Your Weakness Is Strong

“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.” -2 Corinthians 12:10-

The apostle Paul made the statement above, and we all know how he was converted on the road to Damascus. In one blinding moment (literally), he was changed from being a Christian-killer to an evangelist, and for the rest of his life he suffered greatly for the cause of Christ. He rose far above his arrogant and vicious past, pouring himself out for the sake of the gospel. He learned to delight in his hardships, because they made it possible for him to lean hard on God’s strength for everything.
Chuck Colson was a kind of modern-day Paul. Before he founded Prison Fellowship, he was the last person you would expect to be converted. As Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon, he was known as a ruthless and corrupt hatchet man. He ended up in prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up, and it was there that he came to know Jesus.
Once, preaching at a Christian college commencement, he said:
“The great paradox of my life is that every time I walk into a prison and see the faces of men or women who have been transformed by the power of the living God, I realize that the thing God has chosen to use in my life is none of the successes, achievements, degrees, awards, honors, or cases I won before the Supreme Court. That’s not what God is using in my life. What God is using in my life to touch the lives of literally thousands of other people is the fact that I was a convict and went to prison. That was my great defeat, the only thing in my life I didn’t succeed in.”

Chuck understood what Paul did, that “[God’s] power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). He understood that losing everything was okay, that it was maybe even necessary to experience the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:8). And he experienced the same “delight” that Paul experienced — a front-row seat to the power of God in the weakness of his people. Just wait till you see what He can do through you.

Pursuing Today
You and I may not have such dramatic testimonies, but we are definitely weak. What’s your “great defeat” or current hardship? What insult or difficulty are you currently enduring? Write it down. Then draw a line through it — cross it out. And prayerfully imagine how God’s strength will be clearly seen through your weakness.