"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
2 Corinthians 12:8 NIV
In January 2006 I was digging a ditch to drain water from the church parking lot. It was cold. It was raining. I already had a cold but my dogged determination to clear the parking lot pushed me over the brink. Pneumonia is no fun.
My physician took x-rays to confirm his diagnosis. Yes, pneumonia. But he also saw abnormalities in the lymph nodes. We talked about the possibilities. I had never been in a conversation with a doctor about cancer until that day.
I wasn't sure how to react. Uncertainty about the future often leads to uncertain actions and reactions today. So it was for me. The one thing I knew to do for sure was to pray. So I prayed. At the time I was also working another job and the commute was a forty-five minute drive. So I prayed a lot.
The prayer was typical, I guess, of most people faced with something like this. I prayed for healing. After a few days of praying like this I felt like the Lord told me that this was a selfish prayer; instead, I needed to pray for his will to be done. Believing that God's will is perfect, his power is unstoppable, and his concern for me is off the charts, I began to pray for his will to be done in this situation in my life.
That can be a hard prayer to pray. What if God's will is to use me as an example of faithfulness as life ebbs away? What if God's will is to teach me greater dependence upon him by removing my ability to care for myself? What if God's will is to magnify himself instead of me? These are hard questions but totally within the realm of possibility when I realized that my life is intended to bring glory to God rather than to me or anyone else.
I now pray for God's grace to help me deal with whatever may come my way. I don't want to avoid the problems because through them I draw near my Lord. Pray that God will show you sufficient grace for everything you face.
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