Is God's Grace Really Sufficient? | STF Podcast Ep. 16

In this episode of Singing Through Fire, Lara Silverman speaks to listeners who feel overwhelmed, afraid, and unsure they can keep going, and prays for God’s comfort. She challenges the idea that “God will never give you more than you can handle,” showing from Scripture that God sometimes allows burdens beyond our strength so we will rely on Him, citing Paul, Elijah, Job, Jeremiah, and even Jesus’ anguish before the cross. Lara centers the episode on 2 Corinthians 12:9—God’s grace is sufficient and His power is made perfect in weakness—along with other passages about God sustaining His people. She shares her testimony of being bedridden for years with severe vertigo, learning to depend on God one moment at a time, and describes God’s provision through timely verses, daily strength, and “rest stops.” She also recounts seeing God sustain her husband Matt through stage-four cancer, ending with hope in eternity and God’s promise to preserve believers’ faith to the end.

Chapters
00:00 Despair to Hope
00:49 Prayer and Purpose
01:33 God Gives More
02:38 Biblical Overwhelm
03:55 Grace Is Sufficient
06:51 Paul’s Trials List
08:33 Promises from Scripture
09:58 Memoir Break
11:08 My Bedridden Valley
13:28 Manna Moment by Moment
15:09 More Sustaining Signs
18:14 Matt and Cancer Grace
20:32 Rest Stops in Suffering
22:23 When It Feels Abandoned
24:17 Eyes on Eternity
25:30 Final Encouragement

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PODCAST DESCRIPTION:

Welcome to the Singing Through Fire podcast! I’m your host Lara Silverman, and this is where we:

• Worship when it hurts
• Discuss hot takes from the furnace of affliction
• Explore a biblical theology of suffering with a side of sass and sarcasm 

From lamentations to laughter, this podcast is for anyone desperate for hope who has ever asked, "Why, Lord, why?”

Don’t forget to follow/subscribe because I upload content every Tuesday and Friday! 

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." 2nd Corinthians 4:17.

