By Amanda Casanova
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like a weakling. Sometimes I feel like the skinny kid chosen last for dodge-ball staring at his shoes because he is equally torn about not wanting to play and about being picked last. Sometimes I don’t think my anxious heart and scared spirit is up to the task. Sometimes I think my story doesn’t matter.
I know I was created to do awesome things, to take up my wings and fly, but sometimes, I can barely crawl. For whatever reason, stress, an aching body, day-to-day activities, we stop feeling like conquerors and we start feeling like cowards.
I wish I could tell you that cowards grow out of it. I wish I could tell you that it’s as easy as growing out of it, but that’s not how it works. We will always be weak, but that’s OK because God loves weaklings.
God said we are called to follow him and sometimes that requires doing more than our bodies and minds can do. Honestly, I don’t always have the guts or energy to follow Christ.
But I’m not discouraged by that. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
And that sounds like grace to me.
Because I am weak.
Because I’m not perfect.
Because I’m not enough.
In a sermon in 1991 about the 2 Corinthians verse, John Piper said, “One of the reasons biblical Christianity has to be so drastically distorted in order to sell it to mass markets is that the market wants power to escape weakness in leisure, but Christianity offers power to endure weakness in love … What the market wants is escape from weakness, not power in weakness.”
God shows power in weakness not a way to escape from it, and to do that he chooses women and tax collectors and fishermen. He chooses people who stutter and people who are poor. He chooses weaklings.
In Judges 6, the Israelites are under the control of the Midianites, and they cry out for help. God speaks to Gideon, a prophet, about saving the people, and Gideon replies with disbelief. He says, “Are you sure? I’m in the most insignificant family in Manasseh! I’m young and weak! Don’t bet on me!”
I’ve said that too. There are way better writers out there. There are wives who run full households with more poise than I. There are people who know more about the bible than I do. Don’t choose me.
God didn’t choose us because we’re the best speakers or leaders or parents or workers. He chose us because we’re fearful and broken. The best way his glory is shown is through our weakness. The best way our story is told is through the Holy Spirit.
I don’t know about you, but I want my story to be explainable without Christ. God helped Gideon defeat the Midianites, and he’s helping us too. Right now. In your weakness. In your fear, he is showing his power.
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