So Tyler found one of my early childhood books the other day. It’s called the “It’s All About Me” book by Dr. Seuss. It allows you to be interactive with the book. As Tyler was going through it he saw that I had done it when I was about his age. In it he saw my foot drawn out, my hand drawn out, how tall I was. TALK ABOUT THAT BOOK MAYBE SHOW IT OFF. Well when it came to my favorite subjects their were two that I just were not good at. One was Math and the other was science. Though science and math are still weaknesses of mine, I do remember learning one law that will help us in understanding this subject of how we treat grace.
What I have here is my contraption of a pendulum. You know what a pendulum is. You can find them in clocks and other things. Well there is a physical law that speaks to how a pendulum works. The law of the pendulum says that a pendulum can never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. It has to do with friction and gravity. I don’t understand all of that but what I do understand is that if I take this pendulum when it swings back it will always fall short of the original release point and as it swings the arc will continue to be smaller and smaller until it finally stops.
Here is what I mean. Notice this is where I will start it from now watch and see that as it moves it gets smaller and smaller which shows that there is a law of pendulum and indeed it does work. Now anyone have a problem with that.
Okay, Chrysta will you come here please. Now remember that the law of the pendulum states that the pendulum will never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. Now are you willing to stand here and allow me to take this brick and try the theory of the pendulum? If the theory is true then your nose should be safe. So Do you believe this theory is true? Now what people can’t see is that you are starting to get sweaty and nervous up here. That was a weak yes.
You see that’s the problem. It is easy to believe in this law when it is simply theory and we are talking about it. Yet when your life depends on this law of the pendulum, it shows a lack of faith and belief in the theory.
Now you say, what does this have to say about our reaction to grace? Well is it not true that it is easy for us to believe in God’s sufficient grace for me on Sunday morning or Wednesday night. Oh how easy it is for us this morning to stand up and say Oh yes I rely on God. I rely on him fully and completely. I trust him with everything
Yet what happens when we are outside of church. What happens when things don’t go like we planned. What happens when sickness, sorrow, difficulties come in our life. What happens when God says my grace is sufficient for you now trust me? What can easily happen is we let go. We run from the brick. We don’t trust the theory when put into practice.
Now I want us to go back to last week. Last week we said that no one no not one is good enough to receive God’s grace. Rather it is something that is given to us who are undeserving of this wonderful gift. So why is it that we think that we can handle everything on our own. Boy when life is good, it’s easy to say I got this living thing under control. Yet when we start struggling about what comes our way in life we start to get mad at God. Listen, we can’t handle this world on our own. That’s why we need church, that’s why we need Christian friends and yes that is why we need grace.
Matthew Henry once said, “We have no sufficient strength of our own… All our sufficiency is of God… We should stir up ourselves to resist temptations in reliance upon God’s all-sufficiency and the omnipotence of His might.”
Today, I stand up here to say that I can’t make it on my own in this world and neither can you. But there is good news because God has given us an amazing grace and it is all that we need to overcome all things. There are three things this morning I want to share with you about God’s Sufficient Grace.
1. First God’s grace is sufficient enough to overcome Life’s Problems (v.7b):
7. To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
In this passage of scripture Paul is simply laying out his heart. He shows us that while there is glory in doing what he is doing, there is also pain. Paul has just gotten finished talking about something glorious about a man in Christ whom God had worked through and given the man a message to preach. Yet before someone could say that Paul was boasting he shared that he was just like you and me. He had problems. And he states in verse 7 that he did not have just any problem but his problem was a thorn in the flesh or better known as a pain in the side.
Now we don’t know what the thorn was that Paul experienced. Some say that it was epilepsy, some say it was eye trouble, some say that he had malaria and others say that he had migrane headaches. Well whatever it was it caused paul a lot of pain. I get migrane headaches quite frequently. And when I get those headaches the pain is so severe it’s right behind my eyes and the only treatment that I can have for a severe migrane is pillows over my head, no noise and 2 advil and sleep it off. But it is an excruciating pain. It throbs and feels as if someone has taken a hot iron and stuck it through my eye. And I pray that it will be taken from me. Let me ask you can you relate. Are you burdened with headaches, backaches or yes quite possibly heartache? Are their storms in your life right now that are causing you enormous pain.
And when pain comes are way regardless of what it is, we beg and plead for it to be taken away from us. I can probably say that there is no one here today that is hoping Hey God how bout bringing some pain and problems into my life.
Well Paul was just like us. he could not endure the pain that he was experiencing and he prayed to God that it would be taken from Him. He did not just go to God and say God if you get a chance take this pain away. No rather in verse 8 he asks 3 times for this thorn to be taken from him. “At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that”
Did you catch the word that Paul uses in asking God to remove it. He begs, pleads, implores for this thorn in the flesh to be removed because it is a very difficult and painful thing for Paul to bear.
Here in this verse we can see that Paul was going through the same thing that we were going through yet Paul was about to receive a lesson in grace and he wants to share that lesson with us this morning. Paul prayed that this thorn would be taken from him but God answered that prayer of Paul’s the way that he answers so many of our prayers by not taking the thing away but by giving Paul and us the strength to bear it. God looks out for us by understanding that it is in our best interests to not spare us these things but to help us be able to conquer these things.
2. God’s Grace is Better than our Solutions
Go back to verse 8 Paul pleaded with God to solve this situation by simply removing the thorn from his flesh. He prayed that God would simply take it from him so that they could both move on to bigger and better things. Sharing the good news and bringing people to faith. Yet God answered that prayer of Paul’s the way that he answers so many of our prayers by not taking the thing away but by giving Paul and us the strength to bear it. God looks out for us by understanding that it is in our best interests to not spare us these things but to help us be able to conquer these things. Paul is seeking his own solution by simply removing it… He did not ask for God’s solution rather he was focused on his own solution.
