"I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will SUSTAIN you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." 1 Corinthians 1:4-9
This passage hit me in a way that it never has before. I have read over this passage so many times and I amazed at how many different and new things you can get out of a passage each time you read it. Obviously you can see by the title of this post is that the fact that God is the Sustainer stood out to me this time. There comes a point in everyone's lives, including myself, where you feel like you have nothing. You feel as if everything is falling apart and your life is in shambles. There are two different paths you can take in these moments: 1 you can either let your life continue to crumble and lose all sense of worth in your life, or 2 you can look to the only thing in this life that does matter and that is Jesus. Because so many times we think that we are self sufficient. Things are going great for us and we feel we can do everything on our own and that we don't need God. But that is the farthest thing from the truth. We need to look to him as all sufficient and everything that our lives are about. Without Him are lives are nothing. That's why it says in this passage that HE will sustain us until the end. Not you will sustain yourself, or your money will sustain you. NO! It is Jesus who sustains us and we should be grateful for that.
There is that saying that I have heard and used myself many times that has kind of become a Christian cliche and that is that "God will never give you anything that you can't handle". That statement doesn't put the whole picture together. God gives us things all the time that on our own we would never be able to handle. The weight of these situations and circumstances would just crush a person. The only way that we can handle these is in and through the person of Jesus Christ. Without his sustaining power we would not be able to handle them. When a storm or trial comes and we try to handle it on our own then we will fall to pieces and be crushed by it all, but if we look to Jesus as our anchor and ask for His help then He will give us the strength and power we need to get through whatever comes our way. And after we get through that trial we give Him all the glory and not ourselves. Later in the same chapter of 1 Corinthians Paul says that God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise and what is weak in the world to shame the strong. Why? Not so we can boast in our power but so that we can boast in His power and His glory. May each of us do that today.
"Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." 1 Corinthians 1:31b
