Encouragement for Today

October 7, 2024 Divinely Provided Strength JAMIE C. FINN Lee en español

“… My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9a (NIV)

Most nights, I limp to the post-bedtime finish line. The day is long and hard. I wake before dawn and then give-and-go nearly every moment till dark. Nighttime is a minefield for my kids — fear of isolation and abandonment, overstimulating hygiene routines, nighttime monsters, darkness and its frightening shadows, anxiety for the next day, and the terrifying quiet that invites intrusive thoughts.

My exhaustion is bone deep — soul deep.

The Apostle Paul surely must have known this level of weariness, but he saw it as an opportunity to experience God in a new way. It’s not that Paul wanted to experience hardship; in fact, he “pleaded with the Lord to take it away” from him three times (2 Corinthians 12:8, NIV).

But God reminded Paul of His own sufficient grace and perfect power. God used the weakness-inducing challenges of life to invite Paul to experience Him in a new, fulfilling and complete way:

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, NIV).

I often pray away my exhaustion, asking God to take it away, to make it better: Don’t keep me living at the edge of myself, Lord. I want a life that is free, full and abundant.

And God answers me, based on His words to Paul, with an invitation: Boast in your weakness. Delight in your weakness. Rejoice in coming to the edge of yourself because it is there that I am found.

Weakness is limitation, incapacity, inherent not-enoughness — part of our humanness. Because of our weakness, we can admit and glory in the fact that we are not God, and we can run to God to find all that we need. We boast in our incompleteness so that we can experience the glory of Christ’s power resting upon us.

This changes the paradigm for all of life, especially the hard parts. Insults, hardships, persecutions, difficulties and weaknesses — they don’t need to be avoided, fought against or prayed away. Instead, they can be delighted in. Because anything that brings us more of God and His all-sufficient grace and perfect power is a gift.

So today, I’m not only anticipating exhaustion, not only practicing awareness of my weakness, but I’m also preparing to meet strength — the kind of supernatural, divinely provided strength that’s found only in my weakness.

Because when I am weak, then I am strong in Him.

Lord, thank You for loving me enough to bring me to the end of myself so that I may know You and Your sustaining strength. Help me to seek joy humbly in my weakness and to experience Your power giving me all that I need. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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FOR DEEPER STUDY

Isaiah 40:28-29, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength” (ESV).

What is something you’ve been praying away that is actually bringing you into a deeper dependence on God?

How has God provided the sustaining strength you needed in the past?

© 2024 by Jamie C. Finn. All rights reserved.

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