Discovering Strength Through Weakness

Strength. We admire those who have it, and those who don’t have it desire it. Before Arnold Schwarzenegger became a motion picture star and then governor of California, he was a body builder with muscles rippling all over his body. His physical strength translated into prominence in the worlds of both entertainment and politics.

 

I remember as a boy seeing comic book ads featuring the “100-pound weakling” and how renowned body builder Charles Atlas’s training could transform him into a force to be reckoned with. As a society, and as a nation, we’ve always been enamored with strength: Military might; political power; financial influence; social clout.

But have you ever considered that being weakness – being weak – isn’t necessarily a bad thing?

 

In many areas of life, the “can-do” spirit is commendable. ‘I can do it!’ ‘I’ve got this!’ But sooner or later we’ll encounter times when our honest response is, “I can’t do this! I give up!” We hate being in that position, but experience has taught me that when I’ve reached the point of “I can’t!”, God is eager to respond, “I know you can’t. But I can!”

 

I could recount numerous times, at various stages of my life, when I’d reached the end of my proverbial rope. I had tried and done everything I could. Then, out of options and at the brink of despair, it was like God telling me, “Okay, now see what I can do.” As lo and behold, as old versions of the Bible would say, I found the Lord truly doing “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). 

 

Sometimes He met my needs by working through me; sometimes He did it in spite of me. Many times God’s message to us in times of crisis is, “Get out of the way and watch Me work.” In circumstances like these, He showed me that self-reliance isn’t the path to spiritual growth and maturity.

 

Toward the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus Christ taught His disciples a crucial lesson, using a grapevine as a metaphor. He told them, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing…. This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples” (John 15:5-8).

 

We enjoy looking at fruit trees and the different types of fruit they can bear – apples, oranges, peaches, grapefruit. Their fruits hang gloriously from the tree limbs, but the limbs by themselves can accomplish nothing. They must be attached to the trunk of the tree, from which they literally receive their life and productivity.

 

It’s the same for followers of Jesus. We can strive as hard as we like, but without His Spirit working in us and through us, we can’t achieve anything of eternal value.

 

The apostle Paul knew this all too well. As Saul, a leading Pharisee zealously persecuting the pesky “Christians” who were viewed as heretics, he had often flexed his strength and influence physically, politically and religiously. However, after His life-changing encounter with Jesus enroute to Damascus, he was undone. God was about to teach him about a very different kind of strength.

 

Years later, writing to believers in ancient Corinth, Paul stated, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 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…. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

 

This wasn’t just a one-time observation either. Writing to a different group of Christ followers, Paul reflected on the various hardships and challenges he had faced and then declared, “I can do everything through [Christ] who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

 

Are you facing something today that has taken you to your limits, beyond your capacity to handle or resolve? If not now, maybe you will tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Sooner or later such times come to us all. We can shake our fists and curse the devil, but that doesn’t do any good. Those are usually occasions when we can truly experience God’s power at work, building our trust and deepening our faith in Him.

At times such as those, we have no choice but to apply the truth of what both Jesus and Paul asserted: “Apart from Me you can do nothing,” and “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” As the apostle noted, weakness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

Strength Through Weakness

The life of faith – biblical faith – requires living with paradox: Finding strength through weakness. Receiving through giving. Living by dying. Seeing by believing.

Over the next weeks I’ll address each of these seeming contradictions separately. Today, the conundrum of becoming strong by being weak.

In our society – and the world – strength is glorified and weakness is anathema. (I like that word – anathema. It sounds strong. In case you’re wondering, it means, “vehemently disliked.” Thus endeth the vocabulary lesson.) Choosing weakness over strength is counter-cultural, almost anti-American. Strong is cool; weak is wimpy.

We don’t encounter the phrase much anymore, but people used to talk about “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.” If you’re a cowboy that might still make sense, but “pull yourself up by your own loafers (or sandals)” doesn’t have the same impact. Recently someone told me, “I’m not sure where, but doesn’t the Bible say, ‘God helps those that help themselves’?” Uh, no, the Bible doesn’t say that. But it’s a philosophy many of us follow.

This ad from decades past, courtesy of the U.S.
All-Round Weightlifting Association,
reflects our disdain for weakness. 

Angelo Siciliano, aka Charles Atlas, capitalized on America’s infatuation with strength. Nicknamed “the 97-pound weakling,” he overcame a frail childhood to become a champion bodybuilder in the early to mid-1900s. Magazine and comic book ads depicted him as a skinny guy having sand kicked in his face by some bully, then returning the favor after becoming a muscle-bound powerhouse.

Strength conquers all was his message, and it appealed to many people. Our nation has maintained that mantra in war and in peacetime.

So it’s paradoxical to read Bible passages that stress the virtues of weakness. “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth…. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak…but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:28-31).

Then in the New Testament, the apostle Paul carries on the same theme: “But he (God) 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 12:9-10).

Talk about a paradigm shift! We occasionally pray for God’s help, but the Bible asserts things are best when we’re helpless. That doesn’t sound logical.

I’ve pondered this a lot, even in my own life. Strangely enough, it’s true. Times I’ve felt closest to God were when I found myself at the end of my rope, all my resources exhausted, and not knowing what to do. Depleted of my own strength, I had no choice but to turn to God to take charge. Whenever I’ve done that, He always seemed to be saying, “Good. I’ve been waiting. All you had to do was ask.”

Recent decades have seen our nation adopt a secularized, who-needs-God type of mindset. And that’s understandable. When it seems we have things under control, we don’t feel much need for God. “I’ve got this” is our attitude.

Since World War II, people in the United States have prospered materially unlike any other nation in history. Private home ownership became normative. Multi-car families also became common. Today many of us have more than one of most things, from TVs to bathrooms. Even the poor in our country would rank among the wealthiest in many Third World nations.

So when you have everything you need, who needs God, right? Self-sufficiency, not deity, sits on the altar of worship.

Perhaps that’s why weakness, not strength, fosters spiritual growth. Powerlessness makes us more receptive to the all-powerful God.

Reading through the Scriptures, we see this pattern repeatedly. Noah and his family escaping the flood only through the ark God appointed him to build. Job suffering various afflictions. Abraham and Sarah, aging and without hope of having children together. Joseph in prison through no fault of his own. Moses and the Israelites pressed between a sea and some angry Egyptians. David, the victim of his own sexual sin and murderous cover-up. Impulsive Peter, caught up in his own cowardice.

And then there’s Paul, whose unidentified “thorn in the flesh” kept him humble. At the end of his life he didn’t boast about great success, but rather of having persevered through hardship. “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:6-7).

Oswald Chambers, in My Utmost for His Highest, notes, “The things we try to avoid and fight against – tribulation, sufferings, and persecution – are the very things that produce abundant joy in us…. A saint doesn’t know the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it.”

When we are forced to acknowledge our complete inadequacy, that our best efforts are wholly insufficient, only then can we discover God’s grace truly is sufficient.