Transcript

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You in despair. Can't take one more second of your current situation. Are your circumstances just completely overwhelming right now? Are you terrified that God's grace won't be enough to hold you up emotionally, physically, and spiritually? Are you filled with doubt and fear? Stick around 'cause I'm here to help you realize that God's grace will in fact sustain you. Welcome back to Singing Through Fire. This is Singing Through Fire where we worship when it hurts, discuss hot takes from the furnace of affliction, and explore a biblical theology of suffering with a side of sass and sarcasm from limitations to laughter. This podcast is for anyone desperate for hope, who's ever. Why, Lord, why I've lost my health, career and husband. So we're in this fight for faith together. All right guys. I hope you're having a fabulous week, but before we go any further, let's pray. Lord Jesus, I pray for everyone listening to this podcast who feels like your grace isn't sufficient right now. I pray that you would comfort them mightily with your Holy Spirit and give them life-giving truth on men today. My goal is singular to assure you dear brothers and sisters in Christ. God's grace is and will be sufficient for you. Sufficient to bear you up in all your trials and tribulations no matter where you are, even if you're in the darkest of pits right now on a sick bed, on an emotional rollercoaster of grief, in job loss, in child loss, in divorce. Wherever you are, we're going to start with scripture and then I'm going to give you my personal testimony to encourage you. Let's begin by dispelling a lie. You know that saying that God will never give you more than you can handle. Well, I hate to break it to you folks, but that's a lie. God will give you more than you can handle. We have to be realistic so we can understand what this s scriptural promise of God's. Sufficient grace really mean because otherwise we're going to be demoralized when God allows hard things in our lives, which we just can't bear up in our own strength, and which force us to rely completely and entirely on God's strength and provision. You see, when you read the Bible, it becomes immediately clear that God allows his people to experience struggles that just seem point blank intolerable. Look at how the Apostle Paul spells out his own troubles. In two Corinthians one, eight, we were under great pressure far beyond our own ability to endure so that we despair of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death Right there. The Bible is making clear that God allows his people to face things that are point blank more than they can handle things that are far beyond their ability to endure. To put it in Paul's words. Paul even says he despaired of life. That's how severe his trials were. Other great biblical characters faced the same problem. I'm telling you this, not to scare you, but to remind you that you are not alone. If you are struggling in deep emotional or physical agony in your current trial, great challenges are apparently part and parcel of the life of faith. Just look at this list. First Kings 19. Four says, the prophet Elijah came to a broom Bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. I've had enough Lord, he said, take my life. That's the full quote from the Bible in Job three 11. Job says, why did I not perish at birth and die as I came from the womb in Job 30 verses 15 to 17? Job says tears overwhelm me. My dignity is driven away as by The wind night pierces my bones, my gnawing pains never rest. Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 2014, cursed be the day I was born. May the day my mother bore me. Not be blessed. Even our savior faced overwhelming emotions because he was facing the greatest trial of all time. Being crucified for all of humanity's sins. The passages before his crucifixion display this vividly. Jesus says in Mark 1434. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Luke 2244 says, and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. Now I want to make something very clear, even though God clearly allows his people to go through severe and overwhelming situations, notice how when God said he faced things far beyond his ability to endure, he nonetheless follows right up in the next verse in two Corinthians one, nine with. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead, this means that there is always, always a but God. This ain't all doom and gloom people. The idea is we can bear these trials and they won't defeat us if we rely on God's strength in them. The operative verse on the sufficiency of God's grace is two Corinthians 12, nine, where God tells Paul. My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. The promise here is that we can bear all of our trials with God's help. That's the promise. His grace will be sufficient because he will give us his power in our weakness. Paul emphatically expresses this all sustaining power of God's grace elsewhere in scripture. He says this, all surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. Two Corinthians four verses seven to nine. So there's this sense in which he's saying, yes, our trials are beyond our own ability to in endure this, but God's help and grace is sufficient for us emotionally and spiritually, even in these most difficult of times. Interestingly, in two Corinthians one, eight. Paul says he despaired of life during his work in Asia. But then three chapters later we find Paul describing his experience in the Christian life as perplexed, but not in despair. Notice that shift. What gives Paul isn't bipolar. What I think God's communicating through this series of Paul's emotions is, listen, my children, there are times when you will despair of life because that's just your temporary emotions. I'm going to shift you out of that space because my grace is sufficient for you. Rely on me and let me show you that you need not despair because I am holding you up with my strength in and through all of your trials. That's the shift Paul makes in his heart. Again, Paul says in two Corinthians one, nine, this happened that we might not rely on ourselves. On God. God wants us to make that realization and shift too. Paul even says when he's talking about when he was despair in Asia, that God had quote delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us again on him. We have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us. One Corinthians one 10 Paul's example is very encouraging to us because it means God does deliver. No, this doesn't mean God will deliver us from every illness or life circumstance that is difficult on this side of eternity, but that he will deliver us from our despair because his grace is sufficient for us to endure through our great trials. Paul's outlook, notably where he says he's struck down but not destroyed, is also encouraging as a