Do you ever feel like there’s just way too much to do and you’re out of strength to do it? Serving in Haiti makes me feel this way often.
I think this is to be expected when doing what God asks us to do. God is in the business of assigning God-sized tasks. He invites us to partner with him in doing things that require divine strength, not human strength. Human strength goes a long way, but only God-strength can change people’s hearts, and this is the business that God is in.
Is God concerned about poverty in the world? Yes! Corruption? Yes! Injustice? Yes! Ultimately, however, these problems are the result of sin in the world. Dealing with the sin problem is the only sustainable solution.
God invites his people to work alongside of him in dealing with the sin problem in the world. God not only works healing inhis people, but also through his people. The people of God are the conduit for God’s redemptive work in the world, reconciling humanity to God.
This task is over our heads. It’s beyond our capacity. And it is precisely because it is beyond our capacity that we need to depend on God’s strength for help.
So, how do we tap into God’s strength? the Bible answers this question for us over and over again: be weak.
The Apostle Paul quotes God in 1 Corinthians 12:9 saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul goes on to say, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest in me.”
This is counter-intuitive. It doesn’t make sense. If I want to be strong, I have to be weak? Isn’t weakness the absence of strength and strength the absence of weakness? How does this work?
The problem is that no human strength can overcome the opposing force of sin. Sin is inherent to the human heart. It’s a part of our DNA. We cannot pull ourselves out of sin by our own bootstraps. Trying to overcome sin with human strength is comparable to trying to lift a bucket by the handle while standing in it. I’m simply impossible. Only someone standing outside the bucket can lift it.
Thankfully, God is standing outsideof the bucket.
Bringing healing into the world through weakness means embracing and recognizing our wounds, weakness, imperfections, and idiosyncrasies. It means being honest about our shortcomings and areas in which we struggle.
The last thing the world needs is more (self) righteous people.
Jesus is the most powerful. However, the one thing Jesus couldn’t do was make people love him. He couldn’t coerce people into loving him and accepting him. What he could do, however, was deal honestly with sin by dying for it. Jesus gave up his power to meet the world where it stood. Jesus stepped down from the throne of heaven to stand next to your bucket. Jesus became weak to bring redemption to the world.
Christians have to do the same today. We have to be honest about our own wounds and struggles to arrive a place to being healing to the world. We have to become weak. After all, blessed are the weak in spirit and the meek will inherit the earth.
