The Grace Of God - [2 Corinthians 12:1-10]

I want to begin by just expressing a word of repentance. So I repent of my caricature of the cold, mean, stodgy, grumpy

New Englander. You do not fit the stereotype.

You've been gracious and I appreciate you very much. And I'd also like to say that I am so glad to know that Jonathan Edwards' Massachusetts is in the capable hands of Pastor Mike.

In all seriousness, I do appreciate the privilege of speaking from this pulpit.

I know it is a pulpit that upholds the preaching of the word of God and that preaches the word with boldness and faithfulness.

And so it is a real honor for me to stand in this pulpit knowing that you are well fed.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the greater W -O -R -C -E -S -T -E -R area,

Worcester, Massachusetts, otherwise known as West Boylston.

Thank you for having me and it's a privilege to share with you.

There is a gravestone somewhere in the United Kingdom that has on it these words. John Newton, clerk and preacher, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the gospel which he had long labored to destroy.

He ministered near 16 years in Olney and Bucks and 28 years in this church.

There is only one word to describe the life of John Newton. It is a word that comes from one of his famous hymns.

It is the word grace. You know the story of Newton. Here he was a sailor, a cussing sailor, right?

It's a bit of a redundancy to have a cussing sailor, but here he is a cussing sailor, captain of a slave ship, and God brought him to himself.

Not only did God bring him to himself, but he made him minister of the gospel. There is only one word that can possibly explain the life of John Newton and that is the word grace.

I have recently finished the book Unbroken. Maybe you've read that book too. It's been on the

New York Times bestseller list for a while. It's by the author of the book Seabiscuit. In this book,

Laura Hilbrand uses as the subject of her story the life of Louis Zamparini. Louis, he grew up on the streets of St.

Louis and he was a runner. He was running because he would steal stuff and then he would run so he wouldn't get caught.

And in junior high, a perceptive track coach got a hold of him and said, you know, if you're going to spend all this time running, let's have you run for more constructive purposes.

And Louis was quite skilled as a distance runner and he, in fact, competed in the 1936

Olympics. Now distance runners are, unlike other Olympic athletes, they peak a little bit later in their lives and so Louis wasn't set to peak until 1940 or perhaps even the 1944

Olympics. So he competed in the 1936 Olympics. That was the year that Jesse Owens sort of stole all the glory of the

Olympics. And of course, as we know, as history unfolded, the 1940 and the 1944

Olympics never occurred. And Louis, like most men of his age, found himself serving in the war.

And on this particular occasion, he was in a plane that likely should have been grounded, flying over the

Pacific Ocean. And in fact, the plane did go down. And three of them survived the crash and they made their way into the raft.

And for 47 days, Louis Zamperini was adrift in the seas of the

Pacific Ocean. And they washed up on an island. It was a

Japanese -occupied island. And so their nightmare took an even more hellish turn.

And Louis spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, a prisoner of war in a

Japanese prison camp. The particular commandant of that camp was a very vicious and cruel man.

And in the book, not bedtime reading necessarily, Louis describes the life that he had during those years of the war.

An intractable time. When the war was over and that particular camp was liberated,

Louis returned home. By then, he had moved to California. He had married. And he became an alcoholic.

He was drinking to forget. His wife had recently become a

Christian and the marriage was about to totally disintegrate. And she insisted that he come with her to hear a young evangelist preach in a tent that had been set up in Los Angeles.

This, of course, is Billy Graham. And this is the L .A. crusade that put young Billy Graham on the map.

He goes one night, walks out midway through Graham's sermon. But then he goes back the second night.

And that night, God gets a hold of his heart. And Louis is brought to Christ.

And his life is a 180. Over the next decades, he himself appears in Graham's crusade, sharing his testimony.

And he also spends a great deal of his time trying to track down the commandant of that camp.

As you can imagine, he was accused of war crimes. So he tried to be anonymous and tried to be under the radar.

And so it was difficult for Louis to try to track him down. But Louis was bent on finding him, reconciling with him, and sharing the gospel with him.

He wasn't able to find him. He was always a step behind. And then he learned of his death. There's only one word to explain

Louis Zamperini. And his desire to forgive and to share the gospel to that man who inflicted so much suffering and pain in his life.