testimony to us, because I mean. Paul not only had to endure a mysterious chronic thorn in the flesh, which theologians don't know what it was like a chronic eye condition or something else, but we know it was tough enough for him to beg God to take it away. God not only refused to take his thorn away. Also allowed Paul to go through beatings, shipwrecks, persecution, stoning, you name it, Paul and dirt it. Second Corinthians 1123 is the passage where he describes his trials, and I'm sure this isn't even a comprehensive list. He writes, I have been in prison more frequently. Been flogged more severely, been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews, the 40 lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was pelted with stones. Three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. I have been constantly on the move. I've been in danger from rivers, in danger, from bandits in danger for my fellow Jews. End danger from gentiles endangering the city, endangering the country. End danger at sea endanger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food. I have been cold and naked. Ooh, I can't even read that whole list without, you know, losing my breath. If Paul could go through all that and say he was struck down, but not destroyed, that means something was sustaining him and you bet your booties, it was God's grace. Again, second Corinthians 12, nine promises us that his grace is sufficient for us. The verse doesn't say might be or could be or pray enough, and it might be. It says, my grace. Is sufficient. God promises us in countless verses that his grace is all sufficient. Get ready. 'cause you know I'm about to go through one of my famous scriptural lists, which take forever. Here goes Philippians four 13. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. In Isaiah 43, 2, God promises when you walk through fire, you will not be burned. The flames will not set you a blaze. Psalm 55, 22, cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never let the righteous be shaken. Notice the word will. Not, maybe not, perhaps, no. He will sustain you two Corinthians nine, eight. God is able to bless you abundantly so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. Wow. What a beautiful encouragement that we will have all that we need in all things at all times. And what about all those other encouragement that he gives us, his strength and our weakness? Remember how Paul said, for when I am weak, then I am strong because Christ's power rested on him in his weakness. Or Isaiah 40 verses 29 to 31. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. Jeremiah 31 25, another beautiful one. I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint. The bottom line is God clearly is saying to us today, your children do not worry. Cast your cares on me because my grace is sufficient. As hard as this trial is, my grace will hold and carry you through this valley. Let's meditate on that and take a quick break. If you've ever felt like life's challenges are burning a little too hot and asking the Lord why I wrote something just for you. My number one bestselling Christian memoir Singing Through Fire is about finding Christ's surprising joys in the middle of life's most severe storms. As someone who's lost my health career. Husband, I have a lot to say about how God walks us through great grief. This book is for those who have questioned God's will or struggled with bitterness, anger, or a thousand unanswered questions, yet who still dare to believe that Christ is right there in the flames with us. It's filled with honest theological wrestling, tons of comedy, and many biblical reasons why God allows suffering. Some will definitely surprise you if you're walking through loss today. This book will give you powerful hope and faith to keep. Trusting and make you laugh and ugly cry at the same time. You can grab singing through fire on retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Nobles, or just copy paste the link in the description below. Some tragedies don't tie up in a redemptive bow on this side of heaven, but in Christ, redemption is always awaiting us in eternity. So let's keep singing through the fire. Together. We're switching gears so I can tell you about my own experience of the Lord's sufficient grace in my very dark valleys, with the hopes that it will encourage you not to lose hope in yours. We need real life testimonies of how God has held others up because those examples boost our courage and trust that God will sustain us too. I'm telling you this, grace is sufficient for you. Idea is not just a platitude because I've experienced it as powerfully real in my own life. Let me tell you, I have been in situations where I was not going to survive physically, emotionally, or spiritually unless this biblical promise proved true. You see, there was a time when I was strictly bedridden. I'm still mostly bedridden today on that bed back there, but there was a point when I was completely disabled, I couldn't even lift my head off of one pillow, one inch without not only the world spinning the way it is today, but my blood pressure dropping due to all the drugs I was on. Now I'm off all the drugs. Praise be to God and my blood pressure is stable, but. I mightily doubted at that time that God's grace would be sufficient to carry me through that because it was so hard on a moment to moment basis. Imagine the entire world spinning around you 24 7, and you can't get up to go to the bathroom for three whole. Years. Okay. I mean, things were so bad that I would pray nonstop. Lord, help me. Lord, help me. I can't do one more day. I mean, I have personally experienced that pit of ugly desperation where Paul says, we despair of life. It's not pretty. But one morning I had just cried to God that his grace simply wasn't. This was one year into being strictly bedridden for three years, and ironically, my mom read me my Christian daily devotional lap, and the daily verse just happened to be second Corinthians 12, nine. