Amen, you may be seated. Turn with me and your Bibles to our Old Testament reading, the book of Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 18 through 31. That's found on page 763. If you're using one of our Pew Bibles, page 763 of the Pew Bible, Isaiah 40, verses 18 through 31. As we'll see this morning in our sermon text from 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of God's power made known to the weak, echoing something of the words of the promise of the Lord here in Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40, beginning in verse 18. But first, let's pray that our God would give us understanding of his word. Oh Lord, we thank you that we come this morning knowing that you are no mute idol. You are not like one of the gods of the nation, fashioned after the hands of the imaginations of men. But you are the true and the living God, the one who speaks. And in speaking disrupts our world, disrupts our sin, and gives us your grace, your life. You give us Jesus, the Word made flesh. And we do pray this morning that you would come and give us your Son, We ask these things in his name. Amen. Isaiah 40, verses 18 through 31. To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness compare with him? An idol? A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts it for silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when he blows on them and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these. He who brings out their hosts by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not grow faint or weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint. And to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk. and not faint. If we turn now to the book of 2 Corinthians, our New Testament passage, which is as well our sermon passage this morning, as we continue on in our series through the book of 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 11, verse 31, and we'll read through chapter 12 Verse 10, if you're using a Pew Bible, you can find that on page 1,233. Page 1,233, the Pew Bible, 1 Corinthians 11, beginning in verse 31. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. At Damascus, the governor under King Eratus was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me. but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands. I must go on boasting, though there is nothing to be gained by it. I will go on divisions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man, I will boast, but on my own behalf, I will not boast except of my weaknesses. Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth, But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 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. The grass withers and the flower fades. There's a famous Christian author who tells the story of Chippy the parakeet. He writes this, the problems began for Chippy when Chippy's owner decided to clean Chippy's cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang and she turned to pick it up and she barely said hello when Chippy got sucked in. The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum and opened the bag. There was Chippy, still alive, but stunned. Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippy under the running water. Then realizing that Chippy was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do. She reached for the hairdryer and blasted the pet with hot air. Poor Chippy never knew what hit him. A few days after the trauma, a friend asked Chippy's owner how the bird was recovering. Well, she replied, Chippy doesn't sing much anymore. He just sits and stares. Perhaps you feel a bit like Chippy the parakeet. You were going about your merry way in life and suddenly troubles have washed over you like a flood. Circumstances of your life leaving you not wanting to sing but just to sit and stare. Well, I cannot promise you that following Jesus will necessarily change that reality, at least not the reality of suffering. I know I will never be able to fill stadiums and have my own TV show preaching this kind of message, but Jesus has not come to help you live your best life now. Jesus promises instead, in this world, you will have tribulation. He's come to call us to take up our crosses and to follow him, knowing that our best life is not now, but that our best life is actually the one that is to come. However, he does not call us in the midst of all of this to a sort of stiff-lipped stoicism. He calls us to lament and yet also to rejoice while we lament. And something of the paradox of this, the Christian life, is reflected in many places in Scripture, one of which is what Paul says in Romans chapter 8, verses 36 through 37. Paul strikingly quotes Psalm 44. It says, as it is written, for your sake we're being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. But then Paul turns right around in the next verse and says, no, in all these things We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Now you might want to say, perhaps some of your more honest moments, Paul, I don't feel very much like a conqueror when I'm being a sheep given over to slaughter. Nevertheless, that's the mystery of the cross. In the weakness and shame of crucifixion, Jesus, as a sheep being given over to the slaughter, hangs there, but hangs there as the conqueror, the one who in his humiliation and shame is being victorious over sin and death. And that mystery of the cross is worked out in your life if you belong to him. Even as sufferings and weaknesses and trials wash over you, you are more than conquerors through him who loved you. God's power is made known in you precisely in those moments of your utter weakness. It takes a tremendous amount of faith, of course, to hold on to that truth when the circumstances of life come to you like poor chippy to suck you in, wash you up, and blow you over. However, it's when you find yourself there, find yourself at the very end of your sense of self-reliance and strength, that you will discover the truth Paul speaks of here as he moves to the close of this letter in 2 Corinthians in chapter 