Strength in Weakness
A number of years ago I was playing a basketball game when I fell back hard on the floor, snapping my wrist. When I heard an audible crack, I knew something was broken! The pain was excruciating. After a trip to the ER, and an X-ray—confirming the break—I was fitted with a cast. I had to adjust to life without my “good” hand over the next six weeks. Finally, when the cast came off, I was shocked by what I saw as I looked down at my right hand. The wrist that had been broken looked about half the size of my other wrist. In just a short amount of time, the muscle mass had deteriorated significantly. Over the next two months I did daily exercises to strengthen it. At first, all I could manage was lifting an empty jar! Then, I graduated to small cans of soup, and then to bigger cans. Finally, I moved on to heavier weights. After a few months, I was explaining my injury to a friend and I showed him both wrists. He asked me which one had been broken. I told him it was my right hand. He said, “But it looks bigger than your left!” Sure enough, he was correct. I hadn’t realized, but all the emphasis on rehabilitation and exercise had strengthened my “bad” wrist to the point where it was now stronger than the other wrist that had never been injured.
As I reflect back on that experience, it is funny to think how the weak broken wrist eventually became stronger than ever. It’s a bit ironic. And yet, there is a spiritual parallel with our lives. God can take our weaknesses and turn them into strengths by his grace and in his time.
When I was a teenager, the thing I feared the most was getting in front of a large group and having to do public speaking. And now, I have to do that each week. What happened? My fear and weakness became an occasion for God’s strength and grace.
There is a passage in the Bible that mentions this principle. The apostle Paul gets afflicted with some kind of problem and he pleads with God to take it away. And God responds, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9a). Paul’s weakness became an occasion for God’s strength to sustain and fill him so that he could become strong in that area, not by his own strength, but by God’s strength. That’s why Paul goes on to say, “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9b)
Sometimes we look at our lives and can see an area of weakness and think, “God can’t use me because of this.” But God wants us to turn to him in our weakness and struggles and invite him to strengthen us.
Rick Warren writes in The Purpose Driven Life (p.247-48), “If you really desire to be used by God, you must understand the powerful truth: The very experiences that you have resented or regretted most in life—the ones you’ve wanted to hide and forget—are the experiences God wants to use to help others. They are your ministry. For God to use your painful experiences, you must be willing to share them. You have to stop covering them up, and you must honestly admit your faults, failures, and fears. Doing this will probably be your most effective ministry. People are always more encouraged when we share how God’s grace helped us in weakness than when we brag about our strengths… [but] Only shared experiences can help others. Aldous Huxley said, ‘Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.’ What will you do with what you’ve been through? Don’t waste your pain. Use it to help others.”
Maybe you’ve been through the pain of losing a loved one. Maybe you’ve been through a season of great depression. Maybe you suffered abuse for many years. Maybe you fall over and over because of a certain temptation. Whatever you see as an area of weakness, God can turn into an area of strength. All you need to do is come honestly and openly to him. Seek him. Invite him into that brokenness. Ask him to fill you with his strength. And in time, by his grace, that brokenness will become a means of blessing. His strength will infuse your weakness, making you strong.
