Coming in Weakness to Go in God’s Power

“All God’s giants have been weak people who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them.”

— J. Hudson Taylor

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ And Moses said to the Lord, ‘If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here’.”

— Exodus 33:14 (NRSV)

We all know too well the sense for aloneness, as we’ve perhaps all had that sense of feeling like we belong. God’s Presence is like the latter, but without a single other soul around. Not that we cannot feel his Presence when others are around.

When we feel we belong—heart and soul—to the Lord our God—with no misconceptions clouding us in our doubting—we want to go with God and continue to go.

Going is our way. With pleasure we go. Even in the anxious desire for courage to step, we go.

But at times God does not comfort us with knowledge of his Presence; or, perhaps more correctly put, we just sense a dearth of all divine perspective—no assurance whatsoever that we are on the right path or have the blessing of God as we go.

When we lack this sense of directedness we wander and it’s not good. Desperation is the reality we may deny, but it is the reality. We need to know God goes with us.

Power Requires Weakness Which Gives Us God’s Presence

Weakness is central to experiencing God’s power—which implies God’s presence.

It is futile to go anywhere God does not go or will not go, yet we have all been there, having run not just too far ahead but completely off the trail. We go ahead of God or off the trail because we are relying on our own strength and we have departed from God's presence. As a result we are devoid of power.

Wise is the person that quickly detects the absence of God’s Spirit in their going out and coming home. It should be our constant spiritual sense, but the more we waver from God the less access we have to this sense.

Mixed with wisdom—and essentially part of it—is a catalyst of weakness. Wisdom allows us to open into our weakness. Weakness invites the gentle power of the Spirit of God into our situations. And in weakness we know God’s Presence, because the Lord will not leave us alone in our time of true need that comes with it the commitment to be with God.

***

If only we would go only where God goes and nowhere else. That requires weakness; to come to the end of our own strength, which is a weak strength at its best. When we come in weakness we can go with strength in God’s power by his Presence.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.