2 Corinthians 12:9a  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Have you ever had the experience of trying to put something together only to discover a key part is missing?  Or getting a group together to address an issue at work and someone vital to solving the problem is unable to attend?

I know there have been numerous times when my wife is making something in the kitchen and she calls me to run to the store to get a missing ingredient.  Sometimes you can get by with what’s missing or substitute something similar.  But often times there is no getting around the problem posed by a key item being missing.

Fortunately the missing ‘key part’ problem never applies to God’s grace.  It is always in sufficient supply for every situation we encounter.  Can you imagine the uncertainty and trauma we would go through if God routinely withheld His grace from us?  Think of the nightmare if He allowed temptations to come our way that were more than we could bear.  Our faith would be radically impacted – and undermined.

Faith and grace are there for us to apply to everything we do.  We need them for the problems we face AND how we respond to the problems.  Suppose we are asked to do something and we do it in a negative manner.  In God’s scheme of things, it’s possible that the only reason we were asked to help was for Him to reveal our attitude problem to us; that we were not walking in His provision for us.

One of the most helpful paraphrases I’ve been taught applies to the Lord’s Prayer and to the “Lead us not into temptation” phrase.  The teacher paraphrased this, “Lord let there not be anything in my heart that would cause you to put me to the test.”  God never tempts anyone (with evil) (James 1:13, 14) but He will allow us to encounter situations that reveal problems we have that we might be unaware of – like spiritual termites.

What a privilege we have in God enabling us to respond in a way that glorifies Him no matter what we encounter.  The key is for our faith to focus more and more on Him throughout each day recognizing that He and His grace are there for us to respond righteously.