He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12.9
May 11, 2026, is it? There’s so little in our world that tells us much. In fact, the world tells us the complete opposite. The world tells us that in order to be counted, in order to be accepted, in order to be “okay,” we have to, instead of being weak, be strong.
Power.
It, or more specifically, its attainment, is our current opium, and its narcotic effects are something that are very hard for us to give up for one simple reason: the power of this world increases, rather than fulfills, our hunger (for power). If you have it, you want more of it and if you don’t have it, what of it you get will never be enough.
The power of Christ, on the other hand, is different. It satisfies. Rather than being something of the world for which we grasp and onto which we grip through the strength of our flesh it is, instead, something out of this world that is given to us as a gift of love.
Rather than an impersonal force which we use according to the purposes of our own ego-driven wills, the power of Christ comes to us in the form of a Person, the Lord Jesus Himself, and works through us, according to the divine purposes of Christ’s holy will.
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.
2 Corinthians 12.9
When the power of Christ (2 Corinthians 12.9) rests on us, our human wills are healed and redirected toward heavenly and eternal, rather than earthly and temporal, purposes. It is blissfully united with the holy will of God.
To enter into the bliss of being united with Christ in this way, a mystical process needs to take place within us. We need to come to understand that we are nothing and that Christ is everything.
Self-humbling is not something that we, as humans, are able to do through the strength of our egos. We are hardwired, instead, to do the opposite. We self-elevate.
The Lord knows this, which is why He gives us an example and shows us how to bow our hearts before God: Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2.8).
When we diminish ourselves, we create an internal environment that attracts, rather than repels, the Holy Spirit of Christ, and which, as a result, draws Him and His holy power, toward us.
Such a process is, like the power itself, a gift of grace. God will only allow us to become aware of how fragile, broken, weak, sick and in need of saving we are, when He sees that our hearts are earnestly seeking something more than the power of this world.
When Jesus sees hearts like this, thirsty hearts that are open and that are yearning to be quenched, His grace begins to pour and transformation takes place. As the healing stream of His divine love begins its restorative work, changing our souls and our minds (and with them our feelings and our convictions) to be in harmony with Him, it brings to life what was dead.
We are dead but our minds think that we are alive. As the Lord’s life begins to fill us, however, it brings light to our minds, awakening us to the reality that we are under the control of death, rather than life.
Christ, therefore, comes toward us to encourage us to continuously offer up our personal power to Him and place it upon His altar as a sacrifice of love, in order that the space within us that receives His grace can increase and increase.
The more that this space within us increases by our acceptance of our weakness and need for His strength—which is the power of divine life—the more that His power can then come and rest upon us.
Heavenly power that allows us to do “all things” because we no longer live through our own limited strength alone, but through the unlimited strength of the Lord Christ with whom we are, as a result of our humbling ourselves before Him and allowing His grace to work in us and through us, joyously united: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4.13).
Amen +
Author of You Are Mine and Apocalypse, Sister Anastasia writes on the role of the ancient, ascetic Church in a rapidly changing, modern world.
Source: Apocalypse Substack
