The Blessings of Inadequacy 2 CORINTHIANS 3:4-6

Life is filled with struggles that reveal human inadequacy. Physical problems leave us weak and unable to cope, relational troubles bring confusion and stress, continual battles with bad habits and addictions make us feel defeated, and financial or job demands damage our self-worth. No one likes the frustration and fear of facing challenges which are too big to handle, but God can use them for our good.

Maybe you have never considered inadequacy a blessing. After all, it arouses all sorts of uncomfortable emotions that make us feel useless, insignificant, and weak. But God can turn all the negatives into blessings if we acknowledge our helplessness, depend on His strength, and step into our challenges with confidence in Him.

Inadequacy can be a blessing since it . . .
1. Drives us to God as we recognize our helplessness.
2. Relieves us of the burden of trying to do God’s will in our own strength.
3. Motivates us to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.
4. Provides the Lord an opportunity to demonstrate what He can do.
5. Increases our usefulness to God by humbling our pride.
6. Allows Christ to receive all the glory.
7. Gives peace as we rely on Him.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, believers have the ability to endure difficulty or accomplish whatever the Lord calls them to do. By claiming the adequacy of Christ, we can face every circumstance with a sense of awesome confidence, not in ourselves but in God, who is totally capable.

Rough Seas

They are troubled like the sea that cannot be quiet.

Jeremiah 49:23

We are unaware of what sorrow may be upon the sea at this moment. We are safe in our quiet room, but far away out to sea the hurricane may be cruelly seeking the lives of men. Imagine the bitter winds howling through the rigging, the timbers heaving as the waves beat like battering rams upon the boat! God help you, poor drenched and wearied ones! I am praying to the great Lord of sea and land, that He will make the storm calm and bring you to your desired haven! I ought not simply to pray; I should try to help those brave men who risk their lives so constantly. Have I ever done anything for them? What can I do? How often does the boisterous sea swallow up the sailor!

Thousands have died where pearls lie deep. There is sorrow on the sea, which is echoed in the sad lament of widows and orphans. The salt of the sea is in the eyes of many mothers and wives. Relentless billows, you have devoured the love of women and the strength of households. What a resurrection there will be from the caverns of the deep when the sea gives up her dead!

Until then there will be sorrow on the sea. As if in sympathy with the woes of earth, the sea is always fretting along a thousand shores, wailing with a sorrowful cry, booming with a hollow crash of unrest, raving with uproarious discontent, chafing with hoarse rage, or jangling with the voices of ten thousand murmuring pebbles. The roar of the sea may be glorious to a rejoicing spirit, but to the son of sorrow, the wide, wide ocean is even more forlorn than the wide, wide world. This is not our comfort, and the restless billows tell us so. There is a land where there is no more sea—our faces are firmly set toward it; we are going to the place of which the Lord has spoken. Until then we cast our sorrows on the Lord who walked upon the sea of old and who makes a way for His people through the depths