“When I Am Weak”
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
It’s the most dreaded question of a job interview, and when it comes, many of us can hardly push the words out of our mouths.
“Tell me,” the interviewer asks, “what’s your greatest weakness?”
How do we answer that question?
I hate that question, how about you?
I mean, if you don’t come up with something, you sound arrogant, but if you come clean with your weakness, they might not hire you.
Career counselors offer various strategies for answering that question.
One way is to disguise your weakness as a strength.
For example, you might say, “I’m such a perfectionist I sometimes expect too much of myself or others.”
Another strategy is to minimize your weakness by explaining how you have already overcome it: “I can be very a very task-oriented person, but I learned that working with people is the most effective way to accomplish a goal.”
A third strategy is to share a real weakness, but make sure it is completely irrelevant to the position.
If your applying for an accounting job, for example, you don’t want to admit that you aren’t a detail person.
For most of us, revealing our weaknesses is one of the last things in the world we want to do, whether we’re looking for a job, trying to get a relationship going, or just talking with friends.
If you are like me, we don’t like to admit our weaknesses to ourselves, let alone to other people.
That’s one reason we stack resumes with degrees earned, awards received, and professional accomplishments.
I mean, if you were on a dating site trying to find a mate, you would probably not lead with: “Neurotic, out-of-shape slacker looking for a relationship that will last longer than my previous four marriages.”
For most of us, weakness is bad, and is to be avoided at all costs.
Strength is good, and something we all want.
Which helps explain why most of us do everything we can to avoid or overcome or conceal our weaknesses.
They make us feel vulnerable.
They frighten us.
As a result, we might come up with all kinds of strategies to try and protect ourselves from our weaknesses and the vulnerability we feel.
We try to control our lives.
We hide our true thoughts and feelings for fear of getting hurt.
We do anything we can to avoid or overcome being weak or vulnerable in any way, shape or form.
I mean, from our natural perspectives: “When I am weak, then I am strong,” makes no sense.
But with all that controlling, and hiding and protecting going on we close ourselves off to life.
I’m not saying we have to broadcast to the world every single weakness we have—but there can be no doubt that some of our deepest spiritual insights can come through our vulnerability, through our suffering, through our pain.
When my mom was passing away, for instance, one good thing I was able to rejoice in during the experience is that I would be better able to minister to others who were dealing with such pain.
Because I now knew how they felt.
In our Scripture Lesson for this morning, the church in Corinth was under attack by what Paul termed so-called “super-apostles.”
They claimed they were better speakers than anyone else.
They claimed to have supernatural visions and powers.
Apparently, these “super-apostles” were leading some of the folks astray from what Paul calls “sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”
They were building themselves up or boasting about themselves and preaching, what was according to Paul, “a Jesus [different] than the Jesus we preached.”
He says such people are “false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.”
They were full of themselves, trying to make people followers of them rather than of Christ.
And so what Paul is telling them is that if there is any boasting to be done, it is to be a boasting in the Lord—not in the self.
As an example, Paul describes a remarkable experience he had 14 years before, in which he was “caught up” into what he calls the third heaven and given insight into spiritual realities.
For some reason, something about this particular spiritual vision was so amazing and extraordinary that Paul says he was afflicted by a “thorn in [his] flesh” to keep him from boasting about it—to keep him humble.
There’s been tons of speculation about what Paul means by a “thorn in the flesh.”
The word we translate as “thorn” could just as accurately be translated as a “stake” or “spear.”
The word was used to describe a sharp instrument that caused pain, lodged deeply, and was difficult to remove.
So, Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was not some minor annoyance; it wasn’t just “a pain in the neck.”
Rather, it was some sort of chronic pain and anguish.
Some people have suggested it was a spiritual weakness, a nagging temptation.
Others suggest it was an emotional vulnerability such as depression or anxiety.
Or it could have been epilepsy, poor eyesight, migraines, a speech impediment, or a stomach disorder or whatever.
We don’t know.
But it seems to have been something very challenging.
No wonder he says that he “pleaded with the Lord to take it away”…not once but three times.
Most of us would do the same thing, except I wouldn’t stop there!
I’m pretty sure I would have kept praying and pleading and praying.
I mean, after-all, logically, weaknesses are to be avoided at all costs!
And we all have weaknesses—thorns in the flesh--do we not?
I’ve got lots and lots of them.
What is your thorn in the flesh?
What personal weakness or vulnerability causes you pain and threatens your ability to serve Christ freely and effectively?
Maybe it’s something obvious; maybe it’s something no one would ever guess.
It could be something you’ve lived with for a long time or something that’s happened to you recently.
Some “thorns” are more painful than and debilitating than others, but we all deal with something.
