Sufficient
Therefore, in order to keep me
from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan,
to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 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. (2 Cor. 12:7-9)
Heather Sample
suspected trouble the moment she saw the cut on her father's hand. The two had
sat down for a quick lunch between surgical procedures. Heather spotted the
wound and asked him about it. When Kyle explained that the injury had happened
during an operation, a wave of nausea swept over her. Both were doctors. Both
knew the risk. Both understood the danger of treating AIDS patients in
Zimbabwe. This trip to Zimbabwe was not his first. Exposure to the AIDS virus
was. Heather urged her dad to immediately begin the antiretroviral treatment in
order to prevent HIV infection. Kyle was reluctant. He knew the side effects.
Each was life threatening. Heather insisted, and he consented.
Within hours he
was violently ill. Nausea, fever and weakness were only the initial signs that
something was terribly wrong. For ten days Kyle worsened. Then he broke out in
the unmistakable rash of Stevens-Johnson syndrome,
which is almost always fatal. They moved up their departure time, and wondered if
Kyle would survive the forty-hour trip, which included a twelve-hour layover in
South Africa, and a seventeen-hour flight to Atlanta. Kyle boarded the plane
with a 104.5° fever. He shook with chills. By this time he was having trouble
breathing and was unable to sit up. Incoherent. Eyes yellowed. Both recognized
the symptoms of liver failure. Heather felt the weight of her father's life on
her shoulders.
Heather
explained the situation to the pilots and convinced them that her father's best
hope was the fastest flight possible to the United States. Having only a
stethoscope and a vial of epinephrine, she took her seat next to his and
wondered how she would pull his body into the aisle to perform CPR if his heart
stopped. Several minutes into the flight Kyle drifted off to sleep. Heather
crawled over him and made it to the bathroom in time to vomit the water she had
just sipped. She slumped on the floor in a fetal position, wept and prayed, “I
need help.”
Heather doesn't
remember how long she prayed, but it was long enough for a concerned passenger
to knock on the bathroom door. She opened it to see four men standing in the
galley. One asked if she was okay. Heather assured him that she was fine, and
told him that she was a doctor. His face brightened as he explained that he and
his three friends were physicians, too. "And so are ninety-six other
passengers!" he said. Imagine that. One hundred physicians from Mexico
were on the flight.
Heather
explained the situation and asked for their help and prayers. They gave both.
They alerted a colleague who was a top-tier infectious disease doctor. Together
they evaluated Kyle's condition and agreed that nothing else could be done.
They offered to watch him so she could rest. She did. When she awoke, Kyle was
standing and talking to one of the doctors. Though still ICU-level sick, he was
much stronger. Heather began to recognize God's hand at work. He had placed
them on exactly the right plane with exactly the right people. God had met
their need with more-than-sufficient grace.
He'll meet yours
as well. Perhaps your journey is difficult. Maybe you’re like Heather, watching
a loved one struggle. Or maybe you’re like Dr. Kyle Sheets, feeling the rage of
disease and death in your body. You’re fearful and weak. But you’re not alone.
The words of "Amazing Grace" are yours. Though written around 1773,
they bring hope like today's sunrise: "'Tis grace hath brought me safe
thus far, and grace will lead me home." You have his Spirit within you.
Heavenly hosts above you. Jesus Christ interceding for you. You have God's
sufficient grace to sustain you. Paul's life underscored this truth. He wrote,
"There was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment
me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to
me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'"
(2 Cor. 12:7-9)
A thorn in the
flesh. Pretty vivid imagery. The sharp end of a thorn pierces the soft skin of
life and lodges beneath the surface. Every step is a reminder of the thorn in
the flesh. The cancer in the body. The sorrow in the heart. The child in rehab.
The red ink on the ledger. The felony on the record. The tears in the middle of
the night. The thorn in the flesh. "Take it away," you've pleaded.
Not once, twice, or even three times. You've out-prayed Paul. He prayed a
sprint; you've prayed the Boston Marathon. But you're about to hit the wall at
mile nineteen. The wound radiates pain, and you see no sign of tweezers coming
from heaven. But what you hear is this: "My grace is sufficient for
you."
Grace takes on
an added dimension here. Paul is referring to sustaining grace. Saving grace
saves us from our sins. Sustaining grace meets us at our point of need and
equips us with courage, wisdom and strength. It surprises us in the middle of
our personal transatlantic flights with ample resources of faith. Sustaining
grace promises not the absence of struggle, but the presence of God. And
according to Paul, God has “sufficient” sustaining grace to meet every single
challenge of our lives.
Sufficient. We
fear its antonym: “Insufficient.” We've written checks before, only to see the
words Insufficient Funds. Will we
offer prayers only to discover insufficient strength? Never. Plunge a sponge
into the Pacific Ocean. Did you absorb every drop? Take a deep breath. Did you
suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere? Pluck a pine needle from a tree in
Yosemite. Did you deplete the forest of its foliage? Watch that same Pacific
Ocean wave crash against the beach. Will there never be another one? Of course
there will. No sooner will one wave crash into the sand than another one appears.
Then another. Then another. That’s a picture of God's sufficient grace.
Grace is simply
another word for God's tumbling, rumbling reservoir of strength and protection.
It comes at us not occasionally or miserly, but constantly and aggressively;
wave upon wave. We've barely regained our balance from one breaker, and then, “bam,”
there’s another. "Grace upon grace," as John would say. (John 1:16) So,
we dare to hang our hat and stake our hope on the gladdest news of all: if God
permits the challenge, he will provide the grace to meet it. We can never
exhaust his supply.
God has enough
grace to solve every dilemma you face, wipe every tear you cry, and answer
every question you ask. And would we expect anything less from God? Send his
Son to die for us and not send his power to sustain us? Paul found such logic
impossible: "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all
– how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"
(Rom. 8:32)
Take all your
anxieties to Calvary, Paul urged. Stand in the shadow of God's crucified Son. Then
pose your questions. “Is Jesus on my side?” Look at the wound in his. “Will he
stay with me?” Having given the supreme and costliest gift, "how can he
fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?" (Rom. 8:32) "'Tis grace
hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."
When John Newton
penned this promise, he did so out of personal experience. His greatest test
came the day he buried his wife, Mary. He had loved her dearly, and prayed his
death would precede hers. But his prayers were not answered. Yet God's grace
proved sufficient. On the day she died Newton found strength to preach a Sunday
sermon. The next day he visited church members, and later he officiated at his
wife's funeral.
He grieved, but
in his grief found God's provision. He would later write, "The Bank of
England is too poor to compensate for such a loss as mine. But the Lord, the
all-sufficient God, speaks, and it is done. Let those who know Him, and trust
Him, be of good courage. He can give them strength according to their day. He
can increase their strength as their trials increase . . . and what He can do
He has promised that He will do."
So, let God's
grace dethrone your fears. Granted, anxiety will still come. That’s because the
globe still heats up; wars still flare up; and the economy still acts up.
Disease, calamity and trouble populate our world. But they don't control it.
Grace does. God has embedded your plane with a fleet of angels to meet your
needs in his way, and at just the right time.
Kyle recovered
from the reaction, and tests revealed no trace of HIV. He and Heather resumed
their practices with a renewed conviction of God's protection. When Kyle was
asked later about the experience, he reminisced that on three different
occasions he had heard an airline attendant ask, "Is there a doctor on
board?" In each instance, Kyle was the only physician on the flight.
"As Heather wheeled me onto the plane,” Kyle continued, “I wondered if anyone
would be on board to help us." God, he soon discovered, answered his
prayer a hundred times over. Literally.
Grace,
Randy
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