Weak is the New Strong

Are you strong? Are you powerful, a conquering warrior who has never lost a fight? Are you the kind of man or woman who strolls with swag into any room and people notice, and everything just goes your way? Are you the owner of a spotless rap sheet, the doer of all noble deeds, with no scars or emotional wounds to speak of? Do you pretty much have life by the tail, and the world is going to be missing out something fierce if it doesn't know about you?

Then stop reading this, and move along. 

But are you weak? Are you always plagued by that thing - you know what it is for you - that sticks in your craw, that keeps you up at night, that rears its ugly, annoying little head whenever you're poised for a personal victory? Are you more on the downtrodden, delicate, self-deprecating side of self-esteem? Do you hate feeling weak, being weak, coming up lame, never coming through in the clutch, and it's all because of that doggone weakness inside? 

Then I'm talking to you....and I know exactly how you feel. 

AND...I have fantastic news for you.

You see, it's ok to be weak. It's ok that you are weak sometimes, and that you have this weakness that taunts you and trips you up in critical times. In fact, it's more than ok. It's a reason to throw a party, for crying out loud!

As your party music of choice starts thumping and the balloons are inflating and the sparkly hats and champagne are being passed around, let me tell you why it's ok that the banner hanging from the ceiling at your personal party says "Congratulations, Weakling!"

.........It's because weak is the new strong.

Let's talk about St. Paul. No one, and I mean no one, had more to boast about than he did. He had the ministry all ministry-minded people would die for, and technically, he almost did die for it a number of times (see: Laundry List of Run-In's, Near Death Experiences, and Hardships of Paul...you'll have to read most of the New Testament after the book of Acts to get that list, but it'll be worth it), and ultimately his faith cost him his life. But the guy was pretty much the main catalyst to the growth of the Christian church around the known world in the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. He was a missionary extraordinaire, and when he talked, or wrote an epistle, people paid attention. From a human standpoint, Paul did work, son. 

But if you know his story of his life as Saul, you'll also know that no one had more reason to be ashamed, and he called himself the Chief of Sinners in his writings. He was a prime persecutor of the church of Christ at first, and about the closest thing to a member of ISIS in his day. Yet he spent his later years in life leading and growing that very body of followers of Jesus after a dramatic conversion. 

Paul spends the first few verses of chapter 12 of his second letter to the church he planted in Corinth talking about boasting. He references a story of amazing church lore where a man was called to heaven and heard [and saw] "inexpressible things." That would be a guy worth bragging about. What a rock star HE must have been. But, Paul says, "Me? Nothing to write home about, unless of course you want to talk about my weaknesses." In verse 5 he says 

"I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses."

Not exactly something you'd hear many men say, is it? 

It's not like this was a cultural thing. Men in those times in that part of the world - or any part, for that matter - always wanted to be macho. They rarely wanted to show or admit any weakness, and that's no different from men today. In our culture today there's an obsession about power. I can't say for sure that it's only a male thing, but it sure weighs heavier on men to be powerful, and not talk about what's weak in us. 

Nobody likes to talk about their weaknesses, much less admit they have any to begin with.

I've seen it. You've seen it. Most men - and many women too - will run from their weaknesses. If the weaknesses are uncovered by others, the next thing they'll run from is therapy, or any healthy solution.

Power is everything today. It's attractive, engaging, commanding, and sexy. It conveys status, dominance, mastery of something, dependability, value. Power and strength also offer a protective shield for our pride. The rich, famous, and powerful never have to let the world in, or have their weaknesses on display, unless they choose to. Even the average Joe wants to stay carefully protected behind whatever power he can project into his world. Weakness, on the other hand, is a time-waster. It's inconvenient. It bogs down the company, the family, the team, the church ministry...Who wants to deal with that? Just ask Jesse "The Body" Ventura. He ain't got time to bleed. Who of us has time for weakness? 

God does. For the Maker of the Universe, who loves his people immensely and beyond our comprehension, weakness is opportunity for him. Not opportunity to exploit, but to come to the rescue, to shine, and to advertise to the world, that weakness is ok because HE is strong - at all times, in all things, and for everyone. 

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:7 that he had a "thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me." 

We all have thorns, don't we? Paul goes on to redefine this thorn as merely a "weakness." Something in him that he preferred not to have or deal with, that slowed him down, embarrassed him, and made him feel inadequate or vulnerable, and Satan routinely used it against him. 

What's your thorn? We all have them. We all have a personal area of weakness that feels to the psychological side like a little, obnoxious thorn lodged in the skin, that can't be pulled out with a tweezers. We've worked to eradicate these thorny weaknesses, and we've covered them up a thousand times, but they just....won't....go...away.