Now when you and I are faced with problems, science tells us that there are three ways that we can handle problems. 1) we can do what Paul does and go to God and say God please remove this. 2) we can say Oh it’s no big thing. I’ll handle it on my own. Or 3) we stick our head in the sand and hope that it will just go away.
But what we have to realize is that when we begin to deal with our problems under our own power, we hurt our walk with Christ because it cause us to become…
Well if we try to handle it on our own, here is what is going to happen. We are going to become focused solely on that problem and that is the only thing that will be important. We lose focus on our relationship with God and His desires we are buried in grief, and doubt. Our problems begin to overwhelm us because we don’t have the capacity to handle it on our own and that’s when we begin to say Hey God where are you? Why did you leave me?
But God did not go anywhere… He is there… the problem with us handling our own problems instead of giving them to God is laid out by Tommy Tenney, the author of the book The God Catchers. When he says, "It’s NOT that your problems are too big— perhaps it is because your worship is too small."
We get so hung up with our problems and trying to handle them on our own that we begin to say Well, I don’t have time for God, I don’t have time for family I don’t have time for church because I gotta handle this. I got to work, I got to this or I got to that. And instead what we need to be saying is that I gotta get down to my knees, I gotta to get myself back in church. I gotta get myself right with God. AMEN! After all that’s what God wants. Walk out these doors and read our marquee. God wants us to cast our cares and anxities upon him because he cares for us and it’s all because of His GRACE.
Look, I know that you are cool and strong and don’t want to look like we need help and surely don’t need help, but God encourages us that is the only way to be free from the problems. Listen those in our church recently that have had broken arms. If you guys would have gotten up and just went inside and put a band aid on it, it would not have fixed the problem, it would have made it worse. Rather you needed to go to a doctor someone who could and wanted to help you. And that is what we should do with our problems.
Paul simply wanted God to remove the problem, and for most of us that sounds like the smart thing to do. That is because the human approach to problem solving is always the road of least resistance.
Yet listen to the message translation of verse 8 again. He is talking about his thorn in the flesh and he says “At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that,
Did you catch it Paul says that his gift was his thorn in the flesh. He had discovered that asking it to be taken away was not the solution rather the solution was to grow through this test. I remember when I was teaching, and it was time to give a test, everyone moaned and groaned. And I would tell them I am not giving you this test to torture you, I am giving you this test so that you can’t grow. Now If I would have given them the test and then just gave them the answers they would have received a great score on the test, but they would not have grown. And God wants us to spiritually grown with Him and that growth takes place when we have these problems.
Testing gives us the opportunity to completely trust in God and know that he will provide for us. God allows these tests and trials to come into our lives not to hurt us but to help us. They come because of his desire for us to grow and mature in our faith. But these trials and troubles are not so that we can come to rely on ourselves… God puts them into our lives so that we can learn to trust in Him and lean on Him and rely on the sufficiency of His grace and mercy! So understanding that we all have problems and that our solutions will not work then the last thing I want to share with you is this:
3. God’s Grace is the Perfect Solution.
9 And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Jesus answer to Paul’s prayer is the theme of 2 Corinthians and of the New Testament. It is the theme of grace. And so Paul wants to share with the Corinthians and with us that when we are faced with Problems God encourages us to Lean on Him and all will be well. And when paul did that he began to discover that God’s power is best displayed in the moment of human weakness. Think about this. We know who God is and what he has done so why are we willing to trust him with our lives when we die but we are not willing to trust him to help us through the difficult times going on in our lives right at this moment. Why are we willing to trust him here at church but not at home?
Listen God loves us so much that he wants us to know that He can and will provide a solution to our problems and will provide a solution that is solid and long lasting. We might not like the way that he is doing it, but we must trust him. Someone once said that the problems that are over my head are still below the feet of Jesus.
I wish that I could stand up here today and tell you that you would never have any problems, you would never hurt, you would never be depressed. But I’d be lying because that is simply not true. I said it earlier that God desires for us to grow closer to him and for us to be willing to grow closer to him we are going to have to go through difficulties. I remember when I was going through a growth spurt ( I was a skinny short kid) that people would say that I was going through growing pains. It’s the same way in our relationship with Christ.
In our lives we have to come to the realization that there will be pain and difficulties.
I’m excited about the healthy initiative that Kim Griffin has organized here in Castalia. Kim and Jean are like the bionic man and woman. They walk miles and miles a day and they have gotten others interested in walking and running to stay in shape. On any given day you will see many individuals running or walking to get or stay in shape. They are working hard and difficult and is painful. But we do it because of the old phrase “no pain no gain. in other words you cannot get physically fit without the pain of working out. The same applies to spiritual growth, it is going to take great effort and work on your part and there are times when it is going to be painful and difficult!
We have to remember to focus as Paul did… focus on Christ and the fact that it is much more important for us to KNOW Him and have His presence than our own personal comfort, for He is the source of all joy and comfort and He will NOT deceive us or mislead us!
This morning you have heard how Paul dealt with a great difficulty in his life. You have heard how Christians should approach the difficulties of life. What’s our response?
Are you approaching the difficult times in your life like Paul did in our passage today? Are you turning it over to God and relying on His sufficiency to take care of you?
This morning you may be harboring something in your heart or life that you need to let go and let God take care of! Maybe you are holding onto a problem that God has shared with you that He would deal with, but you have to let it go!
Today are you willing to come to this altar and to lay your problems at the feet of Jesus. By the way there is no problem to big or too small for Jesus. Won’t you come and give it to God?
If you are here this morning and God is dealing with you on a deep spiritual level… I call on you to let go of your pride, let go of your fear and step out and allow God to deal with you and cleanse you and make you brand new in Christ!
