For many years I felt ashamed of the word “weakness.” It was a lack of knowledge on my part, for I didn’t know that in times of weakness you really ‘know’ how strong you are.
Weakness does not mean you are weak, or that you are a weak link; we all have weaknesses, because none of us is perfect.
When I look back on my life some of my most fulfilling experiences have come about not through skill and strength, but through weakness.
I remember the roughest days of my life when my hope was almost gone, and when my ship was about to sink due to the heaviest winds and waves of life. I would cry out to my God in desperation and my prayer used to be “Lord, I am standing in my weakness; Lord, may you come and stand in your strength.” And I can tell you that God always came to my rescue and gave me his supernatural strength.
Today, I want to expand on that supernatural strength that comes from God. As I read the Bible I understand what Paul says concerning weakness in Romans and in 2nd Corinthians 12 and verse 10. He says that in this walk of faith and life we often gain strength when we are honest enough to talk about our weaknesses and weaker moments.
We all have weak moments. Paul said that he himself took pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in having needs, in persecutions in distresses when for the Lord Jesus Christ. For he concluded that, “When I am weak then I am made strong.”
If the great apostle can admit this why can’t we? So many of us are great pretenders. When we are around people we pretend to be strong and self-sufficient and self-reliant when in fact the strength we manifest is not our own, but the power of God working through us.
Please don’t mix up strength with energy because lots of people have energy to push people around, or energy to overwork the body until we’re exhausted. Some have energy to fight natural battles and at times even win. Yet all that does not mean you are strong.
God is looking for weak people to bless and to manifest His power.
For example, the story of Jacob in the Bible tells us about a man and his weaknesses and God’s ability to work mightily through them. Jacob had a reputation as a crooked person because he was a trickster and a con artist, but he lived without facing the truth of his ways. Not admitting his faults became an ever greater clutch and weakness that any of his other flaws. Jacob found himself fighting and wrestling with the angel of God demanding a blessing; read the story and you’ll discover that he never got the blessing or his name change until he accepted his weaknesses. So many of us are depending on natural gifts or brainpower or cunningness, yet we don’t even know our own limitations.
Even though Jacob got the blessing and his name changed to a greater name of purpose, he still left the presence of the angel with a limp to remind him of his weaknesses. Now let us remember then that only God can strengthen us and perfect us in our times of weakness.
Allow me to ask: have you reached the point in your own walk of faith where you can trust God with your life? Can you trust God with your health, your finances, the safety of your family, your career, your marriage, your traveling, etc?
I don’t want you to put up a barrier and begin to think you don’t need God’s strength in your life. Don’t be fooled by the mortgage payment in the bank or the diploma on the wall or the good job or the house of your dreams. Do not allow these things to make you believe that you don’t need help. If you think like that you must understand that it is a false perception of strength, for your strength does not lie in worldly goods or commodities, but only in the all-powerful strong and mighty God.
He gives us strength beyond human understanding and His grace is sufficient for you. His strength is made perfect in your weakness; the problem is that we are trying to deal with the issues in our lives in our own strength.
May you be encouraged to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might?