2 Corinthians 12:7-10The Message
7-10 Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,
My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.
Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
“In Your Weakness I Will Strengthen You!”
Married people who are very confident in their own abilities and in what they have each achieved in their wedded life together, seldom know much of God.
Before we can genuinely discover God’s power and strength in all of its fullness, we must be brought face to face with our own inability, weakness and mortality.
We will all go through times in our lives that we’d rather avoid.
Like the apostle Paul, we will ask the Lord to remove difficulty from our lives, and we may receive the answer that, if we are brutally honest, we don’t always desire to hear: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in [your] weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Many of us spend our lives trying to be strong for others, to press on and to hold it together at all costs for those we have each come to very deeply care about.
We may even begin to believe that we can do that—but we can’t.
Even on our best days, we discover that we have physical and spiritual limits that we cannot possibly overcome on our own “at all costs” abilities.
Yet if we will only acknowledge how desperately weak we are, we will be amazed, totally awed to see the power of God unleashed within our lives.
The way to be truly strong for our spouses and strong for others, such as our children, is to lean upon the Lord’s strength, rather than to rely on our own.
Perhaps as you read short devotional this you are physically, emotionally, or spiritually drained—and if you are not, the time for feeling that way will come.
In your moments of weakness, you will be faced with a choice: you can ask God to give you strength, or you can turn to the idols of pride and self sufficiency.
Your all too natural inclination will not be to turn to God but to rejuvenate and reassure yourself by other means—your possessions, your intellect, your own energy, your past achievements, whatever else you and your spouse think of.
Yet the prophet pursues us with these words: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me’” (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
Instead of our spouses and I trying to press on in our own strength today, allow the Holy Spirit to minister to minister to us, shouting this truth into our souls:
God supplies His limitless strength for our all too limiting weakness.
Isaiah 41:10Authorized (King James) Version
10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee:
be not dismayed; for I am thy God:
I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee;
yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
He says, “I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
We serve a God who has eyes that quite literally see everything about us, knees that stoop to help you, and hands which reach out from heaven to embrace us.
Today, take both your spouses hands, face to face, life to life, humbly turn to Him in your weaknesses, be prepared for Him to meet you with His strength.
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us both Pray,
Psalm 23 Authorized (King James) Version
Psalm 23
A Psalm of David.
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 