The Grace of God: Our Sufficiency

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, March 29th. God's expression of grace doesn't stop at the moment of salvation. It's available to believers every single day. Here's more on the character of God. Now you recall we define the grace of God as the undeserved, unconditional and unlimited favor and goodness of God toward us. That all salvation is by the grace of God and that that grace is appropriated by faith and that every single person is saved by the same grace. Now listen, it takes just as much grace to sustain you 20 years after you were saved as it did to save you the day you came to know Christ as Savior. I don't know where we got this idea that you're saved by grace and you sort of live by works. All of us are surrounded by this boundless grace, this unmerited, undeserved, unconditional favor and love and goodness of God. That does not change according to how good I am or how bad. Whatever my attitude may be, the grace of God is unchanging, irrevocable, everlasting and unending.

Now we live in that. Now listen, any spiritual truth that is apprehended or comprehended only from the neck up is not sufficient. It is only when it gets in my heart and down in the soul and the real being of a person where it is applied to the human life does it become of any value to us. We know it's sufficient for salvation. We know we can't save ourselves. But listen, did you know you can't live yourself either?

You are not sufficient in yourself to meet the common ordinary problems and heartaches and burdens and decisions and situations and circumstances that make up your environment. And Paul in this 12th chapter is giving us a beautiful pattern of understanding about the grace of God. Now you recall what he says in the first part of this 12th chapter here.

It sounds like he's sort of repeating himself and he is for emphasis. He says there came a time in his life when God, as it were, just lifted him up. And as if it were, he took him up to the third heaven.

That's beyond the heavens that you and I can see. Took him up to the third heaven and opened his mind and heart and revealed deep spiritual truths, gave him insight, granted to him knowledge and wisdom. He said so divine, so holy, so precious that it was absolutely unspeakable. And so when he came down off that lofty height of divine revelation, Paul said in order, lest he depend upon the flesh, lest he boast about his wisdom and his understanding, lest he become boastful and proud and therefore useless and unavailable for God's use, he says that God allowed Satan to put a thorn in him in order to keep him humble and meek and usable before God. And you see, as great a man as Paul was, God said, having given him this tremendous insight and discernment in the mind of God, the scripture says that Paul said, and unless I should be exalted above measure of what God wants me to feel through the abundance of the revelations that he has given, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me lest I should be exalted above measure. Now, the thorn he's talking about here is not a rose bush thorn.

What he's talking, the word he uses here is like a long steak. Whatever God allowed Satan to drive into the life of Saul of Tarsus, then Paul was so bad and such a hindrance, he thought to himself, the scripture says that three times he prayed for God to remove it. Now, I believe Paul must have gone on prolonged periods of fasting and praying over a period of time asking God to remove this thing out of his life. Finally, he discovered one of the most precious truths in his whole life.

And the reason he discovered that was because, now watch this, not because God refused to answer his prayer. Now watch this, Paul wanted God to have his perfect will in his life. Paul wanted to be the maximum of what God wanted him to be. Paul felt to remove the thorn from his life would make him maybe a little bit more accessible and available and free to do what God wanted him to do. Now, God read Paul's heart and from God's point of view, Paul was praying, Lord, make me the maximum of the man I should be. I want to be total in everything you desire for me.

I want to perform maximum in sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. That was his heart's desire. From that heart's desire came the verbal expression, God, take this thing out of my heart.

While his soul desired God, his humanity desired the release and liberty of that which was painting him, whether it was physical or emotional. So what did God do? God answered his prayer. He answered the heart cry of Paul. Not the flesh cry, not the emotional cry, the heart cry of Paul. And he did exactly what Paul asked him to do. Lord, I want to be the maximum of what I can be and I want you to take this thing out of my life. So what did he do?

Instead of removing the thorn, he used the thorn as a tool to answer Paul's desire to become the man that he was. And he and there is none to equal him in the New Testament except the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So that there are going to be times when you and I get in the valley. There are going to be times when it looks like the bottom drops out and we can't find God anywhere.

Remember this. You are standing in the undeserved, unconditional, unlimited favor and goodness of God. You may be bleeding all over. You may be hurting on the inside.

