In Our Weakness

Have you ever been confused by Bible verses that talk about strength? Have you ever been discouraged by your own weakness? Chances are, that if you're human, you've felt this way. What does God mean when He talks about true strength, and how might we experience the fullness of what He has for us as His children?

What is strength - true, biblical strength? Psalm 18 is riddled with language that pertains to strength:

“I will love You, O Lord, my strength” (Psalm 18:1a). 

“My God, my strength, in whom I will trust” (Psalm 18:2b). 

“My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (Psalm 18:2c). 

“For by You I can run against a troop, by my God I can leap over a wall” (Psalm 18:29).

“It is God who arms me with strength” (Psalm 18:32a). 

“He teaches my hands to make war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze” (Psalm 18:34).

Running against enemies, leaping over walls, bending a bow that is physically unbendable - made of heavy bronze - these are the images that David chooses to describe what can only be a supernatural strength. And little wonder that he declares, “It is God who arms me with strength”. 

But how does that work for you and I, Christians who face the realities of faintness of heart, fear in our minds, and fatigue in our bodies? Is this promise still for us, even as it was for ancient warriors? Well, obviously the biblical answer is yes, and yet it is hard to translate such confident verses into concrete reality. Beautiful lines of Scripture must meet flesh and blood, and the two must envelop one another. This is a miracle only accomplished by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Paul dealt with this issue in profoundly discouraging ways. He knew himself to be terribly weak. Most contemporary believers don’t think of Paul that way though. We view him as the ultimate super missionary: invincible, unstoppable, unbeatable, and unbreakable. We see the man who gets stoned in Philippi and starts walking to the next city to preach the gospel because people needed to hear about Jesus and he was still alive to tell them. (Acts 14)

But what did Paul say about himself? “For we also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him by the power of God toward you” (2 Corinthians 13:4b). Weak in Jesus? What about being strong in Jesus? Is it even possible to be weak in Jesus? What about the God who arms us with strength?

When Paul was stoned in Philippi, his enemies supposed that he was dead. He was unconscious. He was bruised and bloodied. He was lying there on the ground. Paul was weak - no doubt about it - so weak that he seemed to be dead. So what happened? How did he go from being pretty much dead to being a full on missionary in the mere span of 24 hours?

“However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe” (Acts 14:20). 

This was not a natural recovery - this was a miraculous gift from God! God was saying that He still had work for Paul to do. It wasn’t time to die. God would give Paul everything, absolutely everything he needed to accomplish the things that He had called him to do!

Each of us are graced with those moments, those opportunities. They may not be as dramatic as stoning and preaching. But they are real and they are challenging. I used to struggle with chronic dizziness and I  remember when I was dealing with a bout of it right about the time that my friends and I were going to lead a worship service. The lights shone onto the stage, causing my head to swirl. The music on the sheet in front of me ebbed and flowed in and out of my rapidly diminishing focus. I planted my feet firmly on the stage, not wishing to fall. And I wondered, “how am I going to do this?”

But as the congregations stood to their feet and we began to worship the Lord, the room revived to its original glory of straight edges and defined features. The people’s faces came into beautiful focus. Every detail of the print on the page, every cascade of light blaring onto the stage, every photon perceivable to the human eye came into perfect vision. And God gave me complete relief so that I could focus on worshiping Him. Later on, the clear vision ebbed away, but only after God had given me the grace to accomplish what He had put before me to do. I began to learn what it means to declare that “It is God who arms me with strength”.

And yet, if strength is only physical ability, it is a rather sad strength indeed. If I may phrase it this way, I would dare to say that strength is stronger than that. Take for instance, another of Paul’s stories.

“And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 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.  Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

This was a time when Paul’s prayers were answered with a great big “no”. He was weak and he was going to bear that weakness without hope of shaking it off. Maybe the weakness was physical. Maybe it was mental, or even spiritual. We don’t know - and that’s a wonderful ignorance because we are then free to relate to Paul in endless ways.

There are times when God’s power is made perfect in our weaknesses. And those are the times when true strength is just a bit more stubborn. This is the strength to trust when you cannot feel God’s presence. This is the strength to take another step when you know that you might fall. This is the strength to submit to God and rest. This is the strength to say “You are God and I am not. You are good and You know what you are doing.” This is strength to lean on every promise of the Word of God so as to sing for joy right in the middle of your agony.

My great-uncle once told me that “it takes being strong to be kind”. I think what he meant was that strength is not always physical - sometimes the strongest people are the most gentle. That’s meekness. That’s who Jesus is.

Sometimes, my moments of weakness end up being the ones that God uses to display the glory of His power. I recall leading worship in my family’s livingroom for a YWAM group who had come to visit us. I was dealing with a digestive illness that caused me to be malnourished, and I shook quite often with involuntary tremors. That evening was no exception. I sat on the floor with my back against a cupboard. I covered myself with a quilt so that nobody would see how my body was quaking. And there on the floor, a picture of hunger-induced human weakness, I experienced Jesus allowing me to still lead the group in jubilant songs of praise. That wasn’t my strength - it was the power of the Holy Spirit within me, who is never beset by my weakness.

And this is perhaps one of the greatest spectacles witnessed by heaven and earth, angels and demons, all creation and everything that hangs in the balance. All watch in awe as God does one of His favorite miracles of all - turn weakness into strength - and the greater the weakness, the greater the strength. And whether the miracle is physical or not, it really doesn’t matter - God is still doing that wonderful work that is such a slap in Satan's face: displaying the power of the Holy Spirit through the church, through earthen vessels who are struck down but not destroyed, “always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:10).

Are you weak? Rejoice then, because you have been given that priceless opportunity, that readiness ripe for a miraculous display of the very glory of the God of the universe! There’s really nothing more exciting than that. And you may not always see your situation as such, but principalities and powers hang in the balance, watching with joy and dread to see what God is accomplishing - there’s that much at stake - it’s that amazing. And the best part is - it’s not up to you. Jesus is going to do all the work through you - you just need to rest in Him.

So what is strength - true, biblical strength? It is this: trusting in Jesus, resting in Him as His Holy Spirit works through you and your weakness to reveal His power in ways that will impact eternity and rock the world. But it’s not impressive. It’s not acknowledged by the world.

“But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:27-31).

This is what it means to be strong - even in our weakness.