12. There you will learn in the place where you are emptied of your own vigor that you encounter the Lord's own omnipotent hand at work in the deficit of your strength. So the truth I want you to see this morning, it's there in the bulletin page with the notes on it, if you want to follow along. It's this. Embrace the sufficiency of Christ's power, which is perfected in your weakness. Embrace the sufficiency of Christ's power, which is perfected in your weakness. There are three points we will consider that are listed there. First, the sufficiency of an apostle. Second, the sufficiency in weakness. And third, the sufficiency of Christ. The sufficiency of an apostle, the sufficiency in weakness, the sufficiency of Christ. So we'll begin with our first point, the sufficiency of an apostle. Here at the end of chapter 11 and at the beginning of chapter 12, Paul continues what commentators refer to as his fool's speech. He began it in the middle of chapter 11. Back in verse 17 of chapter 11, he says that he is speaking as a fool would speak. He's engaging in a bit of parody, where he adopts the kind of boastful tactics of these false apostles he's dealing with in Corinth, but he adopts those tactics with a subversive kind of irony. He deploys their categories only to flip those categories to expose them for the foolishness that they are, the foolishness of all these terms of comparison that the false apostles have established. They have sought to undermine Paul, discredit his ministry, call into question his very status as an apostle, and to lead the Corinthians down the path that they would take them into foolishness. And in their attempts to supplant Paul, they've built the case for their own legitimacy as apostles on the idea that they have this catalog of achievements that attest to their greatness. They've positioned themselves as specimens of strength and power, refinement and authority. And we can gather from where Paul goes here in these verses that they probably built the case for their spiritual elitism on another thing as well. They likely appealed to spectacular visions, spectacular experiences of seeing Christ. The fact that Paul feels forced into this position where he has to boast of visions and of revelations seems to indicate that he's countering something that his opponents were doing, that they were doing the same. And they would have to do this after all, wouldn't they? Because it was well established in the New Testament era, New Testament church, that in order for you to be qualified to be an apostle, you had to have seen the risen Lord Jesus. you had to have been a witness to his resurrection to be an apostle. And so if you were like Paul, one who, unlike the 12, the 12 saw Jesus immediately following his resurrection before his ascension to heaven, but Paul did not. Paul saw Christ in an extraordinary way after Jesus had ascended into heaven. And so, and if you know the Book of Acts, that's what happened, right? The Lord Jesus appeared to him, but it was in a way that was abnormal. In his road to Damascus, Jesus calls him to himself. And these imposters in Corinth, to sell themselves as apostles, would have had to have claimed something similar. That they too had seen the risen Lord Jesus in a way that was similar to Paul, in this sort of exceptional visionary experience. And realizing that helps us to see something of what Paul seems to be doing at the end of chapter 11. Most of the second half of chapter 11 is Paul cataloging these harrowing experiences of suffering. And they largely emphasize general experiences that he has. But then when you get to the end in verses 31 through 33, he focuses on this highly specific story of him escaping from the city of Damascus, from the civil authorities who were persecuting him. And where does this particular story happen? It's significant. It happens in all places he chooses to list Damascus. It would not have been lost on the Corinthians, probably, that Paul is focusing on a story of escape that came immediately after he had seen the risen Lord Jesus on the road to this very city. One commentator observes, in the place of his dramatic Damascus vision, he gives an account of his ignominal Damascus escape, which he will supplement with a vision narrative in the following section. Seen in this light, Paul's story is wonderfully ironic. Paul's story ends not with a wonder, but a whimper. No angel appears from heaven. No mighty deed of God accomplishes his deliverance. His escape from the city is mundane. He's let down through the wall in a wicker basket, the sort of thing that was used for carrying salted fish. Paul appears silly, humiliated, and weak. He appears precisely as he is. The commentator sums up well, I think, what's going on in Paul's choice to focus on this particular story of escape. It becomes clear, especially since in chapter 12, where he moves into speaking of visionary experiences of the risen Lord Jesus in his heavenly glory. And yet when Paul does that himself, he does that in a way that's a little bit coy. He acknowledges in chapter 12, verse 1, that he feels compelled to go on to speak of visions and revelations, even though there's nothing to be gained by it. But then in verse 2, he doesn't talk about himself directly. Instead, he talks about a man in Christ he knew. Now, as you keep on reading, it becomes quite apparent that this man is actually Paul himself. Verse 7, if you read down to there, does not make any sense without this whole visionary experience actually in the end being about Paul. The thorn that's given to him to keep him from becoming conceited is about revelations that he was just recounting that were given to this man in Christ. Clearly, Paul is that man. And yet Paul does not initially identify himself as that man. Why? Well, because that fits his strategy here. He doesn't want to reveal his role in this story until the point where he becomes a specimen of weakness once more, and not of glory. He will not name himself until it is time for him to talk about this humiliating experience of having this thorn in his