My Grace Is Sufficient for Thee

“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9 (KJV)

Still sitting on that bench, Bunyan burst out, “How can God comfort such a wretch as I?” And straight away, “as an echo doth answer a voice,” came the words, “This sin is not unto death.” He felt “as if I had been raised out of a grave.” If his sin was not the sin unto death, then it could be forgiven. For the first time he felt he stood “upon the same ground with other sinners.”

It didn't last long. The next evening, afraid again, he prayed, “O Lord, I beseech thee, show me that thou hast loved me with everlasting love.” The answer came back like an echo: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” He went to bed at peace and woke up believing it. Over the next days the message grew clearer: “I loved thee whilst thou wast committing this sin, I loved thee before, I love thee still, and I will love thee for ever.”

But the struggle wasn't over. It would be “well-nigh two years and an half” before he was really free. Oddly, he found comfort even in that. “Many days are not for ever, many days will have an end.”

One day the tempter told him there was no point praying. Here is Bunyan's account, and it is worth reading slowly: “Yet, thought I, I will pray. But, said the tempter, your sin is unpardonable. Well, said I, I will pray. It is to no boot, said he. Yet, said I, I will pray.” So he prayed: “Lord, Satan tells me that neither Thy mercy, nor Christ's blood, is sufficient to save my soul; Lord, shall I honour Thee most, by believing Thou wilt and canst? or him, by believing Thou neither wilt nor canst? Lord, I would fain honour Thee, by believing Thou wilt and canst.”

Then one morning in prayer, part of a verse broke in: “My grace is sufficient.” Only two weeks before, he had read that very verse, thought it “not large enough for me,” and thrown the book down in a temper. Now it seemed to have “arms of grace so wide that it could not only enclose me, but many more besides.” But he noticed something was missing: the words “for thee.” So he asked God for those too.

Some time later, sitting in a meeting full of fear, he heard it whole: “My grace is sufficient for thee, my grace is sufficient for thee, my grace is sufficient for thee,” three times over. Every word felt huge. It was “as though I had seen the Lord Jesus look down from heaven through the tiles upon me.”

For weeks after, his mind was like a pair of scales: on one side the verse about Esau, on the other “My grace is sufficient,” and his peace went up and down “sometimes twenty times a day.” Finally he asked God to let both verses hit him at once, to see which would win. A few days later they did. The verse about Esau grew weak and faded, and grace won.

Another verse became his favourite of all: “And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” The tempter told him Christ meant other, better sinners, not him. Bunyan answered: “Satan, here is in this word no such exception; but 'him that comes', him, any him.” He describes fighting for that verse like a tug-of-war: “he pulled and I pulled; but, God be praised, I got the better of him.”

If you are in the up-and-down stage, Bunyan's story says that's not failure. Healing for him was not one bright moment but a scale tipping back and forth for weeks before it settled. And notice what he held on to. Not his feelings, but the words: “for thee,” and “him, any him.”

One thing to do this week: pick one of Bunyan's two verses, “My grace is sufficient for thee” or “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out,” and learn it by heart this week. When a doubt comes, answer it the way Bunyan answered the tempter: yet I will pray.