So we turn to God eventually, after all of man's grand efforts fail miserably to renew himself and develop personally into some self-made giant within. We come to that breaking point in life when we just HAVE TO be rid of the thorn or it'll do us in, and cause despair. 

"How many times have you heard me cry out,

'God, please take this'?

How many times have you given me strength to

just keep breathing?

Oh, I need you...

God, I need you now."

These lyrics from a song by the Christian musician Plumb come ringing into my head when I think of my thorn, my weakness (YouTube the song after reading this, it's an awesome, powerful song - seeing her perform it live brought me to tears). 

Did you know Paul cried out to God for his thorn to be taken away three times? Seeing how Paul describes his ordeal with this "thorn in the flesh," and knowing how my own life has gone, I'm guessing this wasn't three times all on Thursday one week, back in Shevat of 57 (that's like saying "January of 2014"). I'm guessing it was at three separate passages of time, in seasons of his life and ministry, when he had good, knock-down-drag-out prayer sessions with the Lord that culminated quieter periods of ongoing inner turmoil, and he pleaded with God to eradicate this weakness from his existence. We all know what it's like to feel like we just can't go on unless the weakness is taken away. The thorn may be a tiny little thing in our emotional skin, but its weight is tremendous.

But just as God didn't choose to remove the cancer of sin from mankind's fabric with a wave of a magic wand, neither did he choose to take Paul's thorn away. Nor does he just make ours go away either - not all the time. Rather, he redeems the thorns. He redeemed us, through Jesus Christ, thus giving us a new standing with God that overcomes the relevance of the thorns.

This is how Paul described it: 

"But [the Lord] said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' " (verse 9a)

I've had a real weakness in me revealed in recent weeks that sort of defies what I've always thought of myself, and shakes my confidence in an area where I always felt I was strong. It's definitely going to be a thorn going forward. When this kind of thorn shows up - and some days I think of have several others, too - it leaves a man feeling suddenly more vulnerable about the things he wants to take on in his future. The trust in oneself to win life's battles can be eroded so thoroughly when you find yourself staring face to face with a glaring weakness. Is it time to panic? Is it time to crumple up the plans or dreams I've drawn up and throw them aside? It is time to curl up and get overrun with depression?

Not even close. 

It's party time, people. It's cause for celebration! 

"...I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties..." (verse 10)

Why, Paul? How does that make any sense?

"For when I am weak, then I am strong." (end of verse 10)

During all the years of human history, and in all those microcosmic individual moments in fallen people's lives, leading up to the day Christ hung on the cross, mankind was very weak. Sin itself, and the eternal spiritual death sentence it brought along, was the elephant in the room, and the thorn in the flesh. 

What were we going to do?? How were we going to overcome it?? How could it ever be right again?? Why would God our Father in heaven ever want anything to do with impure, weak people like us??

But on that beautifully black Friday afternoon, as Jesus gave up his last breath, uttering "Tetelestai" ("It is finished"), he made it all right. He overcame it. He tore down the heavy veil that hung between us and our holy God, and brought wayward sons and daughters back together again with their daddy. He redeemed us. His unbelievable, sacrificial display of love that we couldn't possibly deserve - better known as "GRACE" - stepped into human history as he died, and it made us -

FORGIVEN. 

It made us strong, though we were weak on our own. 

God used Paul, his rockstar of a missionary, whose name has graced many a chapel or cathedral around the world since his time, as a striking example of a man being kept humble through weakness. If such a man would only brag on himself with respect to the stuff the rest of us would laugh or sneer at, then I think the rest of us can take a page out of his journal. 

So let the party go on. Take a selfie of that weakness. Don't be ashamed of it. Continue to work on yourself, sure, and seek to glorify your Lord through personal growth and a constant maturation of your faith and spiritual life. But NEVER, EVER let your weakness become reason to despair. Let it put a smile on your face. Even though that smile would be an impossible thing for the face of someone who doesn't yet know that Jesus' love is for them too, YOU can smile it up big time. You can throw that party and boast in the weakness that God allows you to live with, because it means something powerful...

It means God is on display. 

If we were strong all the time, in every way, the world would look at us. We don't want that. We want them to look at Jesus. Weak is the new strong. 

When you're weak, God gets to be strong. He gets to do all over again, through you and your thorn, what he once did in the most glorious way as he bought us back from sin and death. He's using you and your weakness as the stage to show how awesome a God he is and how awesomely he can come through for fallen people. 

For people like me, who are so fallen and weak, that's some pretty fantastic news! 

Next time that thorn shows up....Let that initial reaction pass, then go look in the mirror, and say to yourself, "That's right! Now God can show up!"