| But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” |
| —2 Corinthians 12:9 |
We’ve all heard a toddler say, “Me do it!” Later on, when her arms don’t fit into the sleeves right, we often hear the toddler say, “Daddy do it!” Children learn by trying to do things by themselves. Then, they sometimes learn that they need help. We should learn the same kind of lesson, and often we do, over and over.
2 Corinthians 11:30, 32-33 records these words of the Apostle Paul, in the city of Damascus:
“If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness … the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.”
The Apostle had learned that he needed God’s help. It’s a lesson we need to keep in mind at all times.
Whether persistent, or just stubborn, some of us learn the hard way that when we try to do things on our own, even when we’re trying to serve the Lord, we come up short and often fail to succeed. Remember Sarai and her solution to “help” God give Abram the son He had promised? In this story recorded through Genesis 16, we read how Sarai gave her slave girl, Hagar, to her husband Abram in order to try to fulfill God’s grand design. That plan certainly did not go well for her—or in fact for us, looking at the tumult for centuries in the Middle East.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, when the officers of the temple guard came to arrest Jesus, one of Jesus’ followers cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, thinking he was doing Jesus a favor. Instead, Jesus rebuked His follower, touched the servant, and healed the man! This is recorded in Luke 22:47-51.
We often get ourselves into irreversible trouble when we say, “Me do it!” Most often, our Heavenly Father would rather we let Him do it without our help. Or, God would have us agree to learn from Him in the work He wants us to accomplish with His help. What’s the expression? “When you have dug yourself into a hole, stop digging!”
I am reminded of an old Swedish hymn with these words: 1
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.
Refrain:
His love has no limit; His grace has no measure;
His pow’r has no boundary known unto men.
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!
| 1 Flint, Annie Johnson. “He Giveth More Grace.” Dayton, Ohio: Lillenas Publishing Co., 1969. Verse 2. |