And that word is grace. It is the key word of our text this morning.

Our text is 2 Corinthians 12. Not only am

I encouraged by you for your kindness. The string of Daves that have been transferring me back and forth from the hotel to the church.

Including, as we have come to realize, the Hindi word Pradeep actually means Dave. I'm also encouraged that you all read from the

ESV. Or as I have taken to calling it these days, the English Superior Version.

And so we will read 2 Corinthians 12.

I wanted to choose 2 Corinthians because I know your pastor is preaching through 1

Corinthians. And all I can say is that at the pace that he's going, you'll never ever see 2

Corinthians. So I wanted you to get a glimpse of what it looks like.

2 Corinthians 12, verse 1, Paul says, I must go on boasting.

I want to stop you there. That's an odd statement, a curious statement for Paul to make.

Boasting is, after all, a sin. Why is he saying this?

And I think to understand this, we have to dip back into chapter 11. If you go back a few verses, and we'll get the context here of chapter 12.

If you go back to verse 5, he says, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super apostles.

You get the sense that there's a bit of sarcasm here in Paul's voice. And he's indicating that things are not necessarily right at the

Church of Corinth. Paul had ministered here, founded the church, and in his absence, false teachers had come into this church.

And they had sort of poisoned the Corinthians against Paul. They, as we can look at it, likely encouraged the

Corinthians to take a look at Paul and see him as a rather unworthy leader for them. So they were using that to undermine

Paul. And in the process, they were undermining the gospel and Paul's message. Paul confronts these head -on in verse 12 of chapter 11 when he says,

And what I do, I will continue to do in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission, they work on the same terms as we do.

Make no mistake about it. Such men are false apostles. Deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, and here Paul pulls out the trump card, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.

Their end will correspond to their deeds. So Paul, and in verse 30 he adds,

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. Paul, as it were, sort of meets them at their own game.

And so he continues on in this spirit in chapter 12. And the reason why I like 2 Corinthians is because there's a lot of sarcasm in here, and I like sarcasm.

But the other reason why I like 2 Corinthians chapter 12 is that Paul sort of steps back and gives us some autobiographical insight.

He's reflecting on himself. And in the process, I think we learn a great deal about what makes

Paul tick about the gospel. And in the process, I think we learn a great deal about what is the dynamic, the dynamic, to living the

Christian life. Grace. So here we are at chapter 12.

I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it,

I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up in the third heaven.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And I know that this man was caught up in the paradise.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

On behalf of this man, I will boast. But on my own behalf,

I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. Though if I should wish to boast,

I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.

So, to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh.

A messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

May God bless His word in our midst this morning. This autobiographical portion,

I think, is one of two significant turning points in the

Apostle Paul's life. Arguably, the first turning point is his conversion.

We have the record of this for us in the book of Acts.

But Paul himself offers a theological description and definition of his conversion back in Ephesians chapter 2.

Take a look with me at Ephesians chapter 2. These are very familiar verses to you. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10.

Your conversion may not have been like Paul's. Chances are you weren't on a road somewhere where a blinding light blinded you, and for a couple days you had to hole up in somebody's house, and then after that you were sent out into the desert for a few years.

My hunch is, it doesn't describe your conversion experience.

And the fact is, we all come to Christ through different means. As Jonathan Edwards once said, the ways we come to Christ are varied and various and mysterious.

But over all of this can be said, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. No matter how we on the surface come to Christ, this theological definition of conversion applies to all of us.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

And there it is. For by grace you have been saved. That's the theological definition of our conversion.

Now we know these verses. What you might not be as familiar with is just go up a few verses into verse 5, or rather, chapter 2, and you see the same expression.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, and you've got to see the word dead. We're not sick. We're not good people who just need to be made better, or people who are fine.

How are you? Fine. How's everything going? Fine. We're dead.

When we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God made us alive together with Christ.

And then he says it. By grace you have been saved. And then he gets down to verse 8, and he says it again.

For by grace you have been saved. Repetition is a key. When you see it, pay attention to it.

Authors repeat things because they want you to get the message. The first turning point in Paul's life is his conversion.

And I think the second turning point in his life is in 2 Corinthians chapter 12.

And just as grace stands over the doorframe of that first turning point, so grace is the operative word here in this second turning point.

