Glimpses of Grace

Have you ever had a situation in which you prayed over and over again, yet nothing seemed to ever change? You pray for healing, and it just hasn’t happened. You pray for your marriage, and it seems to get worse every day. You pray for a husband, and you seem only to draw spiritual duds. You pray for a job promotion, and you get laid off. You pray for your children, and they seem further away from God than ever.

It’s in those times we may feel like the Apostle Paul when he asked God three times to take away his thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). But God didn’t take all of Paul’s problems away–instead, He offered grace. We ask God to remove our problem, and He gives us grace.

The grace of God gives us the ability to deal with our thorns in the flesh. Many times we feel that we’ve reached the end of our rope. However, because of God’s grace, we can continue to fight the good fight of faith. Grace is the strength to finish our day strong in the Lord.

Many times we forget to ask God for the grace to deal with our problems. This forgetfulness almost always leads to discouragement over our situation. Yet if we would just ask God in the midst of a trying situation for grace, we would find ourselves on the other side, looking at it through the lens of grace instead of dealing with it in our own strength.