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.
2 Corinthians 12:9
Do you ever have those days where you just feel utterly incompetent?
Like… you have to do something. You have a task you have to accomplish. And no matter how big or how small, you just can’t seem to do anything right? Nothing you do seems like it’s making any headway, and you are just stuck and bogged down, almost immovable in your deficiencies?
I feel that more than I would care to admit. Just this past week I felt this. Deeply.
I spent 6 years honing my skills to become a classical musician – that’s what I went to school for, that’s what I was pursuing.
Then I got married. I moved to a small town – the country kind of town where it is rare to find anyone who likes classical music, let alone to find any jobs or outlets in that field.
So I took a deep breath and belly-flopped into the pop world. The world of Worship music.
In short: I am out of my element.
For a while, I tried to escape. I tried to find any opportunity to go back to what I know, even if it were to take away from my time at the church. But I kept getting shot down. I was desperately trying to claw my way back to the familiar, and all I got was “no.”
And each time I had to feel the sting of disappointment, I heard God whisper:
“I put you at that church, in that position. Dig in and be present. Stop running.”
I didn’t want to. I felt underqualified and underprepared, and I didn’t like that. All I wanted to DO was find a way out.
But finally I came to terms with the idea that God wanted me at the church. I came to terms with the fact that He was going to grow me and use me (About time, Christine. Hey, I’m stubborn, if you didn’t catch that). So just last week I surrendered and said “Fine. I will plant my roots. I will dig in. I’m ready.”
And then. And then.
And then I had one of the absolute worst rehearsals of my life.
For the first time, I was in charge all on my own – I had no safety net. I was tired. I was with musicians that didn’t quite see me as an authority yet. Stupid things happened like the computer froze for hours so I couldn’t print their music. People were late – very late. And worst of all, the music was just bad. And no matter what I said, I couldn’t fix it.
I could go on.
My point is this: I was finally fully surrendered to what God had for me there, and then this happened. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
After I closed up, I sat in my car and cried.
I told God: “I’m not ready for this. You have got the wrong girl. That was awful. And I don’t want my name on that.”
I don’t want my name on that.
I was sad. I was mad. I have had plenty of things that I would be proud to put my name on – this was not one of them. I was so upset that God would call me to something I was so… bad at.
That night was a night of raw honesty with God. I flat out told him that I didn’t want to do it anymore. That I felt like running. I wanted to run back to what I knew, what I was good at, where I felt comfortable.
The funny thing about this whole situation was that I recognized the enemy at work. He was working hard. And here’s what gets me – it was working.
A lot of the time, when I can recognize that the enemy is working against me, it fires me up. It makes me realize that what I’m doing is important, and that I need to work all the harder.
This time, though, that didn’t happen. Maybe it was because it hit right in the center of some insecurities and issues I have been trying to work through, maybe it was because I had just surrendered my time there to God and I felt I deserved (VERY dangerous language. When you start saying that, you know you’ve missed the mark somewhere) some smooth sailing for a while. Whatever the reason, I saw the Enemy at work and all I wanted to do was run.
It was enough for me to forget that oh, so important attitude that Paul adopts:
My Grace is sufficient for you.
My Grace is sufficient for you.
My Grace is sufficient for you.
You said to me, “My Grace is sufficient for you.”
How profound is that?
It is so elementary, yet so profound. And so easily forgotten.
In this chapter (and really all over his writing), Paul talks about this metaphorical “thorn” in his flesh. He doesn’t ever explicitly state what it is, just that it is a constant state of ‘weakness,’ an ever-present harassment.
He asks God to remove it from him, and that is when God says:
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
That is God’s answer to Paul’s prayer.
A desperate prayer for deliverance from trials, hardships, from this ever-present thorn in his flesh – and this is God’s answer.
And what is Paul’s response?
I’m gonna boast in them, then. If those hardships bring you glory and show your power, I will be content.
What a guy.
So here’s the thing: we way too often forget that. I know I do. I want to put my best foot forward, be the best steward I can be of the gifts God has given me – and that in and of itself is not a bad thing.
But when I start thinking “I don’t want my name on this,” I bring the focus back on me.
And I think that’s when God steps in and gives me the reminder I need:
You don’t got this. You’re gonna mess up. And I’m gonna let you. But you know why? Because you’ve forgotten that my grace is sufficient for you. You’ve forgotten that I’ve got this.
So he lets me fail. He lets me beat myself up, throw my hissy fit.
And then on Sunday morning, he steps in and takes over.
I spent all those days leading up to Sunday worrying about letting people down. Letting the congregation down, letting the pastors down, letting the team down, letting God down.
Then on Sunday, I woke up early. I woke up well-rested. I woke up with this perspective shift of: God, you are going to have to step in.
And guess what.
He totally did.
Was the music perfect? No. Were there mistakes? Yep. Did I make mistakes? Absolutely. But let me tell you: The spirit was SO present. It was so undeniable that God was moving, that it was an anointed time it kind of blew me away.
After all of that crap leading up to it, this beautiful time of surrender was that much more powerful.
So let me be clear: There were 2 things going on last week:
- I was prideful. I was scared. I needed the reminder that God is in control, not me. So He let me fail to prove to my fickle heart yet again that He is the one who matters, who cares, and who is in control.
- God was moving. He was doing things in hearts and minds and souls through that message that week, even if just in mine. It was a victory. When we have weeks like this, weeks of victory, the Enemy does what he can to stop that from happening. And because I was vulnerable, he used those insecurities as a foothold and grabbed on as hard as he could. And it worked, for a little bit. But because of God, I came out victorious on the other end.
So. When it comes to trials, when it comes to hardships, when it comes to feeling incompetent, how are we going to respond? Are we going to curl up in the fetal position? Are we going to kick and scream and cry that it isn’t fair?
Or are we going to trust that God is in control? Are we going to boast in those weaknesses or those trials or those insecurities because we know that His Grace is sufficient and that He fills in those gaps with His power – beyond what we could even imagine on our own?
If you struggle with Trusting God, you are far from alone. I wrote a free 5-day devotional designed to refocus and rebuild trust based in God’s truth and promises – GET THAT HERE.
By:https://taketheleapblog.com
