God’s Grace: is there a limit?

Wednesday night I found myself getting sick for the first time all year. I had knocked on wood a few times hoping to escape the turmoil of a lingering cold. No such luck. For the next couple of days I was fine, then Saturday hit and my voice was gone. It was as if my voice went from Prince to Worf in about 2.1 nanoseconds. I thought the new depth of my voice was sexy, my wife just kept reminding me that I was sick. She was right. I had a nice chest cough, swollen throat, pounding headache, insane nasal pressure and Sunday morning staring me in the face. I quickly jumped on to our church’s website (www.tfhofvancouver.com) and submitted a prayer request that I knew would simultaneously go to multiple people to pray.

Sunday morning came and with it came a fever. I was hurting. But there was a job to do and I wasn’t going to let my sickness rob the church of an opportunity for corporate worship. So I plugged away, tea in hand. All practice my voice was cracking as if the horror of puberty was repeating itself. I was thinking “I don’t know how I’m gonna make it two services…” But the grace of God was so very evident. As soon as I walked on stage, my stomach settled, my head stopped pounding, I could think clearly, I could remember the words (LOL) and people worshipped. The funny thing was that as soon as I got off the stage all of my symptoms returned. It was an even greater disparity during the second service. Greater symptoms lead to greater grace.

2 Timothy 2:1 1Timothy, my dear son, be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? I’d love to hear about it.