Category: Devotion of the Day

The Supreme Experience

My grace is sufficient for thee.
II Corinthians 12:9

Within a few verses Paul goes from height to depth and rises again to greater height than ever. His third heaven experience, his thorn in the flesh, his denied request, should settle once for all what is the supreme matter in this earthly sojourn. We like to play up third heavens, mighty deliverances, amazing answers to prayer. The supreme experience of Paul was none of these but a constant dependence on God’s sufficient grace. That does not sound spectacular, sensational; it does not make as good a story as third heavens and startling deliverances, but God rates it higher. After all, in the strength of it Paul outtraveled, outpreached, outwrote, and, in general, outperformed any man of his day.

It is better to be buffeted by Satan’s messenger than to be exalted above measure by a third heaven experience. Better have something you can tell than hear words you cannot utter! Life’s greatest experience is to live in the strength of Another the Exchanged Life – “Christ liveth in me.” It is better for heaven thus to come to earth than for you temporarily to be caught up to heaven.

God’s Finished Product

The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.
Psalm 138:8

I have heard of a little boy whose sailor father was coming home to see him. The youngster worked the afternoon long trying to carve a ship model from a block of wood. He fell asleep, with very little success achieved for all his whittling. That night his father came, removed the block of wood and put in its place a real wooden ship exquisitely carved and rigged or perfection.

Your life and mine often bears poor resemblance to the Perfect Model. At our best we are like the carving of the little boy. But one day we shall awake in His likeness and see Him as He is. And we shall find that we bear the image of the heavenly. He who has begun a good work in us in regeneration will perform it in sanctification until the day of Jesus Christ in glorification. We were predestinated to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, and God will make of us a finished product and a perfect creation.

It will be great to awaken in the morning and find that we are just like Jesus!

Cheer up, my brother. He will perfect that which concerneth you!