Now, he sets it up with a really interesting context, doesn't he? And he's sort of cagey about it. He frames it in this expression of,

I know a guy, and this guy I know had visions. It's a very odd way of Paul referring to himself, but that's in fact what he's doing.

He's referring to himself and these visions that he had. Now, if you and I were faced with the situation that Paul was faced with, confronted by challenging folks, confronted by people who wish to undermine who we are, confronted by people who sought us ill and harm, and we had to make a case to promote ourselves, you know what you and I would choose?

We would choose the platform of the vision to make a case of our credibility.

You and I would say, you want to hear something? Let me tell you about this experience

I had. And I was carried right up into paradise, and here's what it was like.

You and I would use the platform of the vision to respond to our challengers, but Paul doesn't.

Paul actually uses the opposite. He uses the platform of weakness, of frailty, of inability to make a case against his challengers.

This event that Paul writes about occurred, according to him, 14 years ago.

This is verse 2. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago... Now, I consulted the oracle, that being the

ESV Study Bible, which I actually use as an anchor for my house in case of a hurricane.

And I know where I am, so I consulted the other oracle, the ESV MacArthur Study Bible.

And both oracles are in agreement on this piece. 2 Corinthians was written in 55 or 56, late 55 or early 56

A .D. Fourteen years ago, if we do the math, make the subtraction, we arrive at around A .D.

42. Paul's conversion occurred either in late 33 or early 34.

That is significant. So that Paul is having this vision 8, maybe 9 years after he's come to Christ.

That is extremely significant to grasping what is going on in this text. This is not

Paul as a new Christian. This is not Paul's conversion. This is not even Paul as a baby Christian.

He's not 1, 2, 3 years into Christianity. And let's not forget who Paul was. He knew the

Old Testament. He breathed it out. It was part of who he was.

He was an apostle of Christ, taught directly from Christ. Remember those years in the backside of the desert he talks about in Galatians.

He was of a superior intellect. I actually think Paul was one of the smartest people who ever lived.

He was a brilliant, eloquent writer. His arguments are so erudite.

This is 8 years after he's a Christian and he has to learn something. And what he learns, he tells us.

And he tells it to us that it's so fresh, it's as if he's hearing it again for the first time as he writes these letters to the

Corinthians and as he writes these letters for us and he says this in verse 9,

My grace is sufficient for you. Now there are a number of key words in that.

That's the key phrase of this whole text, verses 1 to 10. And there are a number of key words in that phrase.

Sufficient is a great word. The sufficiency of the grace of God. No matter how insurmountable the challenge is,

God's grace is always more than capable of meeting it. The my is a great word too.

This God and his graciousness. Grace is obviously a key word.

But the word that I think is the key is the verb. Is. Is sufficient.

Not was. Not, remember that time, Paul, when you were converted and by grace you were saved?

Latch on to that. It's the is that's the key here.

Now what put Paul in a position to hear these words? It was that thorn in the flesh.

It was from a position of weakness and frailty and inability that Paul could hear and appreciate the words,

My grace is sufficient for you. So he comes down off of these visions and to keep himself from being elated, he gets this so -called thorn in the flesh.

Scholars love to debate over what this thorn in the flesh was. Was it his eyesight? Paul was a scholar.

He was a man of books, a man of learning. Poor eyesight would be a terrible affliction for a scholar.

It certainly qualifies as a thorn in the flesh. Some think it had to do with some sort of physical abnormality or physical deformity.

If you get dropped out of baskets over city walls on numerous occasions, it likely might do something to you.

And in a culture that worshipped and praised the beauty of the physical form, an abnormality, a deformity, would be all the reason these false teachers would need to discredit

Paul and to poison the minds of the Corinthians that this is not the guy you should hit your wagon to.

So maybe this thorn in the flesh was some sort of back pain that caused him to hunch over, so he was deformed.

Who knows what it is, but it was something that made him weak and frail.

And I think here he's dealing on a physical level, and we have to confront that. But I think the physical here is a metaphor for the spiritual.

What is ultimately true of Paul, which is ultimately true of all of us, is that in our spiritual selves, we are weak and frail and incapable and unable.

And it is from that position that Paul is able to be taught these words by God, that that's precisely where I want you to be.

