God’s Power is Made Perfect in Our Weakness

Have you prayed and prayed to ask God to set you free of a weakness or pain or difficulty and only to find that nothing has changed? Well, you are not the only one in that situation.  St. Paul – a chosen disciple asked God to release him of this ‘thorn in the flesh’ but instead God replied “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9)

We would have thought that God would have immediately removed that ‘thorn’, after all, it is St. Paul we are talking about. Oh no! He said that thorn is a necessity. The closer you are to God, you would expect all prayers to be answered, but that’s not so the case.

How is God’s power made perfect in our weakness?  It is when we rely completely on him. It is when we completely surrender to Him that He is able to work in us and through us. It is then we realise that at the end what we need is God and everything we have comes from God. It is only when we go through suffering that we are awakened to the Truth.

St Paul’s case reminds us of the time in Gethsemane when Jesus asked “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Mat 26:39).  Jesus submitted to the will of His father and accepted the suffering. So did St. Paul, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties”.

Being a disciple of God is to submit to the will of the Father even in suffering. Our suffering has a purpose- a purpose we may not understand or see but know deep down that God knows everything and He knows what to do. We can turn rebellious in time of pain or we can surrender like Jesus and St. Paul- that is a free will. – SR