flesh. Now, Jewish apocalyptic literature that surrounded Paul on his day was filled with these kinds of stories, where some person was supposedly caught up to the mysterious heavenly realms. And most of those narratives would provide all this intricate detail of the visionary's journey and all the wonderful things that he encountered along the way. However, Paul says nothing of the sort here. He will not allow his audience to be fascinated with glorious experiences of the heavenly realm. He only states a couple things. He states first where he was taken, to the third heaven, which is to say the highest heavenly realm of God's heavenly glory. And then he also states his agnosticism about whether this happened in the body or out of the body. He doesn't know and it does not matter. Why? Because if we were to get into all those details and miss the rest of this and start focusing on this visionary experience, it would fall into exactly the kind of trap that Paul is saying is actually pointless. That's what Paul says in verse one. Boasting and intricate narratives of heavenly journeys, no matter how many books they might sell, as a whole is a futile business. Nothing is to be gained by it. In fact, we read in verse 4 that the things he witnessed, he's not even permitted to speak. Regaling fascinating tales, listeners with fascinating tales of these mystical experiences of heavenly journeys, it is decidedly outside of the boundaries of what Paul is called to do in his ministry of the Word. And why is that? It's because that sort of obsession, gnostic obsession, we might say, with glorious spiritual experience is actually quite at odd with the word that Paul has been commissioned to proclaim to the world. Hence, in verse 6, he says that he refrains from any such boasting, quote, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me and hears from me. Now, what is it that they hear from Paul? What word is it that Paul has to proclaim to the Corinthians? His message is not one of rapturous encounters with heavenly glory, but humiliating conformity to the cross of Jesus Christ. What they see in Paul is what he just cataloged in chapter 11. They see in him a scarred man beset with a lifetime of suffering and frailty. And what they hear from Paul are not fascinating tales of heavenly splendor, but the weakness of the word of the cross. That's what marks Paul's sufficiency as an apostle. Yes, he saw the risen Lord Jesus. Yes, he was granted this incredible privilege of being a witness to his glory as the risen Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus. He even, yes, later had another occasion where he was brought up into the heavenly realms, whether in the body or out of the body. But all of that happened to Paul. in order that he might be an instrument who would proclaim the message of the cross in his ministry, a message that was not marked by spectacular glory of mystical experience, but a message that was marked by the brutal and degrading biography of one who suffers for the name of Jesus. That's what the Lord commissions Ananias to go and say to Paul, if you remember, in the book of Acts. On the other end of Paul's conversion experience, in Acts chapter 9, verses 15 through 16, Jesus tells Ananias to go to Paul. And he says there to Ananias about Paul, he says, go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. And then he adds this, for I will show him how much he must suffer. for my name's sake. Paul's visionary experiences were not wedded to triumph and glory, but to suffering. They were affixed to his calling as one who would proclaim the message of the cross with his words and live that very same message of the cross in his biography. This is what makes this apostle sufficient for his calling. But in that he discovers the wonderful mystery of what that means. And that brings us to our second point, the sufficiency in weakness. The sufficiency in weakness. Paul writes about this counterbalance that was put into his life to put his temptation to become conceited in check because of his visions, and he says that a thorn was given to him in the flesh. Now, a lot of speculation has occurred about what exactly this thorn in the flesh was. Some propose that it was a besetting temptation to sin. Some others propose that it refers to his opponents in the church. Others propose that it refers to his experience of persecution from those outside of the church. However, in my opinion, the most convincing option is that it was some sort of chronic physical condition. Hence, it's not just a thorn, but a thorn in the flesh. Flesh here being a reference to his body. Now, what exactly such a physical malady might have been is also a matter of speculation. Whatever the case, there are several things that are worth noting. First, we should observe that this is an affliction which Paul attributes to the activity of Satan. Calls it a messenger of Satan. And that certainly fits the picture in the Gospels of what we get of physical afflictions. Chronic physical conditions and illnesses in the account of Jesus' healings are regularly connected with the activities of demons. Satan himself is said by the author of Hebrews to be the one who holds the power of death. And in all of this, we should note that We experience these things. We experience sickness and physical suffering and eventually death itself. We experience those things. Why? Because of the curse. The wretchedness of human mortality and all that accompanies it has sprung up from humanity's rebellion against God and what it means for us to be fallen. The dominion of Satan is very much connected with what afflicts our bodies as well as our souls. Hence, Jesus has come to undo that as well. He comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found. And Paul knows the agency of Satan to be involved in this suffering of his chronic condition. And what Paul says in verse seven is reminiscent of the book of Job. The thorn in his flesh is a messenger of Satan. However, Paul says that this thorn was given to him and given to him for a purpose that we can conclusively say was