My Grace Is Sufficient for You

In one paragraph

Pastor Mark picked up the 2 Corinthians series with chapter 12, the Sunday after Christmas. The passage centers on Paul's account of being caught up to the third heaven, and the thorn in the flesh that came with it. The thread running through the whole sermon is the single line God spoke back to Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you." Paul opens by claiming what he calls foolish boasting, and...

Read together

1. 2 Corinthians 12:1 Paul's stated intent to boast in visions and revelations of the Lord
2. 2 Corinthians 12:2 Paul knowing a man caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago
3. 2 Corinthians 12:3-4 the man caught up into paradise hearing things that cannot be told and may not be uttered
4. 2 Corinthians 12:5 Paul boasting on behalf of that man but not on his own behalf except in weaknesses
5. 2 Corinthians 12:6 Paul saying he would not be a fool to boast but refrains so no one thinks more of him than they see or hear
6. 2 Corinthians 12:7 the thorn given in the flesh to keep Paul from becoming conceited because of surpassing revelations
7. 2 Corinthians 12:8 Paul pleading three times with the Lord that the thorn would leave him
8. 2 Corinthians 12:9 God telling Paul his grace is sufficient and his power is made perfect in weakness
9. 2 Corinthians 12:10 Paul being content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for Christ's sake
10. 2 Corinthians 12:11 Paul saying he has been a fool and ought to have been commended by the Corinthians
11. 2 Corinthians 12:12 signs of a true apostle performed among them with utmost patience, signs, wonders and mighty works
12. 2 Corinthians 12:13 Paul asking in what way they were less favored except that he did not burden them, asking them to forgive him that wrong

Talk about it

1. Paul refused to talk about the content of his vision in the third heaven so that, as he put it, 'no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.' What do you think it looks like practically when someone lets their private spiritual experiences become the main thing people know them for, and what does Paul's restraint say to us about that?
2. The pastor shared that when he took his eyes off Jesus during the Christmas Eve offering talk, he sank 'like Peter.' Can you think of a time when something like that happened to you, where fear or self-consciousness pulled your attention away from what God was doing in a moment?
3. Paul's thorn in the flesh came at the same time as his greatest revelation, and the pastor said he noticed the same pattern in his own life when he stepped into mission work. Have you seen a connection like that in your own experience, where a significant step of faith brought a significant difficulty along with it?
4. God's answer to Paul's three times of pleading was not to remove the thorn but to say, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' What is the difference between accepting that answer and simply resigning yourself to a hard situation?
5. Spurgeon's quote drew a distinction between believing in God's grace for the past or the future and actually resting in it for what he called 'immediate necessity.' Where do you find that hardest to do right now, and what would it look like to trust that God's grace is sufficient for that specific thing this week?