Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, March 26th. Have you ever felt like the apostle Paul? Weak, helpless, and out of strength?
We end this series on grace with a reminder that believers always have access to God's resources. Well, all of us have ways of responding to difficulty and hardship and pain in our life. And would you say that when troubles and trials and tough times come that you are challenged by them? That you are, you feel the test, but somehow you're highly motivated, stimulated to be determined to walk through it no matter what?
Or are you one of those persons who can get depressed rather quickly and very discouraged and say you just want to give up and quit and walk away? That is not the way to deal with these issues. And the apostle Paul certainly understood that. And when he says in this passage that he asked the Lord to take away this thorn that he had in his side, look how God responded to him. And sometimes you may feel like, well, God, you're not listening.
But what I want you to see is this. God's response was exactly what he needed and God's response is exactly what you and I need. God makes him a promise. Now I want us to look at this promise for a moment.
Let's read it again for a second. You remember he says that God had given him these great revelations, given him insight into spiritual truth that he'd not given anybody before. And so Paul says, and along with that came this thorn in the flesh.
Now what's the thorn in the flesh? Well, everybody would like to know what that is. You know why God didn't tell us? I can tell you exactly why He didn't tell us. Well, how do you know He didn't tell us that? I'll tell you why He didn't tell us. Because if He'd have named anything, any one of us who had that would be saying, I have the same problem the apostle Paul had.
And you know what? We'd be boasting about, well, you know, I'm going through this trouble, but you know, the apostle Paul and I, praise God, we have the same problem and the same heartache and the same burden. We wouldn't be worth a nickel. So He didn't tell us. This thorn, whatever it was, He said, He cried out to God, cried out to God to take it away. Now more than likely, if it had been any one of us, here's what we'd have done. We'd have prayed, now God, I don't know why you're leaving us here, but Lord, look, I'm serving you. I'm giving my whole life to you, Lord. Now, why don't you get rid of this? And so He, in other words, we don't know exactly what Paul's prayer was, but if you think Paul just simply prayed, now Lord, please just take this out of my life.
You just, you missed it. He said this thorn in my side. This was something the Scripture says that He implored God for.
So it was really bad. Now let's think about this for a moment. Here's God's servant, serving him, starting churches, evangelizing the world of his day. And what's he doing? Shipwrecked, beaten, rejected, I mean, you name it, and he experienced it. And so he comes to God and he says, take this away.
Oh God, please take this away. And listen to this answer, which I am sure he didn't expect. You know what God said to him? My grace is sufficient for you.
What? Did you hear me, God? Did you not hear me tell you how this pain and suffering and hurt? Did you not hear, all you're saying to me is your grace is sufficient for me?
Yes. God offered no explanation. I'm sure He wanted an explanation. And He wanted deliverance.
And He wanted it removed. And He wanted to be able to say, praise God, hallelujah, let's have a big prayer meeting, let me give a big testimony about how God has delivered me from this. And we want to sing and let's get the choir and everybody, we're going to just praise God. And all God said to him was, my grace is sufficient for you. What kind of an answer is that from a loving God? When this man has served God so faithfully so many years, gone through so much heartache, so much pain, and you're telling me your grace is sufficient.
That's right. That's what I'm saying. What would you have felt? You felt, well God, now after I've told all these other people how wonderful you are, and this is all you're telling me, my grace is sufficient for you. No explanation, no promise of deliverance, no promise of change, but that my grace is sufficient for you.
Now let's face it, that would have been very difficult for all of us. And the truth is, all of us, more than likely, maybe not all of us, let's put it this way, eventually in your life, somewhere along the way, you're going to face a trial, a heartache, a burden, some trouble, some shock, some pain, some helpless, hopeless situation that nobody else can help you. And you're going to be saying, God, isn't there more? Can't you do something that just helps me through all this? Well, I want you to look at something here for a moment.
Watch this. Look at what God revealed to the apostle Paul. He only said to him, my grace is sufficient for you, but power is perfected in weakness. Well, God, you know what my weakness is?
Where's this power? Here's what the apostle Paul learned. He learned this lesson that when he was the weakest, this is what he's saying. He says, when I am the weakest, and I feel the most hopeless and the most helpless, when I can't do anything about it, I can't correct anything, and I can't change anything. God's in absolute control. I can't do anything about it.
Here's what I've discovered. He said, there comes into my life this awesome sense of supernatural power and strength and encouragement, something so powerful I can't give up. I couldn't quit. I don't want to walk away. In fact, he says, it has so worked in my life.
He said, now what I find is this. When I am at my weakest moments, I know what's about to happen. I'm not going to get discouraged.
I'm not going to despair, not giving up, not quitting, not throwing the towel, not walking away. And here's the reason. Because in those moments, something happens to me, this awesome sense of strength and power, this experience of overwhelming presence of Almighty God in my life.
