Can you imagine experiencing the perfect power of God? For clarification on this, look to 2 Corinthians 12:7-9.
“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfect in weakness.’”
All of us tend to focus on our flaws and faults with a good degree of guilt. Paul lets us know here that there is indeed a reason to accept our shortcomings with the basic understanding that they should be celebrated. It’s when we’re at our lowest that God will (if you let Him) show up and then proceed to show out. Talk about your powerful stuff!
All of us should take notice of what the Lord is telling Paul versus what Paul is asking the Lord for. It all starts with an honest look into a mirror, any mirror. We are who we are in relation to God’s assessment of us. The fact is, we can’t do this thing called life alone. You and I need help, and that help comes from only one source. It’s the perfect source, so be prepared to have some difficulty accepting the consequences of this truth.
Those consequences begin with recognizing that there is divine purpose in your particular set of weaknesses. Most of us want to reject the notion that our sinful ways have a spiritual, even a blessed, purpose in our lives. This text says it is our job to revel, if not celebrate, through spiritual recognition that we are fertile ground and God can do miracles in our dirt.
When you get a handle on this and a hand from God, you can overcome addictions, place restraints on your pride, deal with your physical infirmities and have peace when the world is falling apart around you. You also get Christ’s power to work with. No wonder Paul continues by saying, “That is why, for Christ’s sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
By itself, you might wonder how Paul comes up with that conclusion. But when taken in the context of the entire passage, isn’t it true that out of your most impossible of circumstances, when you recognized you can’t or couldn’t do it alone, He who loves you more than you love yourself showed up and, through His perfect power, rescued you?
How many testimonies does it take for you and me to give God the praise for accomplishing for us that which we cannot do for ourselves? Because of our frailties, isn’t it about time we give God his just due? He deserves it. We don’t.
Stop fighting yourself. Stop denying your insecurities and your passions. Accept them and give them, too, over to the Lord. Then step back and watch God do his thing in your life.