Everything about you may be strung out. But one thing for sure. You cannot escape the grace and the love and the goodness and the mercy of God. If we just knew how often the grace of God comes tumbling in upon us like a flood to bail us out of all kind of things that we think we are sufficient and adequate to do for ourselves. On the other hand, one of the reasons we feel the mental, emotional, spiritual poverty in our life is because even though we are standing in it, we won't appropriate it for ourselves. And remember the appropriation of grace is not by clawing and claiming, but simply by believing and trusting in him. Now the requirement of grace.

First of all, let's look at the difficulties. Now Paul knew what it meant to bear burdens. He knew what it meant to be left lying dead in the sand of the streets of Lystra, stoned and bleeding and left there to die. He knew what it meant to run for his life year after year after year.

And you know what he said? He said, having done all that, one of the things I have discovered is that every single time I found myself in the valley going down as if this is the last time looking death square in the eye, he says, something supernatural happened in my life. Now I want you to see there are four things here that Paul says so clearly. First of all, he says that in these periods of difficulty and hardship, this unmerited, undeserved, unconditional love and favor of God will always be, number one, they all start with P, plentiful. There will never be a time when you can exhaust his favor and love and goodness to you. Now you say, well, sometimes when I'm bleeding, I think there isn't any grace around.

Yes, there is. Grace is God's unlimited, undeserved, unconditional favor and love and blessing and goodness toward us. So it is always plentiful. Second thing I want you to notice, he says that it is always powerful and sufficiently powerful. He says, my grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect. It is completed in weakness. Most greatly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Now, that is, it is powerful. When he says, notice how he puts it, my strength is made perfect in weakness. That is, God's supernatural power that proves adequate and sufficient to meet your need, he says, is perfected and completed and best described and most beautifully exhibited when you and I are the weakest.

The supernatural power of God that lifted the apostle Paul when he was dying beneath the stones of a maddening mob, the same supernatural power is flowing in your life if you will see fit to appropriate that for yourself. You're standing in it. You're standing under it. You're surrounded by it. There's no way to get away from his love. But somehow we don't appropriate it for ourselves.

Now watch this. It doesn't make any difference what the problem is. The grace of God is unlimited. That means it's sufficient. It's undeserved. That means it's always there. Not when you deserve. It's unconditional.

He's not checking you out. Undeserved, unconditional, unlimited favor of God. And just when you think you cannot take anymore, what happens? He infuses into your being his favor and love. And what happens?

You cannot explain it. You just feel something takes over and something happens in your life. And it's like you get a second wind and God begins to move into your life. And what is he moving in your life? He's moving grace. There is no situation, no need, no problem in your heart that can outstretch the grace of God. Listen, is God going to be left behind in need? Are you going to be able to present God with a problem that he can't match? He said to Paul, who'd been through things that no other man has been through, he said, My grace is, listen, not will be, not shall be, not may be, not has been, not hoped to be. My grace is. You know why he used the word is?

Whenever you are, it is. That's why when God identified himself with Moses, he said to them, he said to him, You tell Pharaoh that I am has sent thee. Well, who in the world's I am? A thousand years ago, he says, I am now. I am a million years from now.

I am. That is the ever present, omnipotent, omniscient God. Now, the grace of God is the same way.

It matters not what your need is. The need will never exceed the grace of God. It'll always be there. He said, My grace is sufficient.

Whatever the pressure may be, the pressure of life, it will always be matched by the grace of God. Now, he says there's a third thing there about it. You ought to notice.

And that is that it's personal. Watch. He suits the grace to our need, not stingy. But what does he do? You see, the grace of God.

Watch this. The grace of God isn't going to express itself in your life the same way every time. Today, his grace is flowing in your life, and it just may be good things. A week from now, I mean, he may give you a thorn on both sides. Well, you say, what happened to the grace of God? Nothing.

It's still there. Because to God, grace is favor. If a thorn will shape me into his likeness, if a thorn will build the character and equip me and prune me into something that will satisfy him, that's still grace.