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. I immediately thought to Shea Lord, I mean he literally perceived my thoughts from afar as Psalm 1 39 says, and called me out by gently reminding me to cling to the truth of his word, regardless of my feelings. This tells us that sometimes our emotions will be screaming. This is a lie, but our emotions are not the arbiter of truth. God's word is his grace will be sufficient and as hard and agonizing as it was, I can tell you looking back, that his grace was sufficient for me on a moment by moment basis. You see, that's the other tough lesson I learned. God only provides grace and strength that is sufficient for us. One millisecond at a time, which forces us to trust him for the next moment. Remember how God gave the Israelites Mana in the wilderness for 40 years, but only on a daily basis? They were completely dependent on God to provide food every single day. He didn't give them a year's worth of mana in advance, did he? He expressly commanded the opposite. Exodus 16, four says, then the Lord said to Moses, I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. Then verse 19, Moses says to them, no one is to keep any of it until morning. God seemed to care a lot about this. There's this day in day out reliance that God seems to want from us, and His grace works the same way. It's the way he designed us to be dependent on him. In my case, I wasn't only completely bedridden, I couldn't open my eyes for two out of those three years. And when you have nonstop vertigo. You survive one moment, and then the next moment another wave of vertigo and pain hits. I would've gone mentally crazy if I didn't realize one year into that completely disabled state that the only way to survive was to rely on God's grace one second at a time. The key is God only gives us enough grace for each individual moment because you only truly need it for that moment. Right. You're not living in the next moment, are you? A lot of times we feel his grace isn't sufficient because we are fearing the future and how we are going to handle the next minute, but the reality is we only need to handle this minute. We want to have control over the next 30 years, but that isn't how God designed us to live. Here's some more examples of God's sustaining grace in my journey. The more examples, the better, in my opinion. That's why we're here. I remember at another very difficult stretch when my symptoms were acutely painful and more than I could bear, God graciously brought to my attention two Psalms, which really encouraged me. Psalm 41, 3, the Lord sustains them on their sick bed. Psalm 46, 5. God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at break of day. Man, these verses were like bombs to my soul that one week. I still remember them so clearly. It was like God was whispering to my heart. I am holding you. I know how hard this is, but you will not fall. I am sustaining you moment by moment. Next. If Psalm 23 ever needs a defense witness, it might as well be me For two years, the Lord literally prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies. How well did I safely eat? 2,190 meals on a bed lying on one pillow with my head shaking involuntarily on and off, and with my eyes closed. With all sorts of random throat and muscle spasms, making it very difficult and dangerous to swallow. If that wasn't sustaining grace, I don't know what is. His grace was sufficient for me. Full stop. No matter how I felt at the time. Feelings are not facts. Another night I remember I refused to eat dinner because I was really nauseous. My dad, who was feeding me at the time protested, but reluctantly agreed to pivot to reading me the Bible, to comfort me. Lo and behold, we stumbled upon Acts 27, verse 34, where Paul begged his fellow boat passengers in a violent storm to stop refusing food. He said, I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive my dad, all but gasped at the timing of us reading this verse and Paul's line to his fellow passengers because it spoke directly into our situation. My dad said, see, Laura, God is instructing you. I'm bringing the meal again. I complied and was able to keep it down entirely without vomiting. Do we think that's a coincidence or God encouraging me that he was walking with me through every single trial, even if I couldn't feel him sometimes. That's sustaining, that's sufficiency. And then in the last four years of this illness, now that I'm actually walking upright for parts of the day and able to bathe myself and go to the bathroom, I have seen God's grace continue to sustain me. Every morning I wake up, swing my legs over the edge of that bed and pray. Lord help me tolerate staying upright for an hour despite all the spinning around me in my brain and somehow. I do before needing to collapse again. I've seen real truth in Lamentations three verses 22 to 23. His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Sometimes I wonder how on earth I am forcing myself to sit up and walk for four years now, even though doing so is still making me spin harder in my brain, neurological. Given that I'm literally rowing against endless severe ocean waves in my vision, including right now. Recording this podcast, Psalm 77 19 also hits comically close to home. It says, your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters. It's not just metaphorical. God is sustaining me through the waters of vertigo. Moment by moment, I have noticed God's all sustaining grace in my late husband's life as well. Actually, I hate the term late, like where do we even get that? What was he late to? All I can see is that my husband was on time to heaven. But the point is God brought me a man while I was strapped to a bed. A man diagnosed with stage four intestinal cancer, the most unlikely spot for God to gimme the gift of love. But hey, stranger things have happened in the Bible while Matt was in his second year bat battling cancer. He was my new boyfriend and God was kind of infusing him with this energy that was just literally supernatural. I used to ask him, does cancer come with secret energy boosts? Because the guy still held down his full-time professorship, like he wasn't juggling cancer treatments. And a new girlfriend, even our pastor, raised an eyebrow and asked Matt at one point, are you still sure you're a cancer patient? Matt himself even wrote a Christian blog post on his pain saying, I saw the hand of God sustaining me. Chemo treatment was surprisingly easy, far from knocking me down. I found myself largely unaffected by side effects. I had my normal amount of energy and minimal nausea. To me. Now, obviously things got harder after we got married and Matt's cancer progressed, but even then, God's sufficiency proved true to me over and over when I was on a bed and my husband had cancer and we were constantly facing physical health challenges. The promise in Isaiah 40 29 that he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the week just kept showing up for us tangibly because Matt and I were like two dying iPhones. Perpetually hovering at 2% battery. Yes. Somehow God's grace was this miraculous never feeling. Portable charger that kept us going. We just kept carrying on. We accomplished so many things in our one year of marriage that a duo of two sickling really shouldn't have been able to do. We made Christian parodies filmed a Christian movie in our house, started a theology and music YouTube channel, performed three musical concerts, gave two Christian testimonies, and raised $13,000 for a new school in Haiti. I see all this not to boast, but to bear witness to the truth that his grace was sufficient for us. Even in our mutual extreme pain, our productivity was a complete miracle because behind the scenes we laid down holding hands half of every