Not The Answer I Wanted

And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness… 

II Corinthians 12:9a 

We bring many requests to God in prayer. We have sound theology. We know that He hears us for Jesus’ Sake. We know that the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us. We have had signal answers to prayer in the past. We prayed earnestly and fervently and been satisfied to see the mountain’s move. Paul was a prayer warrior. He sought the Lord and received powerful answers to prayer. In our text for today, we find that Christ gives Paul an answer that Paul did not really want. Paul was describing his ‘thorn in the flesh.’ He considered it a ‘messenger of Satan.’ Paul prayed three times for Christ, His Beloved Savior to remove this ‘thorn.’ Our text is the only direct statement from the mouth of Christ in the entire book of II Corinthians. He says to Paul, ‘My Grace is sufficient for you.’ We may come to consider the remainder of what He says in due course of time. For the moment, let us consider this answer to Paul. Here is the plain fact. For our greater good; for His Greater Glory; for our deepening spiritually; for our maturing fully, Christ does not remove some of the things that pain us most but gives us His Grace as that which is sufficient for us. This may be a hard pill to swallow. We know what we want, but He knows what we need. Perhaps, you have been praying fervently for the change of some circumstance, and Christ is answering you today with these words ‘My Grace is sufficient for you.’ Paul trusted Christ in his affliction. Can you trust Him in yours? 

Our Kind and Blessed Savior, 
We praise You, that You ‘perform the thing that is appointed for us.’ 
we rejoice that You will provide for us sufficient grace, 
to enable us to endure all our God-appointed trials. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning