Our All Sufficient God
“GOD WILL GIVE YOU GRACE NECESSARY
TO ENDURE ALL SUFFERING.”
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my grace is made perfect in weakness.”
II Corinthians 12:9
Can I get a testify? I can give one regarding His all sufficient grace.
Not long ago a spent five weeks in the hospital suffering from the compounding of five fatal diseases at once: sepsis, staph infection, two blood clots in my lungs, pneumonia, and recovering from a heart valve replacement. To top it off there was a major virus which made the bottom third of my face look and feel like one large fever blister. Most of this I was not conscious enough to know of for a few days. One doctor said he left the hospital three nights thinking ‘he will see Jesus tonight.’ There were times I thought I very well might.
Nights were especially torturous. Needs were often unmet.
One doctor told my wife to find a long term care facility for me to go to upon being discharged. She said, “He won’t like that,” and the doctor replied, “He won’t know it.”
Writing this is not an appeal for sympathy, it is a testimony of God’s grace. I am not trying to be sensational, I am just acknowledging His sufficiency. I am not the hero in this story, God is.
He was with me. No, there was no apparition, no phantom vision. There was simply an awareness of His presence. I was strengthened by a knowledge that He who promised He would never leave me had not. I flooded my mind with Scripture and reminded Him of His promises, as though He needed reminding.
He brought me through that hospital stay and a long way on the road to recovery. There still is not a day without pain, but He has not promised to immune me from pain or exempt me from problems, but He has promised to be with me, to bless me, to strengthen me, and He is doing it. Remember we walk by faith, not by sight or feelings.
My dear friend, Jerry Clower, wrote a book the title of which says it all, “Ain’t God good!” The resounding answer, “Yes!”
Forget about my experience, but don’t forget the theme of it:
“God will give you the graces necessary to endure all suffering.” II Corinthians 12:9
The Golden Rule
As early as 1674 there has been an axiom known as the Golden Law, now the Golden Rule. Its existence over many years and in various cultures is supported by the fact there are Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, it is one. Many persons not of the faith community advocate Natural Law. It is the source of all value judgments. It predates Christianity and exists in non-Christian societies. Consider this cursory history of the Golden Rule. It has been around in a variety of forms longer than is known.
The Greek, Herodotus, attributed it to Maeandrus: “I will not myself do that which I account blameworthy in my neighbor.”
Another ancient phrase said: “I won’t do what I criticize in you.”
Around 500 B.C Thelese, one of the Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece, when asked how people might live together best replied: “If we never do ourselves what we blame in others.”
Even before that Isocrates wrote: “You should be such in your dealing with others as you expect me to be in my dealing with you.”
Confucius phrased it: “…do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you.”
A 16th Century source said: “Treat others as thou wouldst be treated thyself.”
Other ancient writings variously state the Golden Rule:
“Judge your neighbors feelings by your own.”
“What you hate do not do to anyone.”
In the first quarter of the 1st Century A.D. the scholar Hellel, when asked to recite the entire Jewish Torah said: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.”
Jesus said: “…whatever you want others to do to you, do also to them…” One of the best current phrasing is: “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” The Golden Rule does not always pay off as it did in the following story, but it does pay off.
It was a rainy day when a young man working in a store saw a little old lady come in out of the rain looking forlorn. The clerk offered her a chair and spoke kindly to her. When she started to leave she thanked him and asked his name.
A few days later the manager of the store received a letter asking that this young man be sent to Scotland to take an order for the furnishings of a house.
The store manager wrote back explaining the young man was not in furnishings and stated he would be pleased to send an experienced representative.
Back came a letter stating no other person would do. The letter was signed by Andrew Carnegie. The house was Skibo Castle. The elderly lady was Carnegie’s mother.
The young man went and did a splendid job. He later became half owner of the store. He had simply done for the elderly lady what he would have liked someone do for him.
Are You a “Yes, Butter?”
“THEREFORE, TO HIM WHO KNOWS TO DO GOOD
AND DOES NOT DO IT, TO HIM IT IS SIN.” (JAMES 4:17)
Are you a person who upon hearing a statement often agrees with it, but responds, “Yes, but….”? If so, you are a yes “But ‘er.” If so, read once more the above text. “Yes, but ‘er”is the expression of a hesitant person.
By agreeing with a statement and offering an excuse for not doing it, you are conflicting yourself. If you agree that it is right, offering an excuse for not complying with it does not make the ‘er a legitimate reason for not doing it. “Yes, but… people” are defeatist. Their favorite sport is introducing obstacles. They are good at making up excuses, while concealing their own thoughts.
Excuses for not doing what is right are:
“You just don’t understand.”
“Someone told me I didn’t have to.”
“That is just too difficult.”
“You don’t always do it.”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
There is never a legitimate excuse for not doing what is right. If you do the right thing and things go wrong, be sure you don’t go with them.
William Penn said, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”
Other sage wisdom is “Never do wrong in order to be able to do right.” Doing a bad thing for a good end just sullies the good.
Doing the right thing even when no one is looking is easy if you remember that you are not in this life alone and that your task is to please God… not people.
You know you have done the right thing when you have peace about doing it.
Don’t be afraid to do the right thing if you value your integrity, but if you do, be prepared to take abuse from those who have no integrity.
We often have the choice between saying “yes, but” or “yes and” it’s your choice.
“And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
(Colossians 3:17)
Worry Doesn’t Work
Let’s simply let God’s Word be our Post for the day. Pause before reading further and open your mind to this, His vital teaching.
25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit1 to his stature? 28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”
1Matthew 6:27 About 18 inches
Laws of Nature and Nature’s God
Christianity is more than personal piety – it is a comprehensive worldview. That worldview is as natural in the faith community as gravity is in the physical world. It is inherent in Christianity, yet exists apart from Christianity. It is a part of Christianity though Christianity is far more. It is Natural Law. For ages it has been known by various names: Practical Reason, First Principles, Traditional Morality, and more recently simply as Tao.
Examples of Natural Law and Christianity running on parallel tracks are: private property rights, standards for social decency, values of compassion, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, prohibitions against lying, murdering, cheating, and stealing. These are but a few of the parallel truths. Many persons not of the faith community advocate Natural Law. It is the source of all value judgments. It predates Christianity and exists in non-Christian societies.
Much of the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates are based on them. Roman Emperor Cicero (106 – 43 BC) wrote of them saying, “true law is right reason consonant with nature, diffused among all men, constant and eternal.” He wrote of its benefits being “the safety of citizens … and the tranquility and happiness of human life.” He also wrote of true justice as being rooted in divinely-established universal principles, that is Natural Law.
John Adams, in the Federalist Papers argues the Laws of Nature and of nature’s God are the same in this statement: “In the Declaration of Independence the Laws of Nature are announced and appealed to as identical with the laws of nature’s God, and as the foundation of all obligatory human laws.”
The next time a new Jurist of the Supreme Court is nominated, observe the fight by the left to avoid the appointment of one who believes in the Laws of Nature.
Often today when a Christian advocates a Natural Law in the public arena it is shouted down under the guise of separation of Church and State. Humanists have made great progress in recent years by defying Natural Laws regarding marriage and sex in general.
This modern translation of God’s Word speaks of Natural Law in these words: “When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong.” (Romans 2:14,15)