God Doesn’t Always Choose Who We Would Choose

Today we’re highlighting a blog which is new to us, and featuring two short devotional posts which are very much linked to the same take-away for all of us to remember. The blog is called Hounded by Heaven, but I was unable to locate information about the author(s). Again, I encourage you to click the titles of the individual posts using the headers below. They’re currently doing a study on the book of Judges.

“I will be with You”

“Gideon said to him, “But Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Just look! My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my family.” The Lord said to him, “Ah, but I will be with you! You will strike down the whole Midianite army.”” (Judges 6.15, NET)

Gideon was ordered by God to go destroy the Midianite army and their allies, a very dangerous task. Gideon makes many excuses why he cannot do what God has commanded (we shouldn’t be too hard on Gideon, we likely would have reacted just like him).

The Lord tells Gideon that he has left out one factor and it outweighs all of Joshua’s excuses: “But I will be with you.”

Whatever it is that God calls us to, be it difficult, dangerous, awkward, or unlikely, if He has called us to do it, He Himself will be with us and that fact is the one that matters. Nothing else matters because it is not decisive.

God’s presence with us is everything. Period. End of story.

Weakness is the Way

“But he said to me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So then, I will boast most gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may reside in me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9, NET)

Paul had what he called “a thorn in the flesh”—he doesn’t mention what it was—that he said was given by God so that he would not become arrogant due to a vision God had given him of paradise. This thorn in the flesh made him weak and he asked the Lord to take the weakness away. God’s answer is in our passage. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

It’s an extraordinary statement from God and one we ought to consider carefully. Power usually comes from strength, not weakness, but God once again upsets our expectations of how he should act (much like he did when Jesus was born to an obscure, unmarried woman in an obscure little town in the backwoods of an obscure territory of the Roman Empire). God’s power comes from the opposite of man’s power. God’s power comes from weakness in us.

The reason for this does seem obvious. When we must rely on God rather than ourselves, then God gets the glory for what is accomplished, and not ourselves, and this also is a good thing, even though in our flesh we do not like it.

I think it will take me awhile to boast most gladly about my weaknesses like Paul does here, but God will keep working on me until I rely on him and not myself, sure, he has a lot of work to do in me, but he will persist at it, of that I have no doubt.

Embracing Weakness

We try to go six months before revisiting an author, but after formatting this, I realized it’s only been two months since we featured Elsie Montgomery and her blog, Practical Faith. (I guess she writes good stuff.) Here is another one of her great devotional posts, titled Weakness is a Good Thing. You’re encouraged to read ‘borrowed’ C201 posts at their original source. This one also continued to look at the key verse the next day, that link is below.

Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong;
we are weak but He is strong.

For someone who often sings “Jesus loves me…” God surprises me again by pointing to thinking about my weakness in terms of His love and compassion toward me.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13–14)

Today’s devotional uses these verses again. Obviously, I’ve still more to learn from them. Spurgeon again focuses on the compassion of God, this time on the weakness of His children.

 

As he says, children cannot do much. They have little strength and little children are quite helpless. Yet their father does not chide them for this. In fact, he will enjoy carrying his baby who cannot walk and not at all be angry with the little one who is unable to help himself.

 

As verse 14 says, my heavenly Father knows my weakness. Whether it is a physical lack of strength due to some infirmity or some other shortcoming that keeps me from full capacity, He remembers that I am only dust. He even sympathizes with my weakness.

 

This is the God who became a man, actually, a tiny baby. He became helpless and knows helplessness. This is the Creator of the universe who allowed Himself to be beaten, mocked, and strung up on a cross. The Bible says, “He was crucified in weakness… we also are weak in him… (2 Corinthians 13:4)

 

Yet there is power in weakness, partly because it means I will be carried by my Father, but also because when I am weak, I will call on Him and experience His power. Without weakness, I would not do that. This makes weakness, especially a childlike weakness, my friend, not my enemy. Paul said,

… I will not boast, except of my weaknesses…. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:5–10)

Weakness is more than feeling weak. It is also being weak and unable. I’ve struggled as a teacher on those days I could not put together a lesson plan. Many times God has put people with questions in my path and I knew the answers, but my mouth seems sewn shut and I could not speak. I get weary, disorganized, depressed, and bowed down, and feel like a total failure, yet God has compassion on those who fear Him. He knows that I am dust.

 

I have to ask, why should I think I should be able to do everything I want to do? When I see problems, why can’t I solve them? When I see spiritual blindness and hardened hearts, why can’t I open eyes and soften hearts? Maybe my attitude of wanting to fix everything stems from pride. Maybe it stems from wanting to be like God in the wrong way, the way that tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. But I cannot do it all nor does God put me up against a wall and hammer me with “do it.” Instead, He says things like…

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8:26)

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:12–13)

If I were able, I would not need God or even seek Him. It is weakness that breeds faith and weakness that keeps me in the right place before God, on my knees in humility and utter dependence. I see this clearly and can only say no wonder Paul was content to be weak and even boasted of his weaknesses.

 

Spurgeon says that “a person in perfect health and strength may joyfully accomplish what another cannot even think of undertaking,” but is this what God wants? I don’t think so. Jesus was such a person, but He chose weakness…

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5–8)

For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but… we will live with him by the power of God. (2 Corinthians 13:4)

Click this link: Another Practical Faith post continues to look at Psalm 103

Wasting our Weakness

Adrian Plass:

Here’s a question for you.  What is it that impedes Christians?  Stock answers to this question include sin, disobedience, poor prayer life, failure to read the Bible and lack of fellowship.  It will not have escaped your notice (I hope) that these are all areas of negative behaviour.  We too easily forget that, in Matthew 23, Jesus reframed the Ten Commandments into a list of two wholly positive ones, both of which contain and displace negative behaviour rather than majoring and dwelling on it.

Bearing all this in mind, I would like to offer my own list of impeding factors.  It includes principles, faked spiritual excitement, excessive religious behaviour, and, the one I invite you to consider for a few moments, waste of weakness.  How is it possible to waste weakness?  Remember this passage from 2 Corinthians 12?

^{II Corinthians (NLT) 12:6} If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, ⁷ even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

⁸ Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. ⁹ Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. ¹⁰ That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

There you are, then.  The stunning fact is that God’s power is made perfect in our weaknesses.  Perhaps because the words are fairly familiar, we sort of think we know what this means, don’t we?  But the concept is worth dwelling on.  Weakness is not a barrier to service. On the contrary, if we are brave enough to wholeheartedly offer God those areas of our lives where we fail, he is likely to recycle them and use them for his own purposes, Paul’s conversion and subsequent career being a perfect example of this phenomenon.  Even more importantly, his strength will actually be more clearly demonstrated to the rest of the world, precisely because he works through us despite our failings.

Our weaknesses.  Great opportunities.  Let’s not waste them.  Here’s a thorny question.  Does all this actually mean anything?  After all, it is so much not the way of the world.  Want another one?  Here you are then.  Are you held back by a sense of inadequacy and weakness? What would it cost to surrender yourself to God as a public example of the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit?  Maybe God is expecting too much?  Why shouldn’t we focus mainly on our strengths?  What do you think?

 

~Adrian Plass, War of the Worlds (Authentic Media, 2011) pp. 69-70