When it comes to famous hymns, there’s none more famous than “Amazing Grace.” Beloved for generations, the simple tune and powerful lyrics serve as a poignant spark for worship. There may not be a more sublime response to the truth of the gospel than, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”
There’s one line among those lyrics, however, that used to spark my curiosity: “Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come.” John Newton was the author of that hymn, and I used to wonder what circumstances in his life might have produced such a phrase.
I say “used to” because I did some research and found out. Let me tell you, his life was quite a story! Many know of Newton’s history with the slave trade, which he later despised. But not many are aware of the remarkable number of close encounters he had with death. He wrote that line because he had lived that line.
Consider a few of his highlights:
Brushes with death have a way of making us consider great big questions about life and eternity. Newton’s own close calls edged him closer and closer to his conversion experience. He regarded his survival as proof of the hand of Providence sustaining him over and over, when by any human reckoning he should have perished. Salvation meant more than the hope of heaven to him; it was a literal experience that he had many times, and the sum total of it persuaded him that God must have a particular purpose for his life.
Wouldn’t you love to be in heaven when John Newton and Paul sit together and exchange war stories? Believe it or not, you would notice that Paul’s were even more hair-raising than Newton’s. And Paul’s days of pursuing Christians were almost dull compared to his life after he became a believer. The book of Acts can be read as a kind of Spirit-filled James Bond movie from the first century. The apostle faces death every chapter or two, then he dusts himself off and proceeds to the next calamity.
Here are a few of Paul’s action scenes:
Even if John Newton talked about shipwrecks, Paul could say, “Been there, done that”—three of those, actually. He could talk about arguing the case for his life before rulers. He could tell about being lowered in a basket from an opening in the wall to escape murder.
Perhaps it seems to you that your own life is fairly humdrum; not exactly Hollywood blockbuster material. You can imagine Paul and Newton looking up at you from that heavenly table and saying, “Now, what’s your story?” And you’d begin to stammer, “W-well, y-you see, I haven’t had too many adventures really; I was a tax accountant,” or, “I took care of the house.”
But wait a minute. Think a little harder. We all have our portion of dangers, toils, and snares—dramatic or less dramatic, it really makes no difference. We’ve all endured those seasons when it seemed as if the world was thrown upside down, and us along with it.
Have you ever lost a loved one and thought your heart would break? Have you experienced a painful divorce? Have you ever been out of work, unable to pay bills, and not certain what you were going to do in the immediate future? Or how about this one: Have you ever been a parent? If the answer to that one question alone is yes, then you are an authority on dangers, toils, and snares. I know of no parent who hasn’t lain awake nights worrying about his or her children for all kinds of reasons.
Trouble is like home. You’re either there, coming from it, or on your way back to it. And I’m certain you’ve had your share of each of these:
Times of danger when you’ve been truly afraid.
Times of toil when you labored almost beyond endurance.
Times of snare when you’ve wrestled with temptation—sometimes winning, sometimes losing.
At this point, I’d like to suggest that you stop, put this book down for a few moments, and do some focused thinking. I urge you to make a list of your most important examples from each of Newton’s categories.
Your Dangers:
[Your Notes]
Your Toils:
[Your Notes]
Your Snares:
[Your Notes]
Have you made your list? I’m serious about this. We’re not in any hurry here. Let’s go no further until you’ve thought carefully about your dangers, toils, and snares.
Got your list in hand? Good. You’ve reflected deeply at that pressure point where truth meets experience. Now you’re in the right frame of mind to experience a blessing, because in the next few pages, Paul is going to offer us a theology of hope in times of crisis. He’s going to show us how to keep the faith. If you can hold those personal experiences of yours with one hand and take hold of the Bible’s guidance with the other, you’ll gain a critical tool that can help you stay strong and stand firm no matter what life may throw your way.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
—2 Corinthians 4:7–9
So far in these pages we have explored four obstacles we must overcome in order to keep the faith and continue running the race set before us when the going gets tough. Those obstacles are fear, discouragement, worry, and doubt.
