Getting back into my life

I just returned from a brief trip to Europe yesterday. Our first stop was Sweden, a country that feels very much like home to me. When I walk up to a Swede they first speak to me in Swedish which is not the case in most other European countries. I guess I look and dress like a Swede. From there we flew to London Stansted airport which is in the county of Essex north of London. It was a typical winter evening in England with howling rain and near freezing temperatures. We left for the USA the next day and it was sunny and beautiful.

I sit at my desk now powering over memory verses preparing my heart for prayer. Paul writes this in II Corinthians 12:

7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But 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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is 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.

Whatever it was that afflicted Paul, we can conclude that it wasn't a pleasant thing. Some see a problem with his eyes while others think it could be a person who was constantly opposing his message. Paul was the kind of driven person that didn't want anything slowing down his pace. He was commissioned to take the good news about Jesus all over the known world and to suffer for the sake of it. You can perceive his thought process here as he pleads with God to take away the thing that is slowing him down. "Lord, please take this affliction away so I can pursue the task you have given me with greater efficiency!" What an honorable thing to ask. God's response is equally interesting. He says "No". "No Paul, I won't take this thing away from you. I won't make you more 'efficient'." God wanted both Paul and us to understand that human strength does not propel the gospel. Rather, it is God's strength through human weakness that propels the gospel! As his hearers look upon Paul, they see a man who has been beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, has problems speaking clearly and has some kind of illness. Hardly a Herculean figure. When they see such a man succeed in the task he has been assigned they then must acknowledge that it is God who is the source of his strength. It is God who empowers his message. God gets the glory and Paul doesn't.

What about us? Are we charging forward in our own strength or are we embracing our weakness? The reality is we are all filled with weakness because of the fall. We live in a sin-cursed world and we ourselves are sinners riddled with weakness. It is the height of folly to think otherwise. Do you want to know true power? Do you want to know true strength? Acknowledge your weakness before God and man. Accept the fact that you are a sinner and do what God commanded Paul. Trust in God's grace because it is sufficient for you and I. God's strength is the strength that created all that is with a word. God made you and me. The winds, seas and mountains bow before him. Trusting in God's grace is trusting in his power and strength to overcome our weakness and leave people with no other choice than to credit him.

Becoming a Christian has its roots in this reality. How can I come to trust in the Savior's provision for me if I have no need? If I am basically an okay person then Jesus is just there as a pathway to a better life. But if it is true that I am so lost in my sin, so weak, that I am utterly powerless to escape God's wrath then I am prepared to hear the gospel of grace that says "God himself will deliver his people."