Do you remember the TV commercial of years ago in which a businessman was sitting behind a desk, phone to his ear, telling his boss, “I can do that! I can do that!...” But as he hung up the phone, he asked himself, “How am I going to do that?!”
I think we’ve all been there at one time or another, either piled up with too much work and too little time in which to do it, or confronted with a challenge that seems beyond our capabilities. It makes us want to ask the same question: ‘How am I going to do that?’ In a society in which “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” has been a dominant mantra, we like to feel competent at what’s in front of us, at least adequate for the task. It’s unsettling feeling to realize that what is confronting us might be more than we can handle.
This has been the case throughout the history of mankind. Technology and other advances may have made it easier to be productive, but we still find times when the work seems bigger than the worker. Back in the early 1900s, for example, the Wright brothers were armed with mechanical skills and a vision for creating a flying machine. They dreamed of building a contraption capable of overcoming the pull of gravity, but I suspect there were times when they wondered, ‘What in the world are we doing?’ Thankfully, the “can’t do” impulse was negated by “can do” determination.
Can you imagine how Jesus’ disciples felt when first He called them to follow Him, and then gradually entrusted them with more responsibility? These weren’t individuals holding the equivalent of PH.D.’s and MBAs in their day. They weren’t even learned religious leaders. They were lowly fishermen, a despised tax collector and other men situated on the lower end of the social totem pole.
How do you think they felt when Jesus looked directly in their eyes and declared, “Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19)? Or when, as Mark 6:7 tells us, "He began to send them out two by two and gave them power over unclean spirits”?
I enjoyed the scene in the third season of “The Chosen” when Jesus, portrayed by Jonathan Roumie, announced His plan to send His disciples out for their first missionary foray. As the scene accurately depicts, I believe, they stared at Jesus with unbelief, even questioning what they had heard. In today’s vernacular they were asking a collective, “Say what?!”
Recently I enjoyed meeting with a longtime friend over coffee, reminiscing over the time we worked together on staff with the marketplace ministry Christian Business Men’s Connection (CBMC). We agreed that when we were called to our respective roles, we had no idea what we were signing up for. The only thing that really “qualified” us for the work was our realization of how unqualified we actually were.
Whether we’re at work, in college, doing volunteer work or engaged in the never-ending role of parenting, we like to feel as if we’re in control, that we’ve got things handled. But sooner or later we encounter challenges or obstacles that seem beyond our capacity. As unsettling and unnerving as that may be, that’s actually a good thing.
When my late friend Dave was being mentored early in his Christian life by another man named Dave, he would pour own his frustrations and grumble about the problems he was facing. His mentor would simply smile and say, “Dave, you’re in a great position!” Hearing this would aggravate my friend, but eventually he realized Dave was right. His sense of inadequacy inevitably forced him to turn to the ultimate source of strength, Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul, who as Saul the Pharisee seemed to believe he had the world by the tail, eventually came to the same realization. To wipe away Paul’s sense of self-sufficiency, God had given him “a thorn in the flesh,” an affliction of some sort that he never specified. Whatever it was, it kept him sufficiently humble and dependent on His Savior and Lord.
Paul wrote, “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 made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore 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. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).
“When I am weak, then I am strong”? Are you kidding me, we’re tempted to ask. Strength, not weakness, is what it’s all about we’re told, whether in sports, politics, the business world, or another field of endeavor.
And yet Paul, who had strength, status and worldly “stuff” that few others had prior to his Damascus Road encounter with Christ, came to understand his inadequacy was the path to true strength: “I consider everything a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:10).
Are you feeling weak today? Inadequate? You’re in a great position!
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