Now, as we move to the second half of this book, I want to highlight four key blessings God provides His people to empower them when life seems to be at its worst. These are four blessings we can receive and use to remain strong in the face of fear, discouragement, worry, doubt, and whatever else may come our way.
The first of those blessings is grace. And I want to start by showing you from Paul’s life why grace is a necessary requirement for living the Christian life.
Imagine a business traveler who is constantly on the go from one city to another, his appointment calendar packed. His clients always have some new crisis that he is expected to handle personally. It’s one trivial squabble after another, and he’s always laboring to make peace between petty factions. His business is thriving, but there are plenty of headaches and no time for rest.
That was life two thousand years ago—at least for the apostle Paul. His business was church planting, and every new church brought new joy and new crises. Since Paul was the founder of so many congregations, he found himself in the middle of one controversy after another. Corinth was a problem church. There always seemed to be disruptions there: public immorality, divisions, and now a problem with false prophets. Some of them were challenging Paul’s authority, and he wrote the letter that we know as 2 Corinthians to defend his credentials and to help the church members think spiritually about the problems they were encountering.
In 2 Corinthians 4:7, we find Paul trying to help his readers see the glory of our heavenly Father in the dust of everyday experience. That’s what makes a huge difference in this life: seeing things from God’s perspective. Paul was showing that it can be done because God has been revealed in human form through Jesus Christ, the ultimate Treasure in an earthly vessel—flesh and blood. All the eternal and infinite glory of God shined through the humanity of His Son, who was fully human and yet fully divine. Jesus’ enemies saw Him as just another man, but behind those eyes dwelt the one true God.
That’s certainly a wonderful truth, but what does it have to do with your problems or those of the Corinthians? Here comes the part that should send a chill up your spine, as it does mine. If we are ministers of Christ—and I don’t mean paid ministers of a church but the kind of minister every single Christian is by appointment—then we share in that eternal glory. As the Father dwelt in the Son, the Son dwells within us through the Spirit. We have this treasure, the ministry of Christ, in our “earthly vessels,” our frail and imperfect human bodies.
This is a difficult concept to understand, but Paul always had a handy word picture available. This time he used the idea of a clay jar. If there was one absolutely ordinary, run-of-the-mill object that everyone in the Middle East could understand, it was a clay jar. Cheap pottery was everywhere and used for everything. The jars were breakable, but it didn’t matter because it was so easy to get another one. Clay earthenware was as common as—well, as the clay beneath one’s feet.
A clay pot had absolutely no value in itself. Everyone knew that. On the other hand, it could hold a priceless pearl, a gold piece, a bite of bread to fend off hunger, a day’s drink of water, a wedding ring, even a sleeping newborn baby. It wasn’t the jar but the treasure inside that counted.
I know people who carry Bibles that look as if they’ve been through several shipwrecks with John Newton. The covers are wrinkled and torn. The pages are nearly falling out. But the worn-out container holds the eternal Word of God.
It’s not the vessel but its contents. A lowly clam hides a pearl; a lump of coal compresses into a diamond. We fall for one of the devil’s greatest lies when we assume that our human limitations make any difference to the workings of God through us.
There will certainly be problems. Clay has its cracks, its heat limit, its fragility. But it still does the job and holds its precious cargo. “Just think about all that I’ve gone through,” Paul was saying. “Is God any less real because I’ve been beaten and had rocks thrown at me? No—more so to us, because He bears testimony through all these things.”
Dangers, toils, and snares. They just come with the territory. Paul told Timothy he might as well expect to be mistreated, because the godly in Christ Jesus are always persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12).
For all these reasons and more, we need His grace.
It happened that Paul was once raised to the heavens by God to see glories no man had ever previously beheld. For the Lord’s purposes, this vision was necessary for Paul. On the other hand, so was an infirmity of some kind. Why? Because Paul’s supernatural experience would tend to breed pride. It could ruin him for ministry. Therefore, God allowed a “thorn,” literally a stake driven into the flesh. And “a messenger of Satan” was allowed to “buffet,” or beat, him. In 2 Corinthians 12:7, Paul spoke in language descriptive but not precise. He didn’t tell the precise nature of the suffering he endured, but he did tell us all we need to know: trials are allowed by God to help us keep perspective and to enable us to grow spiritually.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? The greater the Lord’s plans for us, the more we generally need to be tried. The more critical an army’s mission, the harder the army needs to be drilled. The more significant the lesson you’re teaching your children, the more discipline you’ll need to employ. We think it strange when James tells us to consider it joy to endure a trial (James 1:2–3), but in truth, nothing could make more sense.