divine. That purpose is stated at the beginning and end of verse seven. The thorn was given to Paul in order to keep him from becoming conceited by his visionary experiences. That was surely not the intention of Satan. Satan loves nothing more than to make us conceited. Satan does not want to humble us, he wants to make us proud. This is someone else's intention. And so like Job, Paul understands that though his afflictions are in some way from the instrumentality of Satan, in an even more significant way, they are under the direct providential control of the Lord. It was the Lord who had given this thorn in the flesh to Paul ultimately, albeit through what he allowed Satan to do to the apostle. His divine purpose was at work in Paul's affliction in order to humble him. And this is something that we should note as well. Most of you know I grew up in the charismatic wing of the church. And in charismatic circles, whenever sicknesses and physical afflictions come, the response is typically to attribute them to the activity of Satan and then to pray against them. Now that I'm in reformed circles, whenever sicknesses and physical afflictions come, the tendency is to recognize in them the providence of God and to pray for faith to endure them. But the interesting thing that we can gather from Paul's words are this, both are correct. Both are correct. Satan works to afflict God's people and even in ways that encompass our physical afflictions, and yet all of that is entirely under the control of the omnipotent God who governs everything that unfolds in the universe according to his providence. Now that may be unnerving to you. But really, it ought not to be disturbing when everything is considered. What that means is that if you belong to Christ, then you can be assured of what Paul is assured of in his own life. There's a confidence underlying what Paul says in these verses, and that confidence is that no matter what Satan's designs may be, the Lord is at work in them nevertheless. and at work in them for Paul's ultimate benefit. Only God can do this. Only God in his impeccable holiness can sovereignly superintend evil. Even the evil of the father of evil, Satan himself, and in the mystery of his providence, Bring light out of darkness, good out of evil, redemption out of destruction. Paul is convinced of the goodness of God's purposes in his life, even when those purposes allow Satan to put a thorn in his flesh. Have this same confidence in yourself, dear Christian. Understand that there are times when you experience affliction that's given to you with the same purpose as these afflictions were given to Paul, given to humble you, given to lower your pride, given to make you feel your weakness and your helplessness, so that in that place, you may discover what Paul discovered. I found this to be true in my own life when I'm tempted to boast, tempted to glory in myself, the Lord so often sends something that just lays me low. Because when we lie there in the dust, I learn and you learn more of the mystery of what Paul learned. Now, Paul doesn't take this as a Stoic and neither should we. We should not confuse perseverance in the middle of affliction with stiff-lipped indifference to it. The full range of human sorrow and lament is entirely appropriate in the response to the sorts of intensities of suffering that we are sure to experience in this world. And pleading with the Lord that he might bring you relief in the middle of that is not improper either. That's what Paul does. Look at verse 8. Three times I've pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. The apostle was fervent in prayer and seeking relief from the Lord's hand, seeking some way that God would remove this affliction from him. And we can pray that way too. It's not impious for you to ask the Lord to bring you relief, yet when you ask, you have to be prepared for what Paul was prepared for. That perhaps you too might experience what Paul experienced. Because sometimes, Dear Christians, sometimes no matter how faithful you may be in your prayers, no matter how good it may seem what you're asking from the Lord is, sometimes the answer you will hear from God is like the answer the Apostle Paul received. Sometimes God says no. Sometimes he says no. But though sometimes our God says no, nevertheless, at all times, He is still good. Though sometimes He says no, at all times, we can be assured of His purposes, that those purposes are wise, and what's more, that our afflictions themselves are transmuted in His loving hands into an instrument for our sanctification. And so that there, even in weakness, you learn to know the sufficiency of God. If you belong to Jesus, rest assured that there is a redemptive purpose that is at work in all that besets you. That brings us to our third point, the sufficiency of Christ, the sufficiency of Christ. The Lord does not say yes to Paul's request. He doesn't grant him that this thorn would be removed, but in his infinite wisdom, he gifts to the apostle something that is better. Instead of relief, he gives him grace. Verse nine, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. The grace of the Lord was enough for Paul, and rest assured that it is enough for you. The favor of the Lord is not put into question in your life by your experience of trial, by your experience of weakness. Quite the opposite. It's there in the darkness that you learn the favor of the Lord to be what it truly is. because it's a favor that sustains your faith against all that assaults it and bears up your hope against all that would crush it. God's power is made perfect in your weakness. Think on that. You cannot ever experience the power of God being brought to its full maturity, being brought to its complete perfection apart from this path. The dynamic outworking of His love for you cannot be brought to its crowning completion unless you learn to know that power in the middle of weakness. Why? Why is it that God's power cannot reach its consummate end apart from this pathway, apart from your frailty? It's because that power is what Paul says it