And what happens is it's so awesome now I want to talk about it. And so this is why he said this. Here's what he said. He said, now, for example, therefore I'm well content. I'm boasting about the power of Christ. I'm content with weakness, insults, distresses and persecutions. And let me ask you a question.
How many of you are content with insults, persecutions, difficulty, hardship, trial and pain? Raise your hand. You love that.
Raise your hand. Absolutely none of us love it. God knows we do not love it.
And you know what? He doesn't judge us for not loving it. The apostle Paul said he learned something.
He learned that the experience of this awesome awareness of the presence and power and sufficiency and adequacy and completeness of God in his life in those trying, difficult moments, it was worth the pain. He said, now what? He said, now I just quit asking God to remove it. Now what am I doing? He says, now I'm talking about it. I'm boasting about it.
I'm praising God. He says, because I've learned what? I've learned contentment. He says, I can take insults, weaknesses, persecutions and difficulties.
And he says, because here's what I've discovered. When I feel the weakest, that's when God's demonstration of His power is the most evident in my life. Now doesn't that sound just like God? That when we're the weakest and we feel hopeless and helpless and we can't change our circumstance. When we say, God, I can't, the only, I'm absolutely totally dependent upon You. What does He do? Listen to this, He always without a single exception comes, listen, comes to our rescue anytime, anywhere, any situation, any circumstance, any pain, any hurt, any rejection, any sorrow, any trial.
He's always there to do what? My grace is sufficient for you. That is to be sufficient for us to enable us in whatever we need at that moment, moment by moment. Because you see, grace is God's graciousness and kindness toward us. Without regard to any merit, it's not what we deserve and in spite of what we deserve.
On the other hand, we can define it this way. God's grace, listen, is His provision for us at the point and at the moment of our need. How much provision? Sufficient, adequate, complete, overflowing, abounding. God's not cheap.
He's not chinchy. You and I have never been to Him and He gave us almost enough. He says, my grace is sufficient. That means it's adequate, it's complete, it'll fill you up, it'll satisfy you, it'll provide everything that you need for the moment at your moment of need. What is the point of need in your life today? If you could just say, well, that's the point of my need.
Well, you know what? Here's the promise of God. It's a universal promise. It wasn't just that the apostle Paul, he gave it to him for the church, not just the Corinthian church but for the church which includes us.
He never understood, I'm sure, that two thousand years later we'd be talking about one of his experiences and how God spoke to his heart. But the truth is, God, listen, this is a promise given to every single child of God. What's the promise? I will meet, I will be sufficient, I'll be adequate, I'll provide exactly what you need at the point of your need at the moment you need it no longer. Listen, no matter how long it lasts, how short it lasts, how great it is, how small it is, no matter what the magnitude is, I will be there at the point of your need and I will make you adequate and sufficient and complete and enabled and empowered to walk through it, not give up, not quit, not walk away, not throw in the towel, and throw away your faith.
I'll be there for you. And here's what Paul said. He said, well, all the things I've been through in life, I have learned that what he said was absolutely true. I've learned that in all those difficulties and hardships and the things I've been through, he says what I've learned is it's absolutely true. God will do exactly what He said.
He'll do exactly what He says He'll do. Now, all of us want to grow up and be the kind of people God wants us to be, at least I hope we do. You want to grow up and be a godly person? You want to be mature in your Christian life?
You want your life to count for God, to make an impact in the lives of others? Then you can expect to suffer. You can expect to go through hardship and pain and suffering and trial, different kinds. God doesn't send everybody through the same. He doesn't allow everybody to go through the same.
But He's going to allow it. Because how do we grow up? That's the way we grow up, by being tested and tried. It isn't that God's trying to find out what we are like. He already knows that.
He wants to reveal Himself in us. And He wants to grow us up. For example, if you have children, nothing pleads you no more than to watch them as tiny babes begin to grow.
If that babe had not grown as normal, you would have been greatly concerned. But they grew up. And sometime when they're about a certain age, you wish they'd hurt, grow up. And then they got up here where you think, well, you know, now they're teenagers.
Now I wish you were back there where you were, rocket controlling. So we go through those things in life. But the truth is, we rejoice in watching them grow up. You know what? God takes great delight in growing us up. You say, but what about the pain?
You know what? He knows that's what it takes to grow us up, make us godly. God wants us not to be necessarily delivered.
That just does not mean that He won't deliver us from some things. But oftentimes, what I want you to see is those times when we feel helpless and we can't figure it out and we can't make it work, make somebody else change, make somebody else do right. Here's what I want you to see. He says, I want you to see this thing that's causing you difficulty. It's not a tyrant in your life.