I precisely want you to be confronted by your weakness, because in your weakness my strength, my power, is manifested.

My grace is sufficient. Paul goes on to talk about his weaknesses in verse 10.

Look at what he says. He says, I'm content with my weaknesses, my insults, my hardships, my persecutions, my calamities.

That's the missionary letter he sends to his supporting churches. How are things going on the field?

Well, persecutions, calamities, conflicts, hardships.

That's not usually what... I like to say this is the opposite of the Christmas letter. You know what I mean? You know the Christmas letter that you get that extols the virtues of the kids?

Young John just graduated from Harvard. He's 12. And this summer he was accepted and he's going up into space with NASA.

You know those Christmas letters. This is the opposite. And it's in this position of recognizing who he truly is in his weakness that God reveals to himself, reveals to Paul, this beautiful truth.

My grace is sufficient for you. Jesus Bonhoeffer preached on this text.

He was in London in the fall of 1934 and the spring of 1935.

He'd gone there because he was frustrated with developments in what was called the Confessing Church. In 1933, the

German National Church threw its support behind the Nazis. And it came to be called the

Reich Church because it endorsed the Reich, the Third Reich. And a group saw the error of that way and formed the

Confessing Church. And Bonhoeffer took upon himself and a friend to construct what would be the confession of this church, and it was called the

Bethel Confession. Bethel was a city in Germany that Bonhoeffer liked to visit, and he was there in the spring and summer of 1934.

It was established as a place for the mentally and the physically challenged and disabled.

And it was also a location for a seminary. And it was also known as a haven for street people, for tramps, as they were called in the 1930s.

And Bonhoeffer describes church services there at Bethel. He'd say the church was full of the elderly tramps who had come in off the street.

And there was massive economic depression and displacement in Germany in the 20s and 30s. That's how

Hitler was able to manipulate the country into giving him so much power. And the victims of that found their way into Bethel.

And then he said in the back row there were the epileptics that were there with their caregivers to watch them. And there were even folks on hospital beds wheeled in.

And then there were the seminary students. I love that he includes the seminary students among that litany of people because I was a seminary student once.

And we ate the store -bought macaroni and cheese for three years of our lives. It was great.

We were poor. We had nothing. And so, yes, we were counted among the elderly tramps and the folks in hospital beds.

And when Bonhoeffer looked out upon this group of people, he says, their situation of being truly weak gives us insight into certain realities of the human existence, the fact that we are all basically.

What he saw at Bethel physically was a picture, a metaphor of what we are in reality, weak, sick, desperate, frail, incapable, and unable.

And so he goes to London. He pastors two German congregations. And actually they had been so assimilated into culture that they didn't know

German so well. So Bonhoeffer, when he was there, actually preached in English. So we've got an English manuscript of him writing out the sermon on 2

Corinthians chapter 12. And in it he says, God is mighty where man is nothing.

This was in a German culture that was celebrating the Übermensch, the

Superman. Do you know as early as 1933, Hitler required hospitals and doctors to submit lists of children born with deformities and abnormalities?

As early as 1933. By the spring of 1934, Hitler was calling them useless eaters.

Long before the Holocaust, Hitler had begun his program of ethnic cleansing to get at the pure, vital, vibrant Aryan race.

Into a culture of Übermensch, or Übermenschen, Superman. Bonhoeffer says,

God is mighty when we are weak. There is a direct parallel to the

Roman culture that Paul is writing into. Roman culture was not a culture that celebrated the weak and the powerless and the incapable.

Rome was a culture that celebrated power and strength.

There's a book published called Humilitas by Jonathan Dixon. He was a doctoral student in Australia at the

University of Sydney, I believe. His group that he was working with and his professor was given a substantial grant to study the history of humility.

I'm always in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he embarked on a doctoral dissertation of the history of humility.

And you know what he discovered? Humility was not a virtue. It was never a virtue until Jesus Christ and the apostles who recorded and elaborated upon the message of Jesus Christ.

You will not find humility as a virtue among the Egyptians. You will not find it as a virtue among the

Babylonians, the Medo -Persians, the Greeks, and certainly you will not find humility among the

Romans. We are as gods was the

Roman cultural battle cry. And into that culture, Paul says, weakness, human weakness.

