Today’s Reading: Exodus 21; 2 Corinthians 12
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
This is one of the most difficult passages in all of Scripture for me. There are certainly passages that are more confusing or intellectually challenging, but as far as practically living out the Word goes, I have a very difficult time with this.
I don’t like to be weak. I don’t like to be insufficient. I don’t like to have to rely on other people. And, when I’m being honest, I don’t really like to have to rely on God either.
Proving how sufficient and capable I am was the primary (and maybe only) driving force in my life for a very long time. I never really felt like I was “enough” or “worthy,” and so in everything I did, I had to be at the top of the game so that there would be no question of my worth.
The problem is that there are a lot of things… No matter how many ways I “proved myself,” there were always more. Even something as simple as basketball was awful. Some of my best friends my first couple years of college loved to play basketball, but I couldn’t bring myself to go play with them very often because I wasn’t very good. I would sneak off for hours at a time to try to go secretly practice so that I could feel good enough about my skills to feel comfortable playing with them, but I never got anywhere, so I just gave up and stopped playing with them. It never even occurred to me that I could ask one of them for help because that would be admission that I wasn’t good enough; that I was a failure.
God has challenged me on this over the years as I have tried to follow Him, and He has changed me a lot in this area, but it still lingers there. I still want to be sufficient on my own. But this is also where the Christian life starts, with admitting to the Lord that we are not sufficient, and never can be, and instead relying on the sufficiency of Jesus for our standing before God.
There is so much more joy in my life where I’ve learned to admit weakness and insufficiency. There have been such better relationships where God has convinced me that I don’t have to prove myself or be worthy, but can let other people be part of my life in meaningful ways. There is a peace in knowing that I am loved, accepted, and cherished by my Father in heaven, regardless of what I produce or how capable I am.
And yet, I still cling to my strength and sufficiency…
I still feel the need to prove myself, to be strong and capable. And I need God to keep working in my heart to strip that need away. This is one of the reasons I love the pictures we get of God’s intention for the Church, in that He has gifted and prepared each person individually so that together, as a whole, the Church is able to fill out the full function and design of God’s work in this world. No one person can be the church. Even Paul, as gifted and driven as he was, was not “enough” in every way, and needed the people God had put around Him so that God’s work could be accomplished.
This is the reality that has, over the years, begun to reshape my view of weaknesses. I have seen the “weakest” of people used powerfully and effectively by the Lord because they weren’t relying on their own strength, but relying on the Lord and His people to shore them up. I have seen the least “capable” of people step out in faith and have seen God reward that faith in powerful ways. I have watched God prove, time and time again, that He is the sovereign Lord of all creation, and if he wants to move, no strength or sufficiency can stand against Him, and no weakness or ineptitude can prohibit Him.
I want to be more okay with my weaknesses because I want more of God. I want to know Him better, I want to trust Him more fully, I want to rely on Him more often, I want my sufficiency, in all things, to be rooted in Him, not me.
So this passage is hard for me. God has worked in my life in this area in big ways over the last 15 years, but there is still a long way to go…
God, I need to you to keep chipping away at my self-sufficiency and teaching me to rely on you, not myself. I want your power to be made perfect in my weakness, and I know that that has to start with weakness on my end. Give me the humility to not be afraid of weakness and insufficiency.
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