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Embracing Weakness: Unveiling God’s Strength Within Us
Through Our Weakness
Episode #863
07/27/2023
Walk and talk with John Enslow
You know, I can’t seem to get away from the topic of shame and paired up with weakness. Shame and weakness just reverberating in my spirit and reverberating my heart. When weakness is considered a four letter word by our culture, the reality of boasting in your weaknesses as Paul did, is almost profane. And to see weakness as beautiful, it’s off-putting at the best, but more often it see as grotesque. We’re seen as… why would you ever think weakness is beautiful?! It’s something that’s abhorrent. It’s something that should be shunned. But the reality is, when we embrace our weakness then we can experience Christ’s strength.
I wanna read you some verses out of two different versions of the Bible. One is 2nd Corinthians 12:8-10 in the Passion translation. It says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to relieve me of this.” What? The struggle. The thing that was coming against him. “But He answered me, My grace is always more than enough for you, and My power finds its full expression through your weakness.” Through your weakness! “So I celebrate in my weakness, for when I am weak, I sense more deeply, the mighty power of Christ living in me, so I’m not defeated by my weakness, but delighted.” Goodnight! Do you hear the difference between that. Delighted rather than defeated. I have, so many times felt defeated by my weakness. And Christ is saying, “No, it’s a delight!” Why, why is it a delight? How can it be a delight? “For when I am weak and endure persecution because of my love for Christ, I am made stronger. For my weakness becomes a portal for God’s power.” Phew! Amazing!
Another translation of it is in Phillips. I love the Phillips translation. It’s all like the Moffatt and the Phillips. They’re just different translations that just give a rounded approach to it. “Three times I begged the Lord for it to leave me, but His reply has been, ‘My grace is enough for you, for where there is weakness My power is shown more completely.’” That’s a word! “‘My power is shown more completely in weakness.’ Therefore, I have cheerfully made up my mind to be proud of my weaknesses, because they mean a deeper experience of the power of Christ. I can even enjoy weakness, suffering, privations, persecutions, and difficulties for Christ sake, for my very weakness makes me strong in Him.” Wow, those verses are amazing. Do you see how powerful those verses are? So this is such a huge encouragement for the follower of Christ. I’m not left vanquished or lacking by my weakness because Christ Himself is my strength in my very moment. What hope does this provide. God isn’t simply giving us an attaboy and a pat on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, do your best, pull up your bootstraps and do your best!” He is the tangible support needed for my life to thrive and flourish and for me to reach my destiny.
How can weakness, how could weakness have this power? How come my weaknesses literally carry the power in the strength of Christ’s Life? Because in my weakness…so it says, for when I am weak, I am strong. That’s what the Scriptures are basically saying. So when I am weak, when I am struggling, when I am failing, when I have my weakness and I surrender to my weakness and allow Christ to be my strength, it proves my, not only dependence in Him, but also my faith in Him. It is a faith that wells up within me and gives me the power and the strength to experience His dynamic, really, dynamic life.
Celebrating my weakness is such a punch in the eye to this shame. The shame of my weakness. The shame of my weakness. The fact that, I should be ashamed of my weakness? To literally embrace my weakness to embrace, and not only embrace, but to celebrate my weakness, it literally stands against and counter to every instinctive of man completely defeated by embracing my weakness. Self preservation, it’s in us. Survival, is in us, it is who we are. But Christ is basically saying, “I want to be your strength. I literally want to be your strength. And there is no need to be ashamed of your weakness. You don’t have to live in shame in weakness, all you have to do is accept and embrace your weakness, and let Me in faith and dependence be your strength.” That’s huge, huge, huge work, huge.
And while all man and the culture celebrates power, celebrates size, celebrates accomplishments, celebrates force, celebrates strength…all these things we celebrate. And Christ’s Life is saying, “I want to be all that. I want to be accomplishment in your life, I want to be your strength, I want to be your power, I want to be the force that leads you, that guides you, that brings you life. I want to be all this for you.” And that’s a difficult one to swallow. But I’m just blown away by the struggle, the pushback, that is always present, by shame in weakness.
We don’t have to experience shame in weakness. It’s very human to be ashamed of your weakness. That’s just kind of right out of the box. That’s how we come. We’re ashamed of weakness. I’ve told multiple times about me singing Jesus loves me and refusing to sing that because I was not gonna be weak. And I had that as a child. It is the human condition, we fight weakness, we reject weakness. We see weakness as a curse. But Christ is saying, and He is wooing us to live in our weakness, live in our dependence and have faith in His strength. That’s huge! That’s beautiful.
And I really want to, as I’m writing the book on shame, I want to go into these common shames. These shames that tell us that we’re useless, that we’re failing, and that will never overcome because we’re looking to do it in our self. But the Lord is saying, “I don’t want you overcoming in yourself. You are not the Overcomer, you become an overcomer in Me!” And that’s huge. That’s ginormous. That’s a beautiful distinction that we can live in, that we can experience and we can celebrate. That we can literally experience His overcoming nature, we can experience His overcoming strength, but if we will not enter into the weakness, the weaknesses that we struggle in, we don’t access His strength.
It is out of our weakness. It is out of the embracing of our weakness, that we experience His strength. Literally weakness is an invitation, as well as a doorway, a path to His strength. And He is the Way, OK, He is the Truth and He is the Life and we only experience that, as we embrace our actual fallen nature and say I am weak, I am fallen and I need Your strength to live this life. I need Your strength to perform my life tasks, and when we do that, we experience an explosive amount of victory and it’s beautiful.
That’s one of the hidden gems of this life, is that, when we see our weakness, when we experience our weakness, when we live in our weakness, we enter into His strength. When we apply that faith, when we apply the faith that He is our strength and we acknowledge our weakness, then, when I am weak, He is strong. He will come through. But if we try to prop our self up and we try to be puffed up and say that we are not who we really are and we’re strong and we’re bold and we’re…. Good luck, it just doesn’t work.
So I really thank you for walking this out with me and listening with me to what the Lord wants to reveal about weakness, about strength, about shame. And I am looking forward to just bringing forth this as a beautiful testimony of who He can be in all of our lives, in our weakness not in spite of our weakness, but because of our weakness. Because our of our weakness, we can experience His strength. Apply that in dependence in in faith and it blooms and it blossoms and it’s beautiful. So I love you and thank you for listening.
Through Our Weakness – Episode #863 – DivineDesigned.Life
Society views weakness negatively and boasting in weaknesses as Paul did, is almost profane. Embracing weakness allows us to experience Christ’s strength.
