What Flashlight Batteries Can Teach Us About GRACE

 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NKJV)
⁹ 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.

 Probably many of us remember when we first learned a valuable lesson when it comes to using batteries. It could have been in a classroom at school or it could have been at home, but the lesson was clear; if you don’t put the batteries in properly, they will not produce the results you desire. A well-known minister of the gospel recently shared a message in which he used a wonderful illustration of how understanding how batteries work gives us a great visual for a better understanding of GRACE. It is worth remembering.

To produce light, flashlight batteries must be connected by placing one positive end of a battery against the negative end of a second battery. If you place two batteries together at the negative end or at the positive end, nothing happens. This minister noted that two positives never work.

The analogy this minister shared is this. In our relationship with God, when we fall into works (trying to be good enough or trying to do enough to please Him) we become like a positive of a battery. When we place our positive (our efforts) against God’s positive (what Jesus already did), nothing happens. Why? GRACE only operates to its full potential when we come to God as a negative – offering nothing except our faith in His Goodness. The only thing God wants from us is for us to acknowledge our total need of Him. When we try to add our efforts to His completed work, we are saying in effect that what He did on the CROSS was not enough.

GRACE at its heart is “unmerited, undeserved favor.” It is God’s predisposition to be good to us and it is based totally on His Goodness not ours.  It works best, according to the above scripture, when we pair our weaknesses with His strength. Paul goes on to say that he boasts in his weaknesses. Shouldn’t we at least feel bad about them? NO, because GRACE has the power to turn what we can’t do through our efforts into something beautiful as a result of His GRACE. That is the boasting that Paul was referring to.

The apostle Paul wrote countless revelatory nuggets to better help us understand Kingdom principles. Surely one of the simplest yet most comprehensive things he wrote is found in I Corinthians 15: 10; “I am what I am by the GRACE of God.” There is not any good thing in any of our lives that does not originate from the GRACE of God, including our next breath. As we choose to focus on God’s GRACE, our weaknesses will be transformed into something that God can use in our lives to advance His Kingdom through us. Just as a flashlight produces light when the positive end of the battery is connected to the negative end of another battery, so His light will shine in us when we connect our weaknesses to His GRACE!

This is GRACE, and it is indeed AMAZING!!!

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