God doesn’t use us in spite of our weakness, but BECAUSE of it.

Introduction

Good evening everyone and welcome back to our time in the word. I trust you’ve had a full day and that you’ve been looking forward to our time together.

Last night I introduced you to my amazing wife Amanda, proof that even losers like me can take hold of the grace of God and marry beyond our station. Tonight I want to introduce you to my baby girl Grace. Grace is 10 years old now and as sassy as you can imagine. What is it about being 10 where you start to believe that you genuinely know more than your parents do? That you always think they are just stupid and have no idea how to make decisions? That you question everything they do always and think they owe you an explanation. Let me explain to all of you, on behalf of your parents tonight, that you are not as smart as you think you are. You will lecture us about forgetting something that you needed but you’ll do the same thing 4x this week and think that we shouldn’t speak to that at all or we’ve committed some great sin against you. I digress but I’ve been forced to explain every decision I’ve made for a little over a year and she’s only 10. But she didn’t used to be this way.

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People asked me all the time, “Grace doesn’t look anything like you.” Well there are other ways you can tell she’s mine.

But what alot of people never know about Grace is how much of a gift she was. You see, when Amanda and I got married, we had been together for 5 years through high school and college. I hate saying that because 98% of high school relationships end and I tell all my young ladies not to date in highschool at all. They promptly tell me, “Well you guys did and it seems like it worked out for you.” Yeah, well don’t do what I did. But, in those 5 years we talked about the kind of marriage we wanted, what our goals and plans were for the future, what kind of family life we wanted, and where we thought God would use us in our lives. Both of us were asking the entire time, if our vision of our future was compatible with the others, in essence, could I build my life with this person at my side. I will say I fell in love with Amanda within my senior year in high school. She took alot longer but by the end of my Freshman year in college we were engaged. However, Amanda didn’t want to be married while I was in college. She says because she wanted me to just focus on college but in all reality I think she was hedging her bets. I think if I failed out she was gonna pull the plug and look for better options. Just joking but seriously. I graduated and that July we moved to Savannah MO, in the tippy top left corner of MO. We started youth ministry and our honeymoon was moving up to get started.

Now, you won’t know this yet but when you get married, it will be roughly 20 minutes before people start asking you 2 questions: When are you going to buy a house and when are you going to have kids. Within 2 years we had a house and within those 2 years we still didn’t have any kids. We finally went to the DR and she told us we had only 2 chances of having children: slim and none. What no one knew about us, is that Amanda had never wanted anything more than to be a mom. She’d looked forward to it all her life. I had really only a couple goals for my life and one of them was to be a good dad. My dad bailed and dove into alcoholism head first and I was going to make sure that wasn’t my story. Neither of us had ever considered this news. It broke us. Every time a well meaning and if I’m all together honest, ignorant person came up and asked “When are you guys gonna have some kids,” it was like our hearts were ripped out. So when we found out we were pregnant with a baby girl that we never were supposed to have, we prayed and thanked God for the grace he poured out on two unworthy kids like us.

So on 7/19/13 Grace Adele Davidson was borne. In Hebrew, you read the language right to left instead of left to right like we do. So I named her Adele Grace which in the Hebrew means “God is the everlasting God of Grace.” We wanted every time we said our daughters name for it to be a reminder to us that God gives us good gifts that we are not worthy of.

Tension

You see, one of the greatest struggles I had and that I couldn’t explain to others is how helpless and hopeless it felt during that season of infertility and great feelings of insecurity. I had alot of confidence in myself and had achieved everything I could up until that point. I’d almost become kind of proud of that fact about myself but this was something I had no control over. I couldn’t do anything to make this right. I felt weak, helpless, and like I was experiencing God’s rebuke for something I’d done before or something.

Have you ever felt that way before, like nothing you didn mattered because the mountain you were up against was too tall to climb? Like everybody else seems strong enough, good enough, powerful enough, or like they all know something you don’t and they can conquer such things. They can, but not you.

