Gifts only available in the Spirit of weakness

Nobody truly gets the gospel until they understand the weakness of a Jesus who went to the cross devoid of power only to epitomise the ultimate in power just days afterward.

Want power? Choose weakness.
Want strength? Accept weakness.

God confuses every clamouring after wealth called covetousness. “Prove it!” you say. Okay. Chase happiness. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us how that ends; