My Grace is Sufficient

I am still trying to wrap my mind around the whole concept of grace. In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul writes about his thorn in the flesh, how he asked three times for it to be removed. In verse 9 the Lord tells him "My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness."

I know that we are saved by grace. By the definition of grace, meaning "unmerited favor". So in other words because of God's unmerited favor on us we are saved. Because He had favor on us when we were still in sin, Christ came and paid the penalty for us. The Father loved us so much that he showed favor on us, we did not deserve and sent His son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty of death for us. We are saved by turning from our sin and receiving that free gift of grace.

This passage in 2 Corinthians is not talking about grace in the terms of saving; he is talking about living daily in that saving grace. Here is where I had to do much study to learn what that meant. Then find out how to apply this kind of grace to my life. Here's what I came up with. Let me break it down in simple terms for you.

When Christ says "My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness.” He means when you were saved through grace (unmerited favor), you were given favor in Gods eyes, and you no longer need to continue to strive or work to be good enough. It is through Christ that we are good enough and when we just accept that and rely on Christ, we will see His power working through us.

I think a lot of Christians accept Jesus as their savior and then work real hard to keep their salvation. They think they have to "perform" with good works. Christ saved us through grace and we do not need to "perform", we only need to "transform" into His image. Our job is to saturate ourselves in the word for the renewing of our minds and yield to the spirit to give us the strength to "transform".

It is in our weakness that we are transformed in the image of Christ because; guess what, we do not have the power to change our hearts. We must ask for the supernatural power of the spirit to transform us, to help us to love, to give us the characters of Christ.

It is in this daily surrender that we begin to learn to "live in grace", the unmerited favor of God. We begin to learn that we can stop striving and trust in Him for all things. He is the creator of all things and His grace is sufficient.