil. I'm going to give you some statements that will help change your life and your attitude and strengthen you and uphold you and sustain you when you get attacked by the devil and you get attacked by others and when you find that you're being mistreated and you don't understand why and your faith gets tested and you don't know which way to turn. If you'll write these down, they're all the absolute truth of the Word of God.

You're going to be glad that you did. Now with that in mind, the first thing that I'll simply want to say here is this, that sustaining grace is God's answer to the painful, trying circumstances that we all face in life. This is God's answer, His sustaining grace. And if you'll notice what's here, those challenges are painful circumstances in which God may or may not choose to change.

He may or He may not choose to change. Now the apostle Paul certainly understood all of that. And if you'll look back in the eleventh chapter for a moment and you'll see what was involved with the apostle Paul. Notice what he says in verse twenty-three, he's given a little scenario of what he'd been through. And he says, Or they servants of Christ I speak as if insane, I'm also, for in far more labors and far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, listen, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren. I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure.

And apart from such external things, there's a daily pressure on me concerning all the churches. And I want to say, whew, what a load he carried. And every once in a while, we'd get a little splint and you'd think we were about to die. Here's a man who knew what pain, suffering, hardships, listen, persecution, insults, rebellion, beaten, left in the city streets of Lystra for being dead, having been stoned. And what is he talking about? In this particular passage, he says, There was given to me a thorn in the flesh. Now, what Paul was facing was causing him a lot of heartache. And I'm sure that he must have responded the same way you and I would to some degree about these things because they were hindering him in lots of ways. And yet, sometimes God does choose to remove him. That's why we say you ought to pray and ask God about it. You remember what we said, that sustaining grace, this is God's answer to those circumstances in our life in which He may or may not choose to answer.

Many times He does answer. Many of us have many, many times that we can look back in our life and say, well, here's what God said and here's what He did and I prayed and here's what happened. Now, let's look at this for a moment because what determines His choice? For example, if God chooses not to answer your request for some need or something in your life that you feel is very important, if He does not choose to do so, what I want to talk about first for a moment is, is what is not the reason? In other words, He doesn't choose not to remove some thorn in our life simply because of the intensity of it, because Paul really had it hard. He doesn't refuse to because of the length of the time we've suffered. That's not the issue here, nor because of the nature of it.

That's not it. Or the time, how long have we suffered and how often we've asked Him to remove it. None of those things are the issue. So the issue is this, what is it that determines whether God removes this problem in your life or He does not remove it? And the answer is very clear. And it's in this passage and I want you to look at this.

So here's what he says. He says that, notice what he says now, three times, he'd been praying and verse eight says concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. Now what does he mean by that? That doesn't mean that three times He said, Heavenly Father, I want You to take this out of my life. But when he says he implored, he was crying out to God, not just in a prayer, but seasons of time. He implored the God, he cried out to God to remove this and more than likely, he was saying, you know, I'm serving you, you've given me this responsibility to spread the truth of the gospel, the resurrected Christ, I'm traveling, I have opposition, I'm, whatever it was.

Let's say, for example, it was something physical, that it was very, very difficult for him to deal with. And he cries out to God and God doesn't remove it. Now, why doesn't He?

We said it's not how long you prayed, how intense it is and all that, but what is God's reasoning? Here's God's reasoning. Here's what He says, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, He, to keep me from exalting myself, that was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself. And here's what He's saying, that God allowed Satan to send this thing into his life, whatever it might be, and it tormented him.

It wasn't just an ache, it wasn't just a pain, it was something that tormented him. Now, what was God's reason for allowing it? Now, listen to what He says. He says, He was given such awesome revelations from God, which means that God revealed truth to the apostle Paul. Unlike He had revealed truth to anyone up until that time, because they didn't have the Christ, the resurrection, and all the rest to look to, the apostles didn't grasp, nowhere close than any of the other apostles grasped, what God revealed to the apostle Paul. Now, He said, in order, in order for God to keep me from exalting myself.

Now what is He saying? He's saying simply this, God knew the apostle Paul. He knew that he would be very tempted to be very prideful about the fact that he had revelations from God and understanding from God that others did not. And so, in order to keep him humble and acknowledge who he was in reality, and so that he wouldn't destroy his opportunity.

