Sufficient Grace

Sufficient Grace
By Lori Ennis

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” II Corinthians 12:9

When my son died, our pastor at the time came to visit me at the hospital. Obviously at a loss for words, and nearly late for preaching that horrible Sunday morning, he didn’t have much to say and I didn’t have ears to hear.
Two days later, when we went to the church to begin planning our son’s funeral, we walked in the building and he hugged me, saying, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

I’m not going to lie.
I thought, “Are you for real? My BABY SON JUST DIED and you’re telling me His grace is sufficient. Dude. THAT’s all you’ve got?”
Because in the moment…in the trial, the pain and the anxiety and horror, the FIRST thing the enemy does is tell you that you are ALONE. God doesn’t love YOU. God couldn’t love YOU if He let THIS happen. The devil’s lies slide off his tongue like smooth glass right when our hurting, human ears are the most sensitive and seeking of God’s comfort and peace.
And that’s when we have to cling. Cling to His promises, cling to His love and cling to His assurance that He is for us and never leaves us. That His grace IS sufficient, though the circumstances around us may have us feel very differently. That’s when we have to remember that not only is his love and grace for us sufficient, but it’s abundant and never-ending.

The world is full of circumstances that seem unnatural and unfair and are quite frankly? Horrible.
And Jesus knows intimately how that feels, as that’s just what He endured in His life and then in His death on the cross. He stays with you because He loves you and he’s BEEN you. He’s not an unrelatable hovering entity that preaches what He’s not practiced, and it’s in His very sacrifice that you can be assured He will be with you no matter what. He’s not the god who can’t be trusted; He’s our Father who leans into the hard.
Even when His life depended on it…He was there for YOU and for ME.

A few years later, I told my pastor that though I didn’t really want to hear what He said at the time, I thought Him brave and loving for wanting to remind me of that VITAL piece of Truth at the most devastating time in my life.

The Truth that in all things, and maybe especially in the most horrible, He sustains you with a love and grace that won’t ever leave. Thank you, Jesus, for your love for us!