If you’re involved in tough times right now, congratulations! God loves you, and He has great things ahead for you. Sometimes His earthen vessels simply need to be heat-treated.
Paul said of his suffering, “Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:8–9).
It’s good advice to consider our sufferings a joy, but no one is very good at that. Even Paul asked God to take away his trouble—his thorn—three times. The result? God turned him down three times.
Question: Is there any such thing as an “unanswered prayer”? Or would it be wiser to call them “unwanted answers”?
Yes, there are times when God doesn’t give us what we want. But in those cases, He speaks to us in ways that are just as valuable as the thing we prayed for. The question is whether we are listening. In the case of Paul, for example, God gave this answer to the prayer: “My grace is sufficient for you” (v. 9). There is very rich, very practical wisdom in that answer—much more than a blunt “no.”
It’s as if God is saying to us, “I will not take away the trial, but I will give you the power to endure it.” Here’s another way of putting it: “I won’t give you what you want, but I’ll give you what you need in order to keep the faith. If I took away the trial, you would grow no stronger—in fact, you would be just a little weaker and more helpless, like a pampered child. But if I allow the trial and help you endure it, you will be stronger, wiser, and more useful to Me.”
Another long truth in God’s short answer: there is power in the grace of God. The verb translated “is sufficient” is in the present tense—as is God’s grace, which is always present. In every situation, we can rely on Him to provide strength and courage. He will never give us all that we want, but He will always give us all that we need.
Compare our Lord to the gods of all the world’s religions and you’ll find that grace is the difference maker. It is the X factor that radically sets Him apart. Our God is “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10). He is kind, benevolent, and long-suffering. We need not beg Him, bribe Him, or appease Him. He actually longs to bless us every single moment, every single day. He comes down to us rather than demanding that we climb the impossible ladder to infinity to reach Him. Grace is God taking the initiative.
In this same letter, Paul explained, “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
Notice the repetition of the word all. All grace abounds toward us so that we are all sufficient in all things. He is all we need in all we face, so that for all we do, we can overflow with His grace and power. Did you know it was possible to live like that?
One Friday morning, British pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon was challenging his ministerial students. He said:
There are many passages of Scripture which you will never understand until some trying experience shall interpret them to you. The other evening I was riding home after a heavy day’s work; I was wearied and depressed; and swiftly and suddenly as a lightning flash, this text laid hold on me: “My grace is sufficient for you!” When I got home, I looked it up in the original, and finally it dawned upon me what the text was saying, MY grace is sufficient for THEE. “Why,” I said to myself, “I should think it is!” and I burst out laughing. It seemed to make unbelief so absurd. It was as though some little fish, being very thirsty, was troubled about drinking the river dry; and Father River said, “Drink away, little fish, my stream is sufficient for you!” Or as if a little mouse in the granaries of Egypt, after seven years of plenty, feared lest it should die of famine, and Joseph said, “Cheer up, little mouse, my granaries are sufficient for you!” Again I imagined a man way up on the mountain saying to himself, “I fear I shall exhaust all the oxygen in the atmosphere.” But the earth cries, “Breathe away, O man, and fill your lungs; my atmosphere is sufficient for you!”1
Think of it this way. When you have a big problem, ask yourself, “How big is the problem?” Then ask yourself, “How big is God?” I tremendously doubt the time will ever come when you find that the problem is the larger of the two.
