My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

When my youngest child was four years old, she wanted to do everything herself, whether getting dressed or making her own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She refused to ask for help.

On one occasion, I observed her trying to open a new jar of jelly. The seal on the peanut butter jar already had been broken, so it was easy to open. But the seal on the jelly had not been opened. She strained and strained to open the jar.

Eventually, she gave up. Then, at that very moment of defeat, something glorious happened. She brought the jelly jar to me.

Finally, my daughter confessed her weakness. Her only option was to ask her daddy to open the jar—to do for her what she couldn’t do for herself. What was impossible for her was easy for me.

The same thing is true for us as children of God. What is impossible for us is easy for him. This is the secret the Apostle Paul discovered at a low point in his life when he couldn’t open his own jar. He discovered that the Jesus who opened the most impossible jar of them all on the cross was able “to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.”

If only I’ll be weak enough to ask.