“My grace is sufficient.”

-Jesus Christ, and later, Luke Whipple

Today, I encountered II Corinthians 12:7-9, in which Paul talks about the “thorn in his flesh” and God’s refusal to remove it because “His grace is sufficient…and His power is displayed in [Paul’s] weakness.” Paul was proud of his struggles because they were an opportunity for God to demonstrate his power. Implicit is the fact that, although he desired these weaknesses to leave him, he took joy in his inabilities and that is why he was open to the world about them.

This is such a difficult concept for me to grasp, because I have so many faults and I am greatly pained when I fail. When I lack the confidence in my social abilities to confront problems I see, when I treat women poorly because of my struggles with lust, when I snap at people because I am weary, when I knock others down to build myself up, when I judge people so that I can feel like my faith is strong enough, I beat myself up. Instead, I ought to trust that Christ will work through these things and make my negative qualities public instead of hiding them and solely praying that they will disappear over time.

Therefore, I am using this post to proclaim the power of the Lord in the things he used me to do this past year as a resident assistant. I am not claiming to have been a perfect RA, or to have done all that could possibly have been done, but I am giving credit to God for using a broken man, whose social insecurities have frequently caused him to hide, whose pride causes him to run away from the Lord and attempt things under his own power, whose impatience and inability to purely love a lot of people causes him to treat others poorly, whose desire to be popular to make up for past loneliness causes him to sacrifice the well-being of others for his own social gain to do great things. God used me in precisely the areas that I am completely in
capable so that all credit might be given to His name…SWEET!