Kenneth Wuest says it this way:
There is enough grace in God’s heart of love to save and keep saved for time and eternity, every sinner that ever has or ever will live, and then enough left over to save a million more universes full of sinners, were there such, and then some more. There is enough grace available to give every saint constant victory over sin, and then some more. There is enough grace to meet and cope with all the sorrows, heartaches, difficulties, temptations, testings, and trials of human existence, and more added to that. God’s salvation is an oversize salvation. It is shock proof, stain proof, unbreakable, all-sufficient. It is equal to every emergency, for it flows from the heart of an infinite God freely bestowed and righteously given through the all-sufficient sacrifice of our Lord on the Cross. Salvation is all of grace. Trust God’s grace. It is superabounding grace.2
We agree that we are just ordinary clay pots to be used to display God’s power. We even accept that we will be prodded by painful experiences in order to learn that grace provides all we need. Now the good news! Here’s the upshot of our humbling and our thorns—the result of trials is strength to run our race to the end.
Let us consider just a few of the ways God’s grace infuses our lives and makes us strong.
And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
—2 Corinthians 12:9–10
Paul hated the thorn that plagued him. But in time, he accepted it. He knew there could be no ministry if there were no trial because this life wasn’t about Paul’s strength but God’s. The weaker Paul appeared, the greater the Lord would be glorified.
Let me ask you: If you were the most talented person in the world, would that help or hinder your witness? People would say, “You can believe what you want when you have that much natural ability.” But when we see absolutely ordinary individuals change the world for Christ—and our history is absolutely filled with those—we can have no doubt of the presence of God in this world.
The next time you think it’s all about your strength or talents, remember the following:
It was Moody who said, “If this world is going to be reached, I am convinced that it must be done by men and women of average talent.” The story is told of an occasion when he was preaching in London. Members of the royal family and other VIPs were present. When Moody came to the name Eliseus in Luke 4:27 (KJV), he couldn’t seem to get the word out of his mouth. He began reading the verse again from the beginning, but he still stammered over the E word. A third time: same results. Deeply troubled, he closed his Bible and said, “Oh, God, use this stammering tongue to preach Christ crucified to these people.” From that moment he preached with a power his closest followers had never heard. The crowd was awed by the presence of God that evening.3
This is among the deepest of spiritual truths. Remember that the ultimate treasure in an earthly vessel is God’s own Son, whom the establishment believed it could kill. Because He was composed of flesh and bone, they assumed He was simply one more man who could be squashed beneath the thumb of the Roman Empire. He was simply a peasant carpenter from Nazareth, or so they thought.
What if God had chosen instead to save the world as His chosen people wanted it saved, through the military genius of a fabulous leader? What would that say of God, if anything at all?
Instead, countless people have come to Christ through concluding that only one kind of power could possibly turn the world upside down as it did within decades. The weakness of humanity is the proper container to glorify God.
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
—2 Corinthians 4:17–18
When you struggle with some trial, your first question might be, “Why is this happening?” A better one would be, “What is God teaching me?”
It’s difficult for us to remember that God’s great desire is for us to see things as they really are, rather than as they appear to be. As Paul said, we see in a mirror dimly right now. God is always working to remove the fog so that we might share His heavenly perspective. Have you ever met a child who was given her every desire? What is the result of that kind of parenting? It creates spoiled, undisciplined children who believe the world will always serve their requests on a silver platter when they snap their fingers.
I’m sure you’ll agree good parents don’t raise their children that way. Instead, they deny their children certain demands when it is appropriate to do so. Effective parents are always using the moment for an object lesson. They let their children know that love is not the same as pampering. Would your Father in heaven be any less wise in His parenting? He refuses to solve all our problems, but He gives us all the sustaining grace we need for toughing it out.
Can you remember taking your child to a new Sunday school class when she was three years old? She may have cried. She may have clung to your legs and begged you not to desert her until the situation tugged at your heart. You may have experienced every impulse to simply give in and take your child to the adult class with you or stay with her in the child’s class. You would have then failed to help your child learn how to adjust to a new environment. Instead, you would have taught her that a pathetic demeanor will manipulate desired results.