Last night we discussed Paul’s opening to chapter 12 in 2 Corinthians and his response to those that sought powerful speakers and amazing experiences and secret knowledge. Paul’s response to those people was that he would rather they hear the real gospel preached than be attracted to him. Ultimately Paul shows us that no matter what people say about us, God has the final say. Today we continue on. Read with me started again in verse 1.

Truth

2 Corinthians 12:1–8 (ESV)

1 I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.

2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.

3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—

4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

5 On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses—

6 though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.

7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.

Pray

Exposition

Verse 7 and 8 give us a pretty dire picture that many people can relate to.

First, Paul describes a thorn in his flesh that torments him. That brings him low, inflicting him with struggle.

Now, it has widely been guessed at what this thorn in the flesh was for Paul. I use the word guess here on purpose because we simply don’t know. It’s mostly conjecture by scholars who want to try and wager what they know of Paul to gain the “most likely” scenario. It’s been said that it could be incessant temptations, opponents everywhere he went, chronic maladies (such as ophthalmia, malaria, migraine headaches, and even epilepsy), to a disability in speech. No one can really give a good guess except to say whatever it was, it was physical and kept Paul from being able to do all that he would like to do.

My personal guess, for whatever its worth, is that I think Paul was struggling with blindness in the years following his conversion on the road to Damascus. The blinding light that took him from his horse to the ground, later revealed to be the light of Christ, whom he was persecuting at the time, I think left a lasting impact on his ability to function. Like Jacob, who decided he’d have a wrestling match with God throughout the evening before his meeting with Esau. He told the Lord that he wouldn’t let go of him until he recieved his blessing. God touched his hip, popping it out of socket and giving him a limp for the rest of his life, to remind him of the match and his need for God’s intervention. Up until that time he’d made his way through his life by scheming and squabbling to get by. This time it was all about to catch up with him as the brother he’d wronged was coming for supposed vengence. Yet, he cried out to God to be there for him and bless him. God did but also gave him the limp as a reminder.

I think that similarly, Paul was given a reminder that he was once blind and then Christ gave him vision. Now, later on as an apostle, he was losing his eyesight, a given reminder of his condition so many years ago and the continued spiritual condition of the people he ministered too.

Oftentimes, one of the greatest objections people have to belief in God is what is known collectively as the problem of evil. If God is so good and so powerful then why is their so much evil in this world? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God’s people, those who even follow him, have the same calamity's fall on them as those who do evil. We are a people who struggle with struggle. We don’t like to suffer and if a person did like suffering we would declare something to be wrong with them. Yet, struggles, trials, and pain seem to be a common feature of our humanity. We all face struggles and pain in our lives and how we choose to deal with them defines alot about us.

I was in college taking a class called the family and we were talking about generational and family trauma. Issues that take root in your family and follow you around. The conversation culminated in a test called the ACES or “Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey”. The test basically asks you 10 questions about things that happened in your home and how you were raised before the age of 18. It asks questions about different kinds of abuses, Physical or emotional neglect, Separation or divorce, A family member with mental illness, A family member addicted to drugs or alcohol, A family member who is in prison, or Witnessing a parent being abused.

I scored a 9/10, the highest anyone else got in the class was a 6. The teacher stopped class, came up to me and gave me a hug. “Juston are you okay?” I responded, “I thought I was”.

Up until that point I had never really confronted all the things that I had been through as a kid. They were just normal to me. After all, whose family doesn’t have some hard times. But apparently it wasn’t normal to have to protect your mom from your dad or tuck him in from another drunken bender. Apparently it wasn’t a common place activity for parents to leave for days at a time and not put groceries in the house. Most kids apparently didn’t have to use tape to get the animal hair off their clothes because they had a washer and dryer. And when I told my friends that I had to consistently hide my dad’s guns so he wouldn’t threaten my mom or himself anymore, they couldn’t believe it. The first funeral I did as a pastor was for my cousin Cody who OD’d on heroine. These kinds of traumas and trials and struggles follow around the Godly and the ungodly alike. They can and do happen to us whether we have a relationship with Christ or not and sometimes people struggle with that.

