WHAT WE NEED WHEN WE NEED IT – Part 2 of 2

Remember the Lord’s Prayer? “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11)

What we really wish is that it said weekly or monthly or yearly bread. That way we wouldn’t have to depend on God on a daily basis! But that’s when God has us right where He wants us. Spiritual maturity is not self-sufficiency. In fact, our desire for self-sufficiency is a subtle expression of our sinful nature. It’s a desire to get to a place where we don’t need God. We want God to provide more so we need Him less…

Everyone wants a miracle, but no one wants to be in a situation that necessitates one. But you cannot have one without the other. So God gracefully puts us in situations where enough isn’t enough. We find ourselves in a situation where we need to feed 20,000 people and we have two fish to our name.

-- Mark Batterson in “The Grave Robber: How Jesus Can Make Your Impossible Possible” 

#6027

ALL-SUFFICIENT GRACE

And the Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”  (2 Corinthians 12:9 NKJV)

There is power in the grace of God. The verb translated “is sufficient” is in the present tense – as is God’s grace, which is always present. In every situation, we can rely on Him to provide strength and courage. He will never give us all that we want, but He will give us all that we need.

Compare our Lord to the gods of all the world’s religions and you’ll find that grace is the difference maker. It is the X factor that radically sets Him apart. Our God is “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10). He is kind, benevolent, and long-suffering. We need not beg Him, bribe Him, or appease Him. He actually longs to bless us every single moment, every single day. He comes down to us rather than demanding that we climb the impossible ladder to infinity to reach Him. Grace is God taking the initiative.

In this same letter, Paul explained, “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8 NKJV).

Notice the repetition of the word “all.” All grace abounds toward us so that we are all sufficient in all things. He is all we need in all we face, so that for all we do, we can overflow with His grace and power. 

-- David Jeremiah in “Keep the Faith: How to Stand Strong in a World Turned Upside Down” 

#5970

GOD’S SUFFICIENT LOVE

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  (Romans 5:8)

Any time that we are tempted to doubt God’s love for us, we should go back to the Cross. We should reason somewhat in this fashion: If God loved me enough to give His Son to die for me when I was His enemy, surely He loves me enough to care for me now that I am His child. Having loved me to the ultimate extent of the Cross, He cannot possibly fail to love me in times of adversity. Having given such a priceless gift as His Son, surely He will also give all else that is consistent with His glory and my good…

“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32) Paul reasoned that if God loved us so much to give us the greatest conceivable gift, then surely He will not withhold any lesser blessing from us… If God’s love was sufficient for my greatest need, my eternal salvation, surely it is sufficient for my lesser needs, the adversities I encounter in this life. 

-- Jerry Bridges in “Trusting God”

#5199

GOD’S ALL-SUFFICIENT GRACE - Part 2

“[The LORD] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness’.” (2 Corinthians 12:9a NIV)

Plunge a sponge into Lake Erie. Did it absorb every drop? Take a deep breath. Did it suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere? Pluck a pine needle from a tree in Yosemite. Did you deplete the forest foliage? Watch an ocean wave crash against the beach. Will there never be another one?

Of course there will. No sooner will one wave crash into the sand than another appears. Then another, then another. This is a picture of God’s sufficient grace. Grace is simply another word for God’s tumbling, rumbling reservoir of strength and protection. It comes at us not occasionally or miserly but constantly and aggressively, wave upon wave. We’ve barely regained our balance from one breaker, and then, bam, here comes another.

“For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:16 ESB)

-- Max Lucado in “Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine”


#4793

GOD’S ALL-SUFFICIENT GRACE - Part 1

You have God’s sufficient grace to sustain you.

Paul’s life underscored this truth. He wrote “There was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the LORD to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness’.” (2 Corinthians 12:7b-9a)

A thorn in the flesh. Such vivid imagery. The sharp end of a thorn pierces the soft skin in life and lodges beneath the surface. Every step is a reminder of the thorn in the flesh.

The cancer in the body. The sorrow in the heart. The child in the rehab center. The red ink on the ledger. The felony on the record. The craving for whiskey in the middle of the day. The tears in the middle of the night. The thorn in the flesh.

“Take it away,” you’ve pleaded. Not once, twice, or even three times. You’ve outprayed Paul. He prayed a sprint; you’ve prayed the Boston Marathon. And you’re about to hit a wall at mile nineteen. The wound radiates pain, and you see no sign of tweezers coming from heaven. But what you hear is this: “My grace is sufficient for you.”

-- Max Lucado in “Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine” 


#4792

OUR SUFFICIENCY IS IN CHRIST

“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.”  (2 Corinthians 3:5 NKJV)

“Thank You, Lord. You are my sufficiency this moment, this hour, this day. I‘m counting on Your life in me -- Your love and patience, Your gentleness and guidance and power -- to meet my needs and overflow to others.”

When we praise with thanksgiving, we deepen our experience of Christ in us as our Source. He constantly fills us and replenishes our resources as we give ourselves in loving service to other people.

C. S. Lewis wrote that a car [built with an internal combustion engine] is made to run on gas, and it won’t run properly on anything else. Likewise, God made us to run on Himself. He is the fuel our spirits were designed to feed on. So it’s no use trying to find inner release and power and fulfillment apart from God. There is no such thing. And God has given us His life and power through our inner union with Christ Jesus our Lord.

When we turn our attention to Christ, focusing on Him and His sufficiency, how can we help but praise and thank Him for He is our life?

-- Ruth Myers in “31 Days of Praise”


#4724

LIVING IN THE PRESENT

Read Exodus 16:11-21.

God heard [the Israelites], and responded by promising to provide for them. Those of us who attended Sunday school know the story well -- each morning, flakes of bread (manna) appeared on the ground; in the evening, quail covered the camp. But they couldn’t hoard what they gathered, and they couldn’t store it. Moses instructed the Israelites to gather only what they needed for the day -- no more, no less. Tough to do when you’re thinking about what the kids will eat for breakfast!

Why was limiting what they gathered important to God? Because the Israelites needed to understand what we all need to learn -- that we can sustain a relationship with God only in the present.

Our past is nothing more than the story of how we got to where we are, and dwelling on it causes us to become stagnant and unsatisfied. We can’t find God by worrying or dreaming about the future, either, because that just makes us want to control whatever lies ahead.

Yes, we have concerns and hopes and dreams for the future. But this story tells us that we can live out our relationship with God only in the here and now. God longs for us to trust Him every hour and every minute of today.

-- From the “Men’s Devotional Bible”


#4575

THANKFUL FOR GOD’S PROVISION

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18  NIV)

The Israelites escaped captivity in Egypt only to face the challenges of the desert. One of the biggest challenges for such a large group of nomads was enough food to eat. Over and over again God provided supernaturally for His people. If God could provide for many thousands of Israelites in the middle of a desert, He can surely provide for you and your family’s needs. One of the precious testimonies of Scripture is, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or His children begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25).

But even with God’s supernatural provision, the Israelites still complained and grumbled in the desert. They longed for the food they left behind in Egypt. God was literally providing bread from heaven -- enough for each day -- but they wanted His provision a different way. They wanted it their own way.

Ask God to provide for you in whatever way He deems fit. Don’t grumble against God’s supernatural, unexpected ways.

-- Matt Brown in an article entitled “Four Truths About God’s Provision”


#4259

OUR ALL-SUFFICIENT GOD

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." (Psalm 46:2 NKJV)


God wants us to realize that He is our everything. He is our sufficiency. We need to come to Him and trust Him in every situation.


-- David Robinson, in Sports Spectrum




#3727