Now consider that time when you were in an adult-sized version of that situation: you were unemployed or grieving over a lost relationship, perhaps. As you cried out to God, don’t you think it tugged at His loving heart? Don’t you think He longed to gather you up in His arms and give you everything you wanted? But He loved you enough not to give in. He knew how much wiser and stronger you would become through learning to depend upon His grace in a time of storm. Once your pleading was over and you had calmed down—just as the child does in a new Sunday school classroom—you were able to hear God say entirely new things to you. You could feel yourself growing. You said, “I made it through this trial by trusting God, and next time I won’t be knocked down so easily.”
Let’s consider the remarkable ways God nurtures us through our struggles, according to this passage of Scripture.
Reigning with Christ requires suffering with Him—no cross, no crown. But holding the hand of Christ through the darkness gives us a glimpse of the glorious nature of deliverance that is to come.
Paul called it “light affliction,” and frankly, that’s what most of our sufferings are. These are like smaller models of the “higher” suffering called death, and the higher glory of eternal life. God teaches powerful truth through lesser mediums.
“For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (v. 18). The hope of wearing Olympic gold drives athletes to persevere through, and even to value, the pain of dedication. Comparing the value of temporary pleasures with potential glory, they press on. Gold medals are of fleeting value. Some even turn up in pawn shops to be exchanged for a different metal. The goal before us also requires rigorous perseverance through pain. Unlike the hopeful competitor, we can have confidence that every trial, every struggle, has a particular purpose to produce in us some eternal value—provided we keep the faith.
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Isn’t it exciting that modern-day science is only now beginning to affirm what the Bible has said all along? There is a close relationship between body, mind, and soul. This is why you’ve met people with physical challenges who have extra layers of wisdom that few others have attained. Bodily suffering drives us deeper. We find God at the broken places, teaching and encouraging.
John Newton wrote, “We will look back upon the experiences through which the Lord led us and be overwhelmed by adoration and love for Him! We will then see and acknowledge that mercy and goodness directed every step. We shall see that what we once mistakenly called afflictions and misfortune were in reality blessings without which we would not have grown in faith.”4
We can’t wish away our problems, and we’re unlikely to put on a fake smile and pretend we’re enjoying them. What we can do is meet them squarely and soberly, refusing to view them as random shots from an unkind world. Instead, we know they are necessary challenges for the positive growth we’re intent on experiencing. Who wants to remain a child forever? We know we need a good workout. We know it’s necessary to build our spiritual muscles. There are no muscles of any kind that strengthen without resistance.
When you’re at the gym, sometimes you can get through a grueling cycle on some machine by thinking about the muscles that machine is helping. I suggest you do that very thing during times of struggle. Where can you “feel the burn”? What part of your character is going to be that much more godly tomorrow? My friend, perspective will completely change the way you approach challenges.
In one of his books, my friend Ron Mehl wrote these words:
Storms always leave us with a list of things to clean up and fix. They are times when God restores to us the things we lose through negligence, ignorance, rebellion, or sin. For the Christian, storms are a no-lose proposition. They help us to see and acknowledge the loose shutters, missing shingles, and rotten fence posts in our lives while turning us back to the only One who can make the necessary repairs.5
We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
—2 Corinthians 4:8–9
In 2 Corinthians 6:4–5, Paul listed his personal struggles as tribulations, needs, distresses, stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labors, sleeplessness, and fastings. Remember, his authority was under attack at this church. Consider the fact that he chose his problems as his credentials. Can you imagine a pastor offering such problems to a church as his résumé today? Paul suggested sleeplessness and prison time as two of the reasons he would make a good pastor. And, of course, he was right.
Notice also the four gauges Paul used to demonstrate the difference the grace of God made in his life (and will make in yours). Each of these gauges takes some particular measure of the emotional state. Imagine the first gauge. At one end of the gauge is the word Victorious; at the other end, Defeated. Because of grace, the needle keeps hovering near the victorious end of the meter, and that means that in spite of the pressure, you can keep going. The second gauge shows Confident and Despairing as the extremes, and while we may often be more perplexed than confident, because of grace, we are never despairing. No need to slow down.