And when we acknowledge our weakness, God is mighty.

God's grace can be at work. Humble people are dependent people.

Proud people are independent people. And independent people don't leave much room in their lives for grace.

The trick of this, of course, is that this is something Paul learned after conversion.

And the trick that we need to catch here is that this is something we need to learn now for us as Christians.

That we come to Christ dead and weak and incapable and absolutely dependent upon grace.

And here's the other side of that. And we live in Christ weak and incapable and unable and absolutely dependent upon grace.

We don't get a pass. Look at the Bible. Look at Jesus' demands that he places. The ethical demands that Jesus places on us as his followers.

Read the epistles and see the ethical demands that Paul, Peter, John stack upon us.

We are called to do stuff as Christians. And we go wrong when we think that we are capable to pull it off.

And we go right when we recognize that we can't do it. I've been having fun mentioning to you this weekend my middle child.

I think the last time we talked about my middle child, he does have a name, but I prefer to call him middle child.

Contribute to that sort of psychological messed up thing he'll be when he gets older because he's the middle child. Last I think

I left middle child, we were traveling somewhere and he was in the back seat and my GPS went out. But middle child and I had a chance to go down to Florida back in the fall.

And I was speaking in a church and I took him along and we were having a great time. I like to go new places because I like to run and I always enjoy running in new places.

And as we were about to leave, my wife said to me lovingly, kindly, please don't leave

Ian in the hotel. Oh, I gave his name. Please don't leave Ian in the hotel room and go off running. And to me, that was a great idea.

He was six at the time. You'd plop him in front of certain cartoons and I'd just go off running through Florida.

But I decided to heed her advice, at least on one occasion. And I went down to the fitness center to run on the treadmill.

And the first morning we were there, a guy comes in with a USA boxing outfit on, top matching, and a trainer.

And he starts running on the treadmill. Over the successive mornings, he was there each time. And I come to find out in conversations with this guy, he's the light heavyweight champion of the world.

He had boxed for the USA team, but now he was a professional fighter in boxing. He's the light heavyweight champion of the world.

And he was preparing for a title match. And he was training there in the hotel.

And they turned one of the meeting rooms into his training area. They brought in a boxing rink and we went in to see him from time to time and spent a lot of time with him.

But every morning we'd end up in the treadmill about the same time we were running. And as I like to consider it, we were training together.

And so the treadmills were sort of situated like this. And I'd be behind him and he'd be in front of me and running. And one particular morning, a thought entered my head.

I can take this guy. I come up behind him, one punch, right to the kidneys.

And I knock him out. He'll fall down. His head will bounce off the treadmill and he'll go unconscious.

Won't be able to get a punch off. And in one punch, I will have knocked out the light heavyweight champion of the world.

Now, there are a number of things wrong with that train of thought. It makes you wonder why

I'm actually here and capable of actually preaching. But this is what's wrong with that train.

This is the most wrong thing of that train of thought. The thought that I can take him.

But what is so far more foolish, let's just say it, stupid, is the thought that you and I have when we read what

Christ demands of us as his follower and we say,

I can do that. When we read about what it means to love our neighbor and we say, piece of cake,

I can do that. When we read, as I mentioned this weekend, husbands, love your wives.

No problem there. But then comes that next thing, as Christ loved the church.

Again, that's not fair. But if we look at that and we say, piece of cake,

I can do that. When we read what is required of us as a follower of Jesus Christ and the thought that enters our head is,

I can do that, the wheels are going to fall off the wagon.

We need to look at these things and we need to say to ourselves, I can't do this.

Scripture writers try to give us insight to this. Let the one who thinks that he can stand when he is tempted take heed.

When we think, and all of us are confronted with temptation. Sometimes it comes right out of the blue.

And when we think, I can stand up against this.

What we need to do is recognize what Paul recognizes here, that we are weak, that we are frail.

And with humble hearts, we pray sincerely,

I can't do this. I can't love my wife as Jesus loved the church, unless God's grace be at work within me to enable me to do it.

I can't love my neighbor, you know the guy who never mows his yard and the weeds are growing, they come onto mine and I'm supposed to love this guy.

I can't love my neighbor as myself, unless we say, by God's grace,

I can do it. And humility, recognize ourselves.