I, for one, love the picture of Paul, a man whose only desire is to make Christ known among the people, to also have calamity as a part of his life. He struggled too and by the way so did Jesus. Christ is the ultimate example that God is not some aloof or far off creator who doesn’t know us or our struggles. He is intimately aware of our pain and our temptations because he went through the same things. Yet, despite the struggle, he never stooped to sin. Even when the pain and torment eventually led him to a cruel cross that he never deserved. When we asked why do bad things happen to good people we must realize that the worst thing ever happened to the only really good person ever. Christ was perfect. No sin. No failure. Only holiness. Only living to please his father and so love and grace and mercy to those that God wanted to free from their sin. Yet the worst act of evil ever fell upon his shoulders to buy our pardon. Paul was not immune to this either and neither will you or I be. We will have hardships and struggles as a constant companion on our travels in this life, yet take heart that you are in good company when you strife to glorify God and serve him anyway.

Secondly, Paul has grown to understand the benefits of this thorn in keeping him humble, even though its not what he would prefer.

In Paul’s former life he was not just a Pharisee but a Pharisee among other Pharisees. He explains in Philippians 3:4-7

Philippians 3:4–7 (ESV)

4 though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more:

5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;

6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Of all the people who could and would brag on their supposed righteousness and holy behavior before the Lord, Paul had just as much a right if not more than them. That is, before he met Christ. He used to put so much creedance in these things before he really realized how they were all meaningless. Christ was all that was important. Such things that used to command so much of his time and energy were now lost for the sake of the gospel, the real hope and truth for the people.

Paul has grown to see the folly in his old way of valuing his life. It used to be based on all he could achieve and work for, but now he realized that the only thing that mattered was Jesus’ sacrifice for him. It is all, always about Jesus and his work on the cross on our behalf. We can’t earn God’s love. We can’t work enough in our lives to make ourselves lovely enough to be worthy of God’s love. No, no, no, its all about his mercy on us and the grace he poured out to make a way for our salvation. Paul, now realizing this, recognized the gift that his physical weakness has been. It reminds him of who he is and who he isn’t. He is not capable of his own salvation, only Jesus is. He is not prize to be won but Jesus bought him anyway. He is not capable of being the best kind of apostle but through Christ he is made enough.

You see, struggles can teach us lessons that success never could, that is, if we will but lean into them and learn the lessons they are whispering.

The book of James says it better than I ever could.

James 1:1-8 (ESV)

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,

3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;

8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

How can we ever count the trials/struggles/problems that inflict our lives as joy, let alone “pure joy”? When we realize that even they can be used to keep our eyes fixated on Jesus Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We will encounter the valley from time to time and if you haven’t yet, just wait a minute because it is just right there. Paul would rather not live with this torment but he’s learned to respect and even understand the goodness that it brings into his life. We too can learn this if we will but seek the Lord in the valley of the shadow instead of running from the struggles. No one likes pain but i can and will teach us lessons if we seek Christ through it all.

Third, God has a habit of utilizing the weak to point to his power.

Moses was raised in the very house that pharoah lived in. Yet he fell from that position because he rashly murdered a man and fled. He went from Egyptian royalty to a shepherd without any status. Yet, God chose to use him to bring the entire nation of Hebrews out of captivity. Moses’ response to this appointment, “But Lord I can’t talk very good.” Scholars like to speculate on whether or not moses had a speach impediment or he just wasn’t that confident in his public speaking, but either way, he wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice. Yet God chose him because the people would see the power of God made manifest in his life.

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, lands as the head of a wealthy man’s estate and then in prison because of lies. Yet, God raised him up to be the magistrate of Egypt, saving the nation and all the surrounding areas.

David, shepherd, musician, king

Mary, girl, no name, no status, ill-repute, mother of God’s son.

Peter and the Disciples “who are these men from Galilee who speak with authority.

Paul, pharisee, persecutor, scholar, self-righteous, Apostle, Blind.

You see, God is in a habit of using the weak to prove his point. What point is that? That God doesn’t need the wealthy, the strong, the powerful, the savvy, the intelligent, or the proud to do his work. Instead, God chooses most often to use the weak to show his power in.