day of our marriage. Time and time again, I saw God give us the strength, even in pain to do the work he called us to do. I also saw God give us what I like to call rest stops or cloud stops. Kind of like how God gave the Israelites a pillar of cloud and would settle it when he wanted the Israelites to stop and rest. Numbers 9 22 says, when the cloud stayed above the tabernacle, the Israelites would remain in camp and not move, but if it lifted, they would set out. God does the same with us. He gives his people rest stops. Think about one Kings 19, where Elijah is exhausted and in despair after running for his life against the cycle. Queen Jezebel, who wants to kill him, Elijah, asks the Lord to take his life and then is so exhausted that he falls asleep under a bush. Then verses five to eight say. All at once, an angel touched him and said, get up and eat. Elijah looks around and right there by his head is some bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water. He eats drinks and lays down again the angel of the Lord then comes back a second time and touches him and says, get up and eat for the journey is too much for you. So he gets up and eats and drinks strengthened by that food. He travels 40 days and 40 nights. We see here how God sent Elijah simple rest and food to energize the poor soul for the rest of the journey. God knew what Elijah needed and he knows what we need to. He knows how to sustain us if our emotions are telling us otherwise. In the moment, we have to speak the truth to our brains, minds and hearts. He knows when to give the rest stops, so to speak. My husband and I noticed this similar pattern. Our mutual pain was nonstop, but it felt like God's waves of overwhelming grace would come right after a really dark valley or a hospitalization where God would give us a chance to rest and breathe for a week or two before we went underwater. Again, kind of like this swing going back and forth. God's mountaintops always sustained us so that we wouldn't despair in the next Deep Valley, if that makes sense. That doesn't mean the valleys weren't extremely difficult. There came a point where Matt was constantly going to the er. Then we lost our electricity due to a storm and we were freezing amidst our pain. Then after the electric finally came back, five days later, I burned my hand on a hot pan while cooking Tuscan chicken and got a second degree burn. We were both thinking, what's next? If Flower Life was a comedy of errors, the errors were the script, the set design, and the director, we felt like we were just not getting a break. Psalm 42, 7 spoke to us deep calls to deep in the roar of God's waterfalls. All his waves and breakers have swept over me. See how scripture doesn't deny this reality in these kinds of valleys, we all face the troubling emotions of fear, exhaustion, anxiety, and are tempted to think God's grace just isn't sufficient. That Laura Silverman woman was lying, even my saintly husband for the first time after two and a half years of cancer and just five months before he died. Once blurted out in his pain, God's abandoned me. Matt was so Christlike that I was shocked when I heard him say that, but that proved to me that even the most saintly of us crack sometimes, sometimes it will feel like he is breaking a bruised reed. I will be completely honest. But the operative word is feels Again, our feelings are not truth. We are frail human sinners in need of God's grace, and God always bounces us back. Just like how I witnessed God put the pet back in my husband's step after his moment of weakness, and Matt plowed on like a powerful soldier of Christ his last five months before he entered heaven. Moreover, God sustained my husband in that moment of weakness where Matt felt abandoned because that very night when my husband was still feeling down and out, God led a friend to message us both. Philippians three 14, which says, I press on toward the goal to win the prize, for which God has called me heaven Word in Christ Jesus. When we got that text, we both felt so heard and seen that God sent a believer to comfort us in a weak moment. Indeed, Christ doesn't just sustain us with rest and food. He sustains us by reminding us to keep our focus on eternity. In my journey, one huge way God has sustained me is opening my eyes in an acute sense to the temporary nature of this world and the fact that we are all just moving towards eternity. Every day in pain, I tell myself, these symptoms are of this temporary world. When your eye is set on our ultimate prize in heaven, psychologically, it's so releasing because you know your pain. We'll end one day. God wants us to keep our eye on eternity where he will wipe away every tear and where we will have a future without pain or sorrow. This outlook isn't a suicidal cop out where we throw our hands up and give up and say, I can't wait till this life ends. It's a beautiful reminder that this life is just a race to get to our final reward at the end. Paul describes the Christian life as a race, and I think the metaphor is spot on. When we're enduring great trials, God sustains us until the end of the race. Friends. Doesn't a good coach do that? How much more are loving God who died for us? I'm just giving you the tip of the iceberg today when it comes to examples of God's sustaining grace from my own life experiences through suffering. If you want to hear more, I encourage you to buy and read my memoir. I want to end by emphasizing what Christ's sufficiency means above all. Is that on an emotional or spiritual level? You won't lose your faith even amidst the most severe of testings. Yes, you might experience crazy emotions in some mental breakdowns, just like I experienced or those other biblical characters experienced, but God promises when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. The flames will not set you a blaze. That's why we can have joy in the fire 'cause God sustains our faith in the long run such that our spiritual boats don't tip over, so to speak. Remember second Corinthians 1 21 promises. It is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. God himself will do it. Perseverance of the saints was my husband's favorite doctrine, and it means that no matter what you go through, God will sustain your faith to the end. Even if you face great difficulties, he will never let you go. Philippians one, six reminds us yet again. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. Romans eight 30 echoes that. Those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's more than enough for today. If this encouraged you, share it with a friend who needs a reminder of God's all sustaining grace today. And remember when the heat is on, remember that God will sustain you. And that's why you can sing through your fire. God bless you. Be sure to hit subscribe because I upload content every week to help other sufferers to God be the glory.