These gauges are the difference between an empty fuel tank and one that is simply low. Grace makes that difference: you proceed with caution, but you’re not out of gas on the side of the road. Here are the four gauges:
Paul was saying he felt the pinch, but he wasn’t crushed. The term “pressure” means being pushed into a narrow place. Paul was a man who spent time in some very small prison cells. As you know if you’ve read his prison letters, his joy could not be compacted by lack of space; it only became greater. Grace moved that needle.
Church problems left Paul at his wit’s end sometimes. But he never gave up, and he always found the right answer. Grace kept him moving toward the right solution.
The word for “persecuted” derives from the idea of being pursued or chased. As we’ve seen, Paul knew something about that kind of hunting, and he also knew about being hunted. Even when it seemed that his enemies vastly outnumbered his friends, he never felt deserted because almighty God was always with him with sufficient grace for his every need.
The verb “pounded” here means “to be struck down.” Paul was often knocked down, but he was never knocked out. He was sometimes left for dead, but he did not die. He kept getting back up to preach the gospel of God’s grace. When he was in prison, his work seemed to flourish. To the very end of his life, he was planning on new destinations and new churches. The kind of hope Paul had cannot be suppressed no matter how you pound it. Grace renders it eternal.
Sometimes we can gather hidden jewels simply by taking a closer look at Paul’s sentence structure.
For example, notice the three phrases in these passages that begin with the word that. It may seem to you like an insignificant word, but Paul actually used it as a bridge from human action to godly destiny. That means “in order to” or “so that.”
Here are the three statements:
Reading them together, we see a pattern emerge. We do what we do:
Again, Paul was pointing us to a bridge that Christ has built. On this side of the river, you experience dangers, toils, and snares. It’s so easy to be discouraged and to develop a negative and cynical attitude. Then our friend Paul beckons to us. He points to these bridges that seem to disappear into the fog that lies upon the river. We decide to cross those bridges because things can’t be any worse than they are on this side. On the other side, we find the limitless power of God and the rejuvenating life of Christ.
But what precisely are those bridges? They are attitudes about our lives and our trials. The attitudes of the world lead to a dead end. The attitude on these bridges takes us to a whole new world. We realize that there is a purpose to our pain. God is up to something, and it’s always something very good, something worth cherishing hope for. We begin to trust, putting our eyes on Him rather than on our struggles. Having done that, we find ourselves walking—one tentative step, then another. We hear the echo of our footsteps beneath us on the bridge. We move into that mist. And then we begin to make out the shapes that lie on the other side: shapes of maturity, of wisdom, of new strength and new service for God.
Before we know it, we’re not thinking of our infirmities at all. We realize we have what we need. We can keep the faith.
John Newton experienced great loss on this side of the bridge. He had hoped, with all his heart, that he would precede his wife to the grave. But it became clear that his beloved Mary was growing weaker every day. This was surely the ultimate test of his faith, for he had an abiding love for her after many years of marriage. Having been married for twenty-two years, he wrote her a letter that said, “Every room where you are not present looks unfurnished.”6
But one day he was confronted with the prospect of living out his life in unfurnished rooms. Newton’s friends worried about him; they couldn’t imagine how he would handle life without Mary by his side. The Christian should be hard-pressed, yet not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair. Would Newton have that demanding level of spiritual maturity?
On the day of Mary’s death, Newton preached at the regular service time. The next day he visited parishioners, and finally he preached the sermon at her funeral. Did he grieve? Of course he did—powerfully. He later wrote,
The Bank of England is too poor to compensate for such a loss as mine. But the Lord, the all-sufficient God, speaks, and it is done. Let those who know Him, and trust Him, be of good courage. He can give them strength according to their day. He can increase their strength as their trials increase . . . and what He can do He has promised that He will do.7
Newton had tried that bridge and found it would bear his weight. As a matter of fact, the grace of God has limitless strength. Every single one of us can trust our very lives to it. It has never failed, and it never will.
His grace is sufficient, no matter what we may be facing right now. His grace will lead us through every trial imaginable until we begin to look upon one another and see not ourselves but the image of Christ Himself, our hope, our refuge, and our goal. On that day, you and I will look back upon these earthly anxieties with hearts of loving gratitude. Troubles are very real, but in the light of His presence, they somehow fade into the mist.