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 Corinthians 12:8-9a
I know God has the power to provide complete healing. I know He is still the God of the miraculous, just as He was when Jesus healed the sick. He is the same yesterday, today, and for eternity (Hebrews 13:8), so I know that His power to heal is just as potent as it was 2000+ years ago. Sometimes He chooses to heal, sometimes He does not. His power is the same in both cases, His choice is a matter of motive. God's motivation is always to bring about the greatest good for us and the greatest display of His glory.
I have experienced His complete healing first hand. He has delivered me from my struggles with food and body image in a way that I know was all Him. My eating disorder problems were a long time in development and long time in action. Yet somehow, when I gave it over to Him, He set me completely free from the mindset that got me in trouble in the first place. It wasn't my limited experience with therapy or any self-help book that did it, God Himself relieved me from duty in what is typically a lifelong addictive battle. I don't know how He did it, but I know that one day I woke up and I was different. I struggled long enough to know what suffering was like, but in His time, God set me instantly free. God set me free because it glorified Him more for me to walk in freedom from that struggle. He set me free so that I would know His power. That is the lesson I learned from my miraculous deliverance.
I have also experienced what He told Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 first hand. In the midst of shortness of breath and coughing fits that I can't control, I have prayed repeatedly (probably more than Paul's three times) for deliverance from my asthma. I don't want to be dependent on medication every day for the rest of my life to function like a healthy person. I've prayed for God to take me out of that battle. God has chosen not to. I know from my other experience that it is not because He does not have the power to set me free. In this case, however, He has a different lesson for me to learn that another easy deliverance could not teach me. In this area of my life, God wants to teach me the lesson He taught Paul--that His grace is sufficient for me.
For the past 16 years since my initial diagnosis with asthma and my first prayers for freedom, God has led me back to these verses over and over again. His grace is sufficient for me. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't struggled with this concept. I questioned what it meant for His grace to be sufficient and why He couldn't just extend His grace to set me free. God has slowly revealed to me that His grace has done far more than I deserve if all His grace did was open the door for me to come into His throne room. That promise alone should be sufficient for me to get up each morning with gladness and song in my heart. God uses my suffering in the flesh to remind me of my humanity and deepen my longing for the time when I will breathe freely at all times. He granted me complete healing from my eating disorder as a demonstration of his glory and power; He denies me complete healing from my asthma to teach me that an easy life should not determine the state of my spirit or impact my utter gratitude for God's grace. In both cases, God's motivation is for my good and His glory. His grace is sufficient. I need nothing else.
Posted by Kim at April 18, 2006 08:04 AM