"And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for
you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather
boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses,
with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak,
then I am strong." 2 Corinthians
12:9-10
Charles H. Spurgeon said, "It is not our littleness that hinders Christ; but our bigness. It
is not our weakness that hinders Christ; it is our strength. It is not our
darkness that hinders Christ; it is our supposed light that holds back His
hand."
Surprisingly, we Christians sometime develop the wrong idea
about who needs what. Don’t
misunderstand. Certainly, we should obey
God’s commands, we ought to take seriously the work God has given us to take
the gospel to all people, everywhere, and surely we ought to be involved in
doing good in this world so full of things that are bad. We ought to make a positive difference.
The trouble is that we sometimes get the idea that God can’t
get along very well without us. We
develop the attitude that it is through our strength, our ingenuity, our
talents and effort that great things are done.
Actually, while we should offer Him all of these, our offering is really
pretty puny.
Charles Spurgeon understood something about God’s
greatness. It works best when we don’t
hamper it by getting our puny little selves in God’s way. In fact, we end up accomplishing more and
better things when we allow God to work in and through us.
When you think about all the great things that God has done
throughout man’s history, you’ve got to be impressed with how He used the least
expected resources. Take the nation of
Israel. Compared to other nations, it
never was really much at all, yet God used Israel to bring the Messiah into the
world.
Getting more specific, who would have picked an isolated
shepherd, keeping a flock out in the middle of nowhere, to be the guy to lead
God’s people out of Egypt? Yet that’s
exactly what Moses was at the time he was called. King David was just a young man, probably
rather small, yet he took on the giant Goliath when Israel’s army shook in fear
of him. And, who really expected a
handful of Galileans – former tax collectors, ex-revolutionaries, and fishermen
– to change the world? No, you just have
to stand back and be amazed at how God has chosen to do things. He picks the weaknesses in humans and turns
those weaknesses into great accomplishments, all to display His own power and
might.
The question for us, though, is how to get out of God’s
way. It’s not always clear. God certainly can and will use us for His
purposes. What isn’t so clear is when we
are effective tools and when we are a hindrance to what God wants to do. Perhaps the answer is to keep recognizing
that it doesn’t depend on us. Maybe the
concern is one of our faith in God. When
we realize that it’s not our strength that matters, but God’s, then we’re ready
to become as useful as possible in God’s hands.
It doesn’t mean we should sit down and refuse to act. It means that we act with the knowledge that
God will use us. That, by the way, is
really the only way you’ll ever take on things that look bigger than you, and
sooner or later, you’ll run into a few of those. When you do, let God make you
strong.
Scripture to Claim:
I would have despaired unless I had believed that I
would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. Wait for the
LORD; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the LORD.
Psalms 27:13-14
Psalms 27:13-14