Because pride would have destroyed Paul's opportunity, just like it destroys opportunities that people have today. And so, here's the apostle Paul with this awesome ministry, unequal by anybody up until his time and thereafter also. And that is, he'd given him the privilege of explaining the life of Christ, giving us insight into the life of Christ that no one else had. And to preach the gospel to the world of his day. And listen, to establish those churches and to go back and disciple those believers. And also, being imprisoned to be able to write those letters that you and I are still reading, still impacting our lives, still encouraging us, still giving us direction for our life. Look what would have happened if Paul's pride had put him on the shelf. And so he says, no matter how long he prayed, what he believed, how much he served God, how long he served God, God didn't remove it. Because God's purpose was greater than that. When you and I pray, we say, well, God answers in one of three ways.

What are they? We say He answers either yes, or no, or wait. And Paul says, no, no, no, that's one more answer. One more answer. And you see, for us, we say, well, if the answer is yes, I love that, if it's no, that's terrible, and if it's wait, I'm impatient.

And so, we don't like any of those. Here's what Paul discovered. He said, here's how God answered him. When he cried out for God to deliver him, he said, here's what, here was God's answer.

He doesn't say a thing in here about yes, no, or wait. And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. For power, the power of the Spirit of God in your life, is perfected.

It reaches its highest limitation. That is, the power of God reaches its zenith, its pinnacle in your life and my life when we are at our weakest moments in our life and we don't know where to turn, and we don't know what to do. And we're crying out to God to show us what to do. That's when the power of God reaches its strength and its power.

Listen to what he says. He says, he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. For power is perfected, it reaches its summit in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I would rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I'm well content with weaknesses.

Why? He says, because that's what I've learned. He says, I've learned that in these weakest times when I'm going through the most trying times and difficulties, I'm the strongest. There's something about the power of God that enables me to confront my enemies and to overcome them.

And he said, I've learned something awesome. He says, therefore, I'm well content with weaknesses because I've learned the source of God's almighty power in my life. What he taught the apostle Paul, he intends for you and me to learn. That weaknesses and difficulties and hardships and insults and pain and all the rest. That he doesn't intend for us to give up and quit because of these things, because the power of God, because of His sustaining grace. We said His grace is His goodness and love and favor and kindness toward us, in spite of what we deserve. And the fact that it's sustaining grace means it's always available.

It's ever-present. It's ever-adequate. It's always adequate, always sufficient for whatever circumstance we go through. We do not have to give up. We do not have to quit. We do not have to walk away. It's sustaining grace.

It will keep us from sinking when everything around us looks like there's no way. And so when Paul explains this, he says, this is what's happened. Now, if you look in, go over to Philippians chapter three for a moment, look at that. Chapter three of Philippians. And Paul is talking about his life.

Now he's in prison writing this. And he says, beginning in verse seven, what things were gained to me, those things I've counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Now watch this. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value. Nothing like it, of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of everything and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Him. He says, here's what I've learned.

When I asked God to remove it, He didn't say, yes, no, wait. He said, my grace is sufficient. And Paul says, what I've learned is this, that the sustaining grace of God is so powerful, so awesome, so adequate, so sufficient, I can face anything and everything and all things and be absolutely content.

Look at this. Go on, if you will, back to Philippians. Look at the fourth chapter for a moment now. Same book, same prison, listen to what he says. He says in verse eleven, not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I'm in.

Why? Because he understood the awesome power of the grace of God. Now, he didn't have any more grace than you and I have. The grace of God is God's love gift. That is, it's His, it's His favor toward us. Not because we deserve it and we can't earn it, it's His favor toward us.

That favor expresses itself in kindness and love in every aspect and every times of our life. In other words, the same grace that brought Him through prisons and beatings and hunger and thirst and all the rest is the same grace available to every single child of God today with no exception. If you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you don't have it. When you trust Him as your Savior, the grace of God that takes away your sin also does what? Gifts you with the sustaining power to enable you to face any and every circumstance of life. Thank you for listening to Sustaining Grace. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.