Our Weakness Is His Will
We all have weaknesses, and that's on purpose.
Sometimes, I refer to God, the Creator of the universe, as The Big Cheese.
It’s true.
Maybe that strikes you as silly, or even sacrilegious, but The Big Cheese knows my heart. It comes from a good place. An idiosyncratic place, sure, but a good idiosyncratic place.
Maybe it’s because I spent the first 13 years of my life in the cheese state (i.e. Wisconsin).
I can’t be sure. There’s just something about it that works.
We Are God’s Achievement
Some people are lawyers. Some make popsicle sticks. Some enjoy swimming. And some, like yours truly, have spent a fair bit of time in the cheese state.
In other words, we’re all unique. We all come from different walks of life, with different experiences, and different perceptions of the world.
And our uniqueness, our different-ness, is all of The Big Cheese. He created us, specifically, to be just the way we are.
Maybe that sounds like a simple point, or something you might have read before in a Hallmark card.
Let me go a step deeper.
Paul, in Ephesians 2:10, writes that “His achievement are we…” Another word for “achievement,” here, is “workmanship.”
We’re God’s workmanship. Another way of saying this is that we’re the result of His labors.
I imagine God, before times eonian, equipped with his celestial magnifying glass, and toolset, carefully tinkering away at each one of us, getting all the details just right, before, finally, breathing His life-giving spirit into our flesh.
All the details that make us who we are had to be just the way He wanted before giving us the gift of life.
That part of you that you hate, that you wish was different, that you wish was like someone else, was uniquely designed and calibrated precisely for you, by our Celestial Father.
He doesn’t hate the parts you hate. He loves the parts you hate. He was, after all, the One who engineered them.
And so, to hate ourselves, or to bully ourselves, internally repeating how we hate this or that part of who we are, amounts to hating what God labored over for a long time to make perfect in His sight.
A lot of times, when we find something about ourselves we don’t like, or wish was different, it’s because we’re comparing ourselves to someone else, who appears to have what we seemingly lack.
During those times, it’s important to remember where we come from, and Who created us to be the way we are. It wasn’t by accident. It was more than on purpose.
The men and women in Scripture had weaknesses. A whole lot of them, in fact. And, it turns out, those weaknesses were God’s mode of revealing Himself.
Those weaknesses are part of God’s achievement.
Our Weakness Is God’s Strength
Remember that Moses fella?
Well, I don’t believe he was too jazzed about the prospect of confronting Pharaoh, when God sent him on a mission to free the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.
I know he wasn’t. The whole thing sounded like a colossal pain in the rear.
Plus…
Moses was afraid. He was scared. As a result, he tried to back out, listing a series of reasons why the mission would fail.
We’ve all been there before. Fear can get in the way of us taking action.
Imagine how Moses must have felt, given the magnitude of his mission!
Being fearful, Moses naturally came up with excuses.
First:
Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the sons of Israel from Egypt. (Exodus 3:11)
And again:
And Moses answering said: And behold, they [the Israelites] will not believe me, and they will not hearken to my voice. (Exodus 4:1)
And finally:
Then Moses said to Yahweh: O, my Lord! I am no man of words even from yesterday, even from three days ago, even since You spoke to Your servant, for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. (Exodus 4:10)
These were legitimate reasons to not go through with the mission. At least, from Moses’ very human point of view.
But when God has a plan, nothing can thwart it, no matter how impossible it seems from the human perspective. (Job 42:2)
Moses’ failure, in that moment, wasn’t that he saw all the ways the mission would surely get derailed, from his point of view.
His failure was that he didn’t believe that, no matter how unlikely it seemed on the surface, God was in complete and utter control.
The Big Cheese likes to do this kind of thing. He likes when situations seem impossible for us, because that’s when He has the chance to show us Who He really is.
So…
How did God respond to Moses’ very reasonable objections?
Take a look:
Yahweh said to him: Who made the mouth for a human or Who is making one mute or deaf or with eye unclosed or blind? Is it not I, Yahweh? And now go, and I shall come to be with your mouth and direct you what you shall speak. (Exodus 4:11-12).
God directed Moses every step of the way.
The Big Cheese leveraged Moses’ insecurities and physical deficiencies to prove His power, and authority, resulting in the freedom of an entire nation of people.
What About Paul?
Paul, being the apostle to the nations, holds a special place for those of us in the Body of Christ. He’s the only one, in all of Holy Writ, to have written directly to us hillbillies, who never received the “oracles of God” (Romans 3:1-2).
Maybe God treated Paul differently than He did Moses?
Let’s see…
During his third missionary journey, we are told Paul was “given…a splinter in the flesh.” Even though he asked the Lord, three times, to take it away from him, the Lord responded: “Sufficient for you is My grace, for My power in infirmity is being perfected” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).
God could very well have taken away the splinter in Paul’s flesh, but it was not His will to do so.
Why?
Because it was through Paul’s infirmity that God was demonstrating His power. This turned out to be a pattern in Paul’s life.
Here’s a doozy.
In 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, Paul writes:
24 By Jews five times I got forty save one. 25 Thrice am I flogged with rods, once am I stoned, thrice am I shipwrecked, a night and a day have I spent in a swamp, 26 in journeys often, in dangers of rivers, in dangers of robbers, in dangers of my race, in dangers of the nations, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers in the sea, in dangers among false brethren; 27 in toil and labor, in vigils often, in famine and thirst, in fasts often, in cold and nakedness; 28 apart from what is outside, that which is coming upon me daily, the solicitude for all the ecclesias.
Paul could’ve just written: “Ladies and Gentleman, I have basically had the crap kicked out of me, endured the worst conditions, and almost starved. And despite all that, I’m worried about you all, believers, the ecclesia.”
His faith in the Lord was profound. And he well understood how his weaknesses revealed the Father to those who were believing.
In a phrase, Paul lived the life he heralded.
In Philippians 1:29-30, he writes:
…for to you it is graciously granted, for Christ’s sake, not only to be believing on Him, but to be suffering for His sake also, having the same struggle such as you are perceiving in me, and now are hearing to be in me.
Pain, suffering, and weakness are no fun. Not on the surface. Not from the human standpoint. In many ways, they’re awful.
But these things are an opportunity for us to grow in God, to trust in Him, to believe that He’ll do all that He said He’ll do.
It’s an opportunity for God to show us His plan, just as He did with Moses and Paul.
With Grace,
Concordant Student