HH, Sir Godfrey Gregg D.Div                                                                          [wpedon id=”36898″]

“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

The literal translation of this verse gives a startling emphasis to it and makes it speak for itself with a force that we have probably never realized. Here It Is: “Therefore I take pleasure in being without strength, in insults, in being pinched, in being chased about, in being cooped up in a corner for Christ’s sake; for when I am without strength, then am I dynamite.” The translation from the King James version to the more modern expression has opened the way Paul would have spoken to us today. In a way that you would understand without a fuss to know what he was talking about.

Here is the secret of Divine all-sufficiency, to come to the end of everything in ourselves and in our circumstances. When we reach this place, we will stop asking for sympathy because of our hard situation or bad treatment, for we will recognize these things as the very conditions of our blessing, and we will turn from them to God and find in them a claim upon Him. The hardships we face is not to demand any form of sympathy but to make us the better person for the promised kingdom.

Archbishop Simon, the well-known Spiritual Baptist preacher of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, who recently went to be with the Lord, said: “My God, I have never thanked Thee for my thorn. I have thanked Thee a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorn. I have been looking forward to a world where I shall get compensation for my cross, but I have never thought of my cross as itself a present glory.

“Teach me the glory of my cross; teach me the value of my thorn. Show me that I have climbed to Thee by the path of pain. Show me that my tears have made my rainbows.” Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. A friend that sticketh closer than a brother and in these times we need to look beyond the things the press against our spirits until we can see the glorious appearing of the Second Coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.