Strength in our Weaknesses

Today I wanted to talk about our weaknesses. As we go through life we always want to be seen as strong in something. It’s what we want to be known for, our strengths. We hope our strengths outshine our weaknesses. And we want to strengthen areas where we are weak. I’ve never heard a manager say “try and be weaker,” in anything. Any weakness we have we say, how we can be better in that area? Usually we call that personal growth or personal development. Now that type of growth isn’t a bad thing, but like many things in life it can get in our way of spiritual growth by messing with our mindset and our approach to our spiritual life.

God loves to use our weaknesses for his will. And he does so for a variety of reasons. Of course he also uses our strengths, but there’s something special about our weaknesses. Now when I’m talking about weakness, I’m referring to a variety of things. A weakness for someone can be another person, something material, a characteristic, a skill, or even when we just feel like we’ve gone through a lot of undeserved persecution and we are tired, we feel weak. We’re going to go through some examples of these weaknesses.

Women were a weakness for Samson, money is a weakness for greedy people, leadership was a weakness for Gideon, speaking was a weakness for Moses.

God spoke through Moses before Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt

God used Gideon to lead an army to take down the Midianites with a very small army and no weapons

Samson, after being deceived by a women, was captured by the philistines, had his eyes gauged out, made one of their slaves, and because of his disobedience the Lord left him and caused him to lose his greatest strength, which was his raw physical strength. The philistines bring him out to mock him as they are celebrating at one of there temples, and in Samson’s weakest moment physically, he reaches out to God to give him strength one last time so he can bring down the temple. God answers and he killed many more Philistines in his death than the entire time while alive.

Those are just a few examples of people who had weaknesses but were lead by God to do great things and used them in their areas of weakness.

There’s a couple big reasons God uses our weaknesses:

To keep us humble.

When we are successful in an area of weakness, we know we cannot be prideful. This gives God all the glory.

So we cling to God.

How likely are you to ask for help when you are very confident about a task you need to do? How about when you are asked to do something you have no idea on how to complete? We are much more likely to cling to God when we know how much we need Him. Confident or not, we should always cling to God for help, but He knows we’re more likely to seek Him the less confident we are.

And here’s the thing when it comes to our weaknesses, in terms of conforming to the characteristics of Christ, we are ALL weak.

We may be tempted to think “I’m been a pretty strong leader, strong-willed, I’ve done some self-development, studied the Bible for quite a few years, I get the gist of it, God how about you take the backseat and relax, I got this.” We may not literally think that, but whenever we find ourselves not continuously seeking God through the Word and in prayer, then we are living as someone who doesn’t recognize their need for God in their day-to-day lives. I was listening to a well known pastor on this topic, Paul Washer, and I like what he said, his comment was there are no great men of God or those are that are super Holy, there are only men that have a greater understanding of how weak they are and how much they need God because of it.

Our weakness should drive us toward God. I don't care how strong you think you are spiritually, John 15:5 says,

John 15:5 NLT

5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

Apart from Jesus you can produce nothing of value. No fruit. You have to remain in Him, and then He will remain in you. We are weak and we need God, all the time. God has given us His word so we can know Him. We must read the Bible, front to back, study it, meditate on it, memorize it, know it.

One temptation when thinking about our weaknesses is that we can start to use it as an excuse to sin. “I’m just too weak to resist” x, y, or z. No that is a lie. Indulging in sin because we know we can keep asking for forgiveness and desiring to please God but struggling with the same sin is very different. There are sins that we will commit many times, but we should not accept that as the default and think it doesn’t matter because I can repent as many times as I want. That’s what Satan wants you to believe. Yes as a believer in Christ, you can repent as many times as you need to, we all need his forgiveness continually, there’s not a single moment where we would be fine without it. But to use that as an excuse to give into sin is not right. That’s a mindset that’s still in bondage. By the power of Christ we can resist the devil.

1 Corinthians 10:13 NLT

13 The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.

We will have many temptations in life, but as we just read, God’s in control of the amount of temptation that we face and He will not allow it to be more than we can stand. And the scripture doesn’t stop there, it doesn’t read “you will be able to find a way”, it reads “He (God) will show you a way out.” Without God, you’re bound to fail.

2 Corinthians 12:7–10 NLT

7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. 8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

In verses 1-7 Paul is defending himself, because there were some false teachers that came to Corinth trying to turn the people away that Paul evangelized to. In order to get these new Christians to turn to their teachings, they had to try and discredit Paul. These false teachers are what many believe to be Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Even in this scenario though, God did not remove them, and for the reason that Paul gave, to keep him from becoming proud, which is one of the big reasons for the weaknesses that God allows us to have.

Besides this verse talking about God’s power in our weaknesses, there’s one other key thing I want to focus on here and we find it in the first part of God’s response to Paul. “My grace is all you need.”

The word Grace in the Greek language is Charis. It is a favor bestowed on a person that didn’t earn it. It is used 155 times in the New Testament. It is God’s divine favor on those who deserve wrath. Whenever you read about God’s grace, many times you’ll read adjectives upon adjectives, it’s because His grace for us is so much that we cannot emphasize it enough. I’m going to fire off a few verses here talking about God’s grace for us.

Ephesians 2:7 NLT

7 So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 9:8 ESV

8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

John 1:14 ESV

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Cling to God and he will use you and your weaknesses, and if you stumble, do not wait to repent to the Lord. His grace is abundant and he wants you to come to Him right away, recognizing your need for Him and your relationship with Him. Another thing I liked that the Pastor I listened to had said was sometimes people act like they are in a penalty box when they sin, thinking we have to wait before we go before the Lord, we need to makeup for wrongdoings first. That is not true at all. There’s nothing we did to earn our salvation and there’s nothing we can do to lose it and gain it back or to lose God’s trust in us. God knows we are dependent on Him. It doesn’t matter the sin you’ve commited or how many times you’ve committed it, repent, recognize your weakness and depend on Him more and more moving forward. The more we can understand our weaknesses the more we understand how much we need God. As Paul said, “For when I am weak, I am strong.” We are strong when we remain in Christ. Seek God through prayer and His Word.