When we own our weaknesses, we will find God can turn them into strengths.
And that is because weaknesses help us to depend on Christ and allow Him to shine through us in ways we might not allow if we were more comfortable, shall we say…more self-satisfied.
So, how can we handle our weaknesses in ways that allow God to display God’s power in us and through us?
God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Perhaps that is why Jesus said the most-humble will be the greatest in the Kingdom of God and the last shall be first.
God is in the business of transforming weakness into strength.
God is able to use those who hand everything over to Him, their pain, their defeats, their disappointments, their illnesses—and trust Him for everything.
It’s been said that “God uses broken things.
Broken soil produces a crop, broken clouds give rain, broken grain gives bread, and broken bread gives strength.
I’ve read that when Handel wrote the “Hallelujah Chorus,” his health and his life had hit rock bottom.
His right side had become paralyzed, and all his money was gone.
He was heavily in debt and threatened with imprisonment.
And…he was tempted to give up.
The odds against him seemed too great.
And it was then that he composed his greatest work—Messiah.
It seems that when Handel was weak—he was strong.
When we get to the bottom of things.
When we find that this world ultimately leaves us behind…
…Our bodies ultimately fail us…
…We can’t take money with us…
…And friends fade away…
…Well, we find Jesus is right here with us all along, and when it comes down to it—that is all that really matters.
And we might just find that Rock Bottom isn’t such a bad place to be—because Jesus is with us…
…and His power is made perfect in our weakness.
When we are empty of self—we can be more filled with God!
In her book Tramp for the Lord, Corrie ten Boom tells the story of an old woman she met in Russia in the time of the Communist persecution of Christians during the Cold War:
The old woman was lying on a small sofa propped up by pillows.
Her body was bent and twisted almost beyond recognition by multiple sclerosis.
Her husband spent all his time caring for her since she was unable to move off the sofa … [The only part of her body she could control was her right hand. And with the index finger of that hand she had for many years glorified God by typing on a vintage typewriter beside her.]
All day and far into the night, she would type.
She translated Christian books into Russian.
Always using just that one finger—peck … peck … peck—she typed out the pages.
Portions of the Bible, the books of great Christian teachers … and Corrie ten Boom …
"Not only does she translate books,’ her husband said as he hovered close by during our conversation, ‘but she prays every day while she types.
Sometimes it takes a long time for her finger to hit the key, or for her to get the paper in the machine, but all the time she's praying for those whose books she's working on."
[Corrie ten Boom writes]: “I looked at her wasted form on the sofa, her head pulled down and her feet curled under her body. ‘Oh Lord, why don't you heal her?’ I cried inwardly.
Her husband, sensing my anguish of soul, gave the answer.
‘God has a purpose in her sickness. Every other Christian in the city is watched by the secret police.
But because she has been sick so long, no one ever looks in on her.
They leave us alone and she is the only person in all the city who can type quietly undetected by the police.’"
One day Corrie received a letter from that lady's husband that described the day she had gone home to be with the Lord.
The husband explained that the woman had worked until midnight that very night of her death, typing with one finger to the glory of God.
Who would have thought that multiple sclerosis could be used for the glory of God?
Has it ever occurred to you that the very thing you most want removed from your life might be the very thing God uses in the greatest way for His glory?
It’s so easy; too easy to become defeated by our set-backs in life or to become paralyzed by the fear that someone will find out we are not perfect after-all.
But you know what?
Those who truly win in life are the ones who allow God to use—even their weaknesses for God’s glory—in order to make this world a better place and be used to lead others to Christ.
Paul writes: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take away [the thorn in my flesh].
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”
This is the same thing God says to every one of us.
Paul listened when God said this to him and Paul believed it.
Therefore, he was able to say, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
That’s why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
We can all live this way.
Paul was just a human being like you and me.
He was a man who was completely sold out to Christ, a man who was far from perfect, but a winner in life just the same.
And that winning came through his faith and reliance on Jesus Christ for his everything.
I want to be that free; how about you?
I want to be able to rejoice in sufferings, difficulties, weaknesses, insults, hardships.
They are going to come anyway, so I want to be able to rejoice in them.
I want to make the best out of my short time on this earth.
I don’t want to waste my time with the way the world thinks and acts.
I don’t want to be burdened by personal pity parties.
I want to be completely sold out for Christ.
I want to love fully, forgetting about self—thinking only of Christ and those whom He loves.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus said to Paul and Jesus says to you and me this morning: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Do you believe this?
Will you believe this?
Will you make the decision to allow
God to use your weaknesses for His glory?
Will you make the decision, this very morning, to hand everything over to him?
Will you make the decision this morning, to say with Paul, “I will boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me…
…For when I am weak, then I am strong”?