It can be. But I want you to see it as a slave, as a servant. That God is using this to do something in your life that if you and I respond right, He's going to reward us greatly. He says, my grace is sufficient. He says, I want you to rise. Listen, I don't want you to sink beneath it all. I want you to rise above it. And you know what happens? When a person says, I quit, I give up, I'm walking away.
I don't have to put up with this anymore. What you're doing, you know what you're doing? You are allowing it to take you down. Or you can get your focus on God and allow it to do what? To raise you above it all.
And God will absolutely transform your life in the process. Now, here's something I want you to think about. We've talked about why we get tempted to give up and quit, how God worked in the Apostle Paul's life. He explained it to him. He didn't give him a deliverance at that moment.
What I want you to see at this point is this. In a very practical way, how does grace work? Okay, I'm saved. I'm going through this very trying time.
Somebody that loves walked out on me and my children's done this and lost my job and I've 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, I still don't have one and things are coming down pretty close to zero and I don't know what I'm going to do. How does grace work? All right, listen carefully. First of all, the grace of God releases within us. The grace of God releases within us this supernatural power and strength that encourages us.
We can go on. We don't have to quit and our God is going to supply every need. There is this awesome sense of supernatural power and strength and energy and confidence that comes to us through grace. The second thing grace does in a practical way is this. Listen, it ignites the spirit of confidence in us. That is, grace ignites the spirit of confidence.
You know what? I'm going to trust God. I'm going through this. God's going to take me through this. God's going to get me victoriously through this no matter what. That's, when He says my grace is sufficient, He pours out His grace. He pours out upon us that release of power. He pours out upon us that sense of confidence that we need at that particular time.
A third thing that happens is this. That is, grace shouts to us that we have a heavenly Father who is our friend and our supporter and He's going to be with us through every step of the way. We have this awesome God who is our loving Father who is going to be with us.
Listen, He comes on as a friend and as a supporter. Grace calls out to us, shouts to us. He is going to walk with you through this.
He is going to be there as a friend and as a supporter. Then likewise, grace keeps pointing us to the Father. Get your eyes off the trouble, the heartache, the problem.
Get your eyes on Him. He is the sovereign God of this universe. Grace, grace is always doing what?
Keeps pointing us to God. That He has a reason and a purpose and a plan for allowing this in our life. You say, but you don't know what I've been through. I'm sure I don't.
And I'm sure that I have not been through anything to even compare with what many of you have been through in life. But I can say this, I've been through enough to know that what He says is true. That you name it and if He's promised it, it's going to be true. He doesn't just spout off things in the Word to give us a little encouragement. Practical, listen, down to earth Monday morning, you name it, it works no matter when, where, what, why and who.
It works. This is grace at work in our life. Also, listen, grace, listen, how does it work?
Grace is there to remind us that God is going to bring us through this. He's going to take you through this. The sovereign God's going to take you through this and you're going to come out with a greater sense of intimacy with Him and a greater sense of faith. That is your faith's going to be stronger.
Your intimacy with Him is going to be deeper than ever before. Grace is practically working. All during these difficulties, hardships and trials when we get our focus on Him, what's happening?
God is working. And so when we say grace is sufficient, sufficient to do what? To release this power, encourage your heart, remind us, recall to us those things that are so essential that you and I believe and understand. Likewise, grace is like grace just embraces us. Listen, embraces us with the assurance, listen, that God is sovereign and that He is only going to allow so much pain, so much heartache, so many burdens. He's only going to allow what He knows you and I can bear up under with His grace, with His strength and dependence upon Him. It's like grace embraces us.
That is just absolutely covers us with the assurance. There's a limit to this. I'm not going to allow more than you can bear.
I'm not going to allow a trial that I won't bring you through. You don't have to give up and quit. You're going to make it. It's going to be okay. He embraces us with that grace.
And then I would think about when I think about how we've been through these things in life, I think about what happens is that grace, listen, grace awakens in us. Listen, this awesome sense of confidence. God is going to turn this for my good.
I know He is. He's going to turn this out for my good. What would normally destroy some people will develop you. So when we say that my grace is sufficient, grace on the inside of you is working, working all of that for your good so that you don't have to quit. You don't have to give up. You don't have to get discouraged.
You may have moments of discouragement, but then what happens? You get your focus upon Him, relying upon Him, and you have the awesome promise of a sovereign God who's in absolute control of every single circumstance, every event in life. Not one single person can keep Him from accomplishing His purpose. He's going to work in your life. If you're one of His children, you trust that Jesus is your Savior, you know what? You're going to be victorious.
You can be, you will be if you'll trust Him. And let grace work in your life. The very nature of grace is to cause you to be triumphant and victorious no matter what you're facing by. Thank you for listening to part two of The Grace to Keep Going. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
