More than sufficient power

UV 473/10,000 2 Corinthians 12 v 9 His grace is sufficient 2Co 12:9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Paul took the mental position that we all should take: “when I am strong, the Lord’s presence and power in me is weak. When I am weak, He is strong in me.” The meaning of this is that when we think we are self-sufficient, we become spiritually complacent and there is no room for faith and the operation of grace. Even our greatest strength or ability is but weakness before the power of the Almighty God. But, there is no weakness that He cannot help us handle. We may be struggling with a physical,financial, intellectual, emotional or spiritual weakness in our lives. When we allow the power of Christ to work in these gaps, He will fill it with His grace to the point of overflowing, like He transformed the jars of water into wine in the marriage at Cana. God speaks loudest to us in our moments of weakness, our times of crisis, of loneliness, persecution and failure. These are the times we have no one we can confide in except the Lord. Paul had a secret affliction- a thorn in the flesh that only the Lord and he knew. Weakness is a part of human nature, the power to overcome and to endure comes from the Lord. Grace is the power to overcome and to endure. It is a God-given and not a naturally occurring ability. Grace is the transforming power of God whereby, He tranforms the sinful people into holy and righteous people, the weak into strong, the foolish into wise, the proud into humble, the stubborn into obedient, the imperfect into perfect. The power of Christ will rest upon us, meaning it will remain in us and become part of our second nature- the God-created new self. Nothing can dislodge it, no one can defeat it. In modern management, we do SWOT analysis to enumerate our personal strengths,weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Then,we glory or take pride in our strengths and ignore our weaknesses. We think of availing our opportunities and ignore our threats. Our weaknesses and threats become our blind spots. In Biblical management, the strengths are already a given: we take steps to further augment it and use it faithfully for the glory of God. As faithful stewards we use the opportunities. We invite the Lord to act in our areas of weaknesses and threats. We pray and expect an outpouring of His power or grace in these areas of weaknesses and protection from the threats. The longer is the list of our weaknesses and threats, the greater is the potential of our lives. This uni-verse guarantees that we have sufficient power made available to us as believers to face all the challenges in life. Prateep V Philip