1 Corinthians 1:26–28 (ESV)

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;

28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,

By using the weak and the unremarkable to lead his people and to work in and through, God demonstrates his remarkable power and his strength in them. The way I’ve learned to say this is this, “God doesn’t just choose to use us in spite of our weakness, he uses us because of them.” When we allow God to use us, warts and all, weak and frail as we are, He gets the glory and we can glorify him in our weaknesses.

My first year as a youth pastor I was in Savannah MO. I had a middle school boy around 12 years old attend an event I was heading up. We had about 200 teens in our church after a Friday football game and I came into the room to about 30 kids around in a circle and I stepped in the circle to break up what was obviously going to be a fight. This kid had alot of problems and as a result, he would often run his mouth and cause problems in school. He was known for this but I didn’t know. As I stepped in to break up the two kids he threw a haymaker that I promptly blocked with my forearm. When I did, I noticed that he gripped in his fist a sharpened pencil that he had no doubt meant to stab the other boy with. As he raised up his head to see that he hadn’t been blocked by the boy but by me, his eyes welled up to about 4 times their normal size. The crowd started making “ooooOOOoOOO” noise which further scared him and he promptly ran from the room out the back door into the night.

Now, I was about 21 at the time and it was 1130 at night in a small town. I was in charge of this event and responsible for all the kids so I felt like I couldn’t just let this kid run away into the night, so I took off after him. I wasn’t in the worst shape in the world so I was able to keep pace with him and I just kept yelling, “Jacob, slow down. Stop. Let’s talk.” But at this point he was so worked up he knew he’d be in trouble and couldn’t allow me to keep up. He was a husky kid and eventually I caught up. He kept saying, “You don’t need to follow me, I know where I’m going, just go back.” I explained over and over that I couldn’t just do that and that I would walk him home to make sure he got there. Turns out he lived on the other side of town. Roughly 13 blocks away. So we were off. In the middle of the night. Me trying to make small talk and get to talk to this kid, knowing he didn’t want to talk and that he was embarrassed and likely going to get in major trouble. About 4 blocks from his house he turned around and I could see that he’d been crying the entire time. “Dude, can you just tell me what’s wrong? What happened? What’s going on? I’ve come all this way, come on man level with me. He finally let go of all of it.

“Juston you have no idea what its like to be me so just quit trying, you could never know.” Come on man, just try me, at the very least I can listen. He began to line out the story of his 12 year life. A life that looked a lot like 9/10 ACES. A life that looked a lot like my own. I told him, “man, I get that you might not believe this but let me tell you about who you are talking too right now.”

In that moment I realized a couple things. Not a moment of my heartache was unknown to God or a surprise to Him. That those times of struggle and weakness, and fear, and anxiety had all been used by God to mold me and shape me into who God was calling me to be. Not a moment of it was wasted. And here I was, being given a chance by God to use my pain to comfort and encourage another kid who was going through the same things. I realized then, that when God rescued me, saved me, and called me into his ministry to share his gospel with those around me that he bought my story and my life. That when I willingly gave him my life, weak as it might be, he could take those scars and turn them into billboards for his greatness. How about you?

Landing.

Questions:

Tonight we talked about the ways in which we can sometimes feel too weak to matter. Paul himself struggled with a physical ailment that we don’t fully know what it was. Have you ever struggled with feelings like that? Like you’re just not the right stuff to be used by God?

In our world today so many people struggle with feeling as if they have something to offer or that they are worth anything at all. Many struggle with mental health, anxiety, depression, and in the midst of all of that, people can lose their way. Why do you think as a culture we have become so down on ourselves?

Paul encouraged the people that even our struggles can have lessons that strengthen us if we will lean into them. Why do you think we run from trials and tribulations so much nowadays?

What do you think we could learn from Paul’s response to the things that make us feel weak? Have you learned that lesson?

Juston said tonight, “God doesn’t just use us in spite of our weaknesses, he uses us BECAUSE of them”. Do you believe that? In what ways have you seen God step in and show his power off when you thought you were too weak?

What lessons should we walk out of here this week with regarding our own strengths and weaknesses? How should this change how we view and respond to God?