And so Paul says, I think not with one bit of sarcasm, but with 100 % of certainty,

I will boast of my weaknesses. How paradoxical.

But in the boasting of his weaknesses, he is precisely where he wants to be. Because as Bonhoeffer says, God is mighty where man is nothing.

It is in our weakness and in our frailty and in our inability that God's grace is manifested.

I think this is difficult for a lot of reasons. If we look at this from the perspective of the text, one of the things that we find, again,

I think you and I, our natural tendency is to focus on the vision. Is to focus on the elation of the visions and the revelations.

But Paul flips that on its head, doesn't he? And it's in our weaknesses and our frailty.

Now, don't think that it was just Roman culture of first century

Rome that celebrated human power and human strength and human achievement.

It's also true of 21st century culture, isn't it? We are a culture that celebrates human achievement.

Look at what I have done. Look at the great things

I have made. Look at the frontiers we have conquered.

There is a great deal of hubris in the 21st century culture.

And just as humility is a difficult virtue historically, it is also a difficult virtue in contemporary times.

To cultivate true humility, which is a clear perception of who

I am and who God is. And Paul has a nice, neat balance sheet.

And on the human side, it's weakness and inability.

And on the divine side, it's power and might and strength.

When grace triumphs in a life, which is what's going on here in chapter 12.

When grace triumphs in our life, God's power replaces our inability.

I'll give you one more. When grace triumphs in a life, hope replaces fear.

Let me explain that. As you look at what is required of you in the

Christian life, as you look at what is even on the horizon of us. If five years ago

I had taken all of my retirement account, with all those zeros and commas in there.

And I took all that money out and I buried it in my backyard. And raccoons had come along in the middle of the night and dug it up and went off with half of it.

I'd still be better off now than I am. If we look at the economic uncertainties that await us, we might very well be filled with fear.

If we look at Islam, honestly look at Islam, the global threat of Islam, we could easily be filled with fear.

If you as a parent take time to contemplate what a task it is to raise children, you will be nearly paralyzed with fear.

And if it was up to you, then you have every reason to be very afraid.

But because of grace, we can actually have hope. When grace triumphs in our life, we recognize that it's not up to us.

It's not up to us. God will do it. Mysteriously, very mysteriously, not at all how we would plan it, but God will do it.

When it's about grace, when grace triumphs, true hope replaces fear.

And finally, when grace triumphs, gratitude replaces ingratitude. Proud people are not grateful people.

They have no reason to say thank you. They do it all themselves. But humble people have every reason to be grateful.

And it is from a posture of gratitude that we enter into a wonderful cycle of further and further dependence upon grace.

And we just keep spiraling up in an ever -ascending maturity of grace at work in our lives.

The more we recognize grace, the more we long to see it at work in our lives. And the more it is at work in our lives, the more we long for it.

And the more we express our gratitude to God. But the opposite is also true.

We can spiral down. Never fall from grace. Wesley got it wrong, very wrong.

We cannot fall from grace. But there is a difference between the

Christian that recognizes how primary, how ultimate 2

Corinthians 12, verse 9 is and the Christian who fails to do so.

From his position of weakness, Paul heard these words that he had heard 14 years ago.

And it's as if he was hearing them fresh. And he records them so that you and I can hear them fresh.

So in our position of weakness, be ready to admit it.

And in our position of frailty, and admit it. And in our position of inability, be ready to admit it.

These are the words that God says to us. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Father God, we are so grateful for your grace that is at work in our lives.

We thank you that it is by grace that we have been saved. We know that none of us, none of us, could ever attain what is required of you, a holy

God. Our offense was so great. Our weight of sin was so great.

There was no way we could get that burden off our back. And so we look to Christ, and Christ does it for us.

We thank you that it is by grace that you have saved us. We thank you that it is by grace that we live the

Christian life. We have no boasting. Glory is not for us.

We are saved by grace and we live by grace. And it is altogether fitting because precisely there our lives, our lives lived for your glory and for your glory alone.

Convict us. Convict us of those times when we try to go on in our own strength.

Convict us of those foolish moments when we think we are no longer in need of grace.

Humble us. Bring us to the proper realization so that we too may see your grace at work in our lives.