Our Weakness and His Strength

The Lord has been impressing me to share a message He has been putting upon my heart for the past couple of weeks. Don't you just love those Holy Spirit moments? Those times when something just pops out at you and you know it is coming from our Lord. I've been having a lot of those moments lately, when you hear it in your spirit, God quickens it to your heart and everywhere you turn it's repeated over and over. It just stands out and you feel it pierce your heart and soul. It pops out in a song, you see it in a book, you read it on-line, you pass by a poster....there it is...over and over. You even walk down the street and a stranger is talking about the very thing which was upon your heart. It's then time to stop, open the scriptures and ask the Lord, "What is it you want to teach me?.

Today I want to share about finding strength in our weakness. A few weeks ago I was struggling with my weaknesses and feeling self-condemnation. I had been battling an infection for weeks and was having trouble overcoming it. My mind began to spin and reminisce about the past and my weaknesses which have kept me from getting where I want to be. My health has been a life long struggle which I have battled fiercely  and not been able to overcome. I would achieve a relatively healthy period, start moving ahead and achieve some goals and then bang! My health would decline and I would fall down. It caused me to have a tender heart towards God when I was a child, yet I would wander when things improved. I found Jesus as my Lord and Savior as a teenager during a very trying time of health issues which stretched into years of total despair and hopelessness. It was Jesus who brought me hope in this time of despair. I turned to Him and asked for this weakness to be taken away. He didn't take it completely away and I questioned why. Couldn't I better serve Him if I were well and healthy?

Our culture teaches us that it isn't good to have any weakness in our lives. People don't want to admit to any weakness for fear of rejection. The emphasis is on those things we can achieve by our own strength. All of us have weaknesses in our lives of one type or another, whether it be an infirmity or a sin we can't overcome. The scripture says in the first epistle of John, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  One thing that I have been learning as He has been teaching me about His light is.....the more we walk in His light....the more it exposes the sin in our lives. Have you ever sat in a chair in a room and watched as the sun's rays pour through a window? Have you noticed when the sunlight shifts and moves throughout the room, you notice dirt and dust everywhere as the light rays shine upon it? So it is when His light shines on us. In His Righteousness, we see our unrighteousness. Thank God, we have an advocate! "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks in our defense-- Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" 1 John 2:1 In the Gospel of John we read, "For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

He will remove our sins and we can overcome them through the power of His Spirit, but what about those other weaknesses, those things we can't escape? What about those things we have asked Him to help us overcome or asked Him to remove, yet they still remain? Why does He allow them?

The Apostle Paul wrestled with this very same thing. He said, "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."

More lessons learned on His grace and His strength made perfect in our weakness.....next time.