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MOMENTS OF GRACE
Strength from weakness

By David Woodbury

Life seems paradoxically unfair in many ways and it has been my experience that many of God’s choicest saints endure lives of excessive suffering and affliction. How this all fits into God’s plan for this world I am not sure. However, I accept it as a reality and that God knows best and allows such things to occur. How a Christian accepts and responds to such circumstances is the point in question. We can allow ourselves to become bitter and resentful when suffering is visited upon us, and such a response is probably a barrier to moments of grace. I suspect it is almost impossible for God to pour his grace out into the heart that is resentful and bitter.

Someone has said that suffering affliction will either make us bitter or better people. Those who would experience moments of grace must seek to become better people. Resentment and bitterness poison the heart and soul. However, we should refrain from becoming judgemental when we see others going through such an experience, pain and suffering are personal experiences and are entirely relative to the sufferer. They are experiences which in some way, we can never enter or share. They call for us to accept, love and support those who are passing through them, seeking to assist them to move on by prayer and compassionate understanding.

Suffering and affliction are common to all humanity alike, believer and non-believer. The Bible rebounds with examples of suffering saints. However, the reality is; none eagerly embrace the mantle of the suffering saint, the apostle Paul among them. The Bible does not encourage us as Christians to actively seek suffering and affliction; that comes as part of being human in a sinful world.  No normal, healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he simply chooses God’s will, just as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not. (Oswald Chambers)[1]

It seems incongruous that at times we suffer to bring us closer to God; however, that may well be the reality of our pilgrimage here. Becoming a Christian does not bring with it some sort of invisible shield against suffering and affliction. What it does is enable us to access a resource to cope with suffering and affliction; the grace that comes from an authentic relationship with a loving God. The Apostle Peter contends that suffering may well demonstrate the reality of our faith (1 Peter 1:3-9) while the writer of Romans asserts that we can have joy with our troubles because we know that these troubles produce patience. 4And patience produces character, and character produces hope. 5And this hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts. God gave us his love through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to us. (Romans 5:3-5 – International Children’s Bible) Paul associated suffering and affliction with God’s plan to become like Jesus. (See Philippians 3:10)

Paul grasped that his thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:6 – 10) could well be an instrument that would enable him to remain humble and access God’s grace to cope with all situations. He well understood that there would be strength available when he was weak, a strength that could only be bestowed through a total reliance on God. Like many of the great saints, Paul recognised that his humanity brought with it undeniable weaknesses. He was acutely aware that he was most useful to God when he relied on God’s strength and wisdom. 

While we have no specific description of Paul experiencing a moment of grace, in the early part of 2 Corinthians 12 we have an extraordinary description of an unworldly experience where a man is taken up to paradise. Most Bible commentators and scholars agree that Paul is really speaking of an experience through which he passed. The experience was so intense and ethereal that it was indescribable. It may well be that Paul is here describing a moment of grace where the love and grace of God overwhelmed him. It is certainly significant that he writes of this experience just prior to witnessing to the sufficiency of God’s grace in his suffering.

This paradox of strength through weakness is difficult for modern humanity to comprehend and flies in the face of what is valued in today’s society. Most of us don’t like to appear as weak individuals. Yet we have met Christians who on the surface do not appear strong personalities but exhibit some sort in inner strength which at first may not be so obvious. Such people have learnt to draw their strength from the hidden well of God’s grace. Paul came to appreciate that in his weakness he was able to tap into this well, a resource freely available to all who would seek, in true meekness, moments of grace. It is only as we are humble and meek enough to stoop and draw from the boundless well of God’s grace that we can truly enter into moments of grace.

MEDITATION VIDEO: The well is deep
Click on or paste the following link:

https://youtu.be/raHXAQBd80I



[1] My Utmost for his Highest – The Holy Suffering of the Saint - Oswald Chambers

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