God's Power Made Perfect In Our Weakness
When Paul addressed the internal struggles and problems that the Corinthians were experiencing particularly the emergence of the "super-apostles" proclaiming a different gospel, he gave many accounts of his and the other apostles' struggles with persecution, imprisonment, and threats on their lives all for the sake of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, doing the work of the Lord, obeying the will of God by the leading of the Holy Spirit, and strengthening the different churches that they have established.
Paul also indicated that despite all these problems and difficulties they encountered, it was God who sustained them and delivered them from their troubles. God enabled them to speak boldly and enter foreign lands to preach the gospel.
In fact, in 2 Corinthians 3:5, Paul states, "Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God."
The whole book of 2 Corinthians was written to encourage each one of us regarding our struggles and problems in life. We see that no one is exempted from facing challenges in life not even the apostles or our leaders in church today.
But there is one thing we can completely trust and rely on and that is God's faithfulness. We know that it is by God's grace that we are able to live a full and meaningful life. It is by His grace as well that we are able to endure the hardships that we face.
Toward the end of Paul's second letter to the Corinthian Church, he recounts the thorn that was given to him to torment him. This was to keep him from becoming conceited, arrogant, and puffed up.
He says that he pleaded God to remove this thorn from his flesh but God answered him with the verse given above saying that His grace is sufficient for us and His power is made perfect in weakness.
Sometimes, God allows problems to come our way which may be financial crisis, illnesses, unemployment, struggles in relationships, and the like so that we learn to depend and rely on Him.
It is through the difficult times that we learn to trust in God more and put our faith in Him more about every aspect of our lives. We become more eager to pray and read His Word so that we can communicate with Him and learn from Him.
We also learn to wait on God. Living in a fast-paced world, we always want things to be done quickly because we do not want to wait. But knowing that God's grace is sufficient and trusting in His power, we learn to wait for Him and for His perfect time.
In our weaknesses, we also learn to be humble and accept that we are weak and we do not have the ability to do anything on our own. So we become dependent on God's strength and power.
Moreover, the daily life of a Christian entails much spiritual warfare and we really need the power of God to help us overcome the sinful nature of the flesh and different principalities, powers, and forces that oppose the true knowledge of God.
With all these things, we truly need God in our daily lives. We will have struggles at every corner and people will try to bring us down but what we need to do is to rely on God and draw strength from Him. He will be there to comfort us in all our troubles (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) and He will deliver us from them.
We need to continue praying and immersing ourselves in God's Word because that is our weapon against the numerous attacks that target us from side to side. We need to stand firm on God's faithfulness and depend on His grace.
Let us also put God first in everything. Whenever we have a problem, God should be the first one to whom we would run to for help because He knows what we are going through and He can help us overcome.
Furthermore, we need to recognize that it is God who works in and through us. It is He who deserves all the glory, honor, and praise. 2 Corinthians 10:17 says, "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." Only God is worthy to be glorified and we humble ourselves before our Creator and Lord.
In the second part of 2 Corinthians 12:9 it says that he will boast about his weaknesses because we know that in our weaknesses, God's power and strength will be manifested. It is in our most difficult trial that we can depend on God the most and trust in Him with all our heart, mind, soul, strength, and spirit.
It is such an assuring and encouraging thought that God will be there for us and He will guide us through our struggles and even develop a good character in us so that we can live the life of righteousness. It is even more exciting to know that when we are weak, we can find our strength in God.
The Christian life is going to be a difficult road with all the trials, persecution, struggles, and other threats from the world but we have an Almighty God who is our Father in heaven and we can depend on Him. We know that He will never fail and we can rely on Him through our difficult times.
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