is here in verse nine. It is the power of Christ, the power of Christ. This is not just any divine power, but the divine power that is at work in the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, the power displayed in the one who is crucified. It's quite significant how Paul describes himself in the third person, back up in verse two of this chapter. He knows a man, but notice how he describes that man. He knows a man in Christ. That's the definitive way of speaking of any Christian. If you're a Christian, then you are a man, you are a woman in Christ. Your union with Christ is definitive of who you are. But here's the thing. For you to be a man in Christ, for you to be a woman in Christ, is for you to be one who can expect to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. the likeness of the Christ to whom you are united. And the likeness of the Christ to whom you are united is the likeness of one who is weak, one who experiences suffering, the likeness of one who took a pathway to glory that went through humiliation. And this is how the Lord shapes this in you, shapes the likeness of Jesus in you. This is how he perfects his power in you. He does it not through your strength and your glory and dominion, he does it through weakness and humiliation and suffering. As the great Puritan Thomas Watson writes, affliction to a wicked man has evil in it, it makes him worse. It makes him curse and blaspheme, but no evil befalls a child of God. He is bettered by his affliction. The furnace makes gold pure. See, Watson is correct. This was the intention of the thorn that's given to Paul. It's to make him better, to make him less proud, more humble, to help him rest in his sense of dependence upon the Lord and rejoice in what it means to suffer in Christian faith. Paul learned this in his experience of his thorn, and you ought to learn this as well. Do not squander your sufferings on self-pity and bitterness. See in them the sanctifying purposes of your Savior. Rejoice in your sufferings. knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope will not put you to shame, because the love of God has been poured into your hearts through his Holy Spirit whom he has given to you. The presence of Christ is made known in your life amid suffering in the most glorious kind of way. Paul's language at the end of verse nine communicates that in this very striking portrait that unfortunately gets a bit obscured by most English translations, including our Pew Bible. Paul speaks of the power of Christ resting upon him, resting upon him. But that Greek verb, which is translated here as resting, it literally means to pitch a tent upon. You might think that's weird at first. What is Paul doing? Paul's evoking the language of the tabernacle of the Old Testament in a way that any Jew would have immediately recognized. The idea is that the power of Christ tabernacles upon Paul. The tabernacle is the place of the glorious dwelling in the presence of God. And Paul is saying here that he experiences that. He experiences the glorious dwelling of the Lord's presence resting upon him, but experiences that in no other way than in his weakness. The tabernacling presence of Christ's power does this. It makes itself known in you as you are conformed to Christ's sufferings. This is substantially identical to what Paul has already said earlier in this letter about the power of the resurrection. Remember back in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 10, Paul says that he carries in his body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in his mortal body. That's how the power of Christ's resurrection is made known in your life, brothers and sisters. It pours your life into the mold of the cross. The power of the resurrection is made known in you by cruciformity, by conforming you to the image of your Savior in his sufferings. And Paul's expressing the same thought here. The glory of the power of Christ tabernacles upon him. It tabernacles upon all of his people. but it tabernacles upon us in weakness. Paul's already said, in effect, the same thing in this letter, that this light momentary affliction is preparing you for an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all comparison. Yes, we possess glory and we are moving towards a greater manifestation of that glory. Yes, we have the power of Christ tabernacling upon us and that power is moving forward to its inherent goal and perfection. However, that movement, it's not propelled along its way in the way that the world expects. The perfection of this power is not propelled along by triumphant boasts of the flesh. It's propelled by affliction. It's moved forward by the humiliation of what it means to bear in your body the death of Jesus. It's a power that is made perfect in weakness. But in the mystery of that movement, though there is great pain for you, there is also great comfort. To have the power of Christ rest upon you, for it to be consummated in your weakness, is to know that Christ is the one who holds you through your weakness. In the unrelenting grip of His grace, He will not let go of you. His power will tabernacle upon you, and that tabernacling power will bring you across the goal of the glory which your Savior intends for you. If it is His power that is being brought to perfection, brought to its appointed end through the experience of your trials, then you can know that it is His power which causes you to persevere through those trials. And nothing in all creation can thwart the strength of His purposes. Embrace the sufficiency of Christ's power, which is perfected in your weakness. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we feel our weakness. We come this morning sensing what it means to inhabit a world of brokenness and pain. And yet we come this morning seeking that power which the Apostle Paul discovered. Oh Lord, would you give it to us. Teach us afresh what it means to be able to say that when we are weak, then we are strong. As we discover there in our weakness, the omnipotence of Jesus Christ. We ask these things in his name, amen.