It is always personally adapted to the need. The fourth thing I want you to notice, he says, is that in the realization of the grace of God for his sufficiency of our life, there is pleasure. Look in verse 10. Therefore, I take pleasure in, watch this, in infirmities, reproaches, necessities, persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake.

He says, the reason is this is because when I'm weak, then am I strong. Now, how many of you love to be sick? How many of you would just love a broken leg? How many of you would just love a broken heart? How many of you just love a financial setback? How many of you just love to be criticized, persecuted, being evil spoken against?

How many of you love those kind of things? God wouldn't get any takers in this crowd this morning, would he? Well, listen to what Paul said. He said, I take pleasure. That is, he says, man, something just overflows with joy in me when there are infirmities and distresses and afflictions and persecutions, when the bottom drops out, my soul sinks and everything falls apart. He says, I say, praise the Lord.

Well, he wouldn't have much company this morning, would he? You know why Paul can say that? Watch this. He says, when I look at the things in life that I have counted valuable, the fact that I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews, zealous for the Hebrew religion. He says, standing tall with those men of great eloquence and stature. He says, when I look at all the things that have been mine and then I look at what God is teaching me about himself. Over here, all of this was granted to me by family, by birth, by knowledge, by education.

All of these things were given to me. These things that I'm learning about God, all of these have cost me blood, sweat, tears and facing death. He says, I'll take this because to know Jesus Christ in the everyday power of his supernatural resurrection is absolutely incomparable above everything the world has to offer.

Now I know what some of you are saying. You say, now you don't really think Paul meant what he said, do you? Let me tell you something, until you learn that he meant what he said, you're still going to be frustrated and you're going to miss some of the most precious truths that God is trying to teach you. Because I want to tell you something, in fact the most precious truths to be comprehended and discerned and learned and acquired in all of life are absorbed when we are stretched out, inadequate, absolutely desperate, weeping on the inside telling God, I can't.

And what happens? It's as if all around you something intangible, invisible and unexplainable begins to rise up around you, what happens? You just become in doubt in the favor and the love and the goodness and the tenderness and the kindness of a gracious God.

We think that grace is all just ease, comfort and pleasure. But is it not true that you've learned the sweetest, most precious truths about God when you were at the end of yourself and there was no other place to go? You know what our problem is?

We are too self-sufficient. Let me tell you something, watch this and get this in your heart. As long as you can manipulate and as long as you've got enough education or enough experience or enough eloquence or enough of prominence or enough prestige or enough money or enough ingenuity or enough skill or enough ability or enough talent or enough gift, as long as you've got enough of anything that you can weasel your way through without depending upon God, my friend, you'll weasel your way straight to glory as a Christian very, very ignorant of the God you're going to face. You see, it is desperation, it is inadequacy, it is in total inability that we look up to God and say, God, I can't. Why do you think Paul had such tremendous insights into the grace of God? Because, listen, on the one hand his revelations reached the heaven and the reason his revelations reached the heaven and his understanding was heavenly is because humanly speaking his experience reached all the way to the gutter of hell.

He knew what pain and suffering and being strung out was all about. And between heaven and hell the grace of God kept Paul beautifully balanced and perfectly secured in him. Well, one other thing about the grace of God and that's the reach. The reach of the grace of God for our sufficiency. How do you get his grace down here?

Well, first of all, remember, it's not up there coming down here, you're standing in it. How does this unconditional, undeserved, unlimited favor of God get into here where we need it? One word. Faith. Trust him for it. There may be someone here this morning, you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your personal savior. You've up to this point maybe had no desire to ask him to save you. I want to tell you, my friend, you are standing in the middle of the grace of God and it's not doing you any good because you've never appropriated it for yourself. But you see, the grace of God, his undeserved, unconditional, unlimited love and favor is always being showered and as we are willing to appropriate it by faith he saves us and locks us in to the favor of God. Listen, watch this. You see, before God ever created you, he turned the faucet of grace on in your life.

And do you know what? It's been flowing towards you all these years. I mean, you didn't even feel like you were getting wet. But the grace of God was flowing towards you all these years. Now listen, it flowed under you, over you, around you and it will only flow in you and through you as you are willing to stop and accept it by faith. Thank you for listening to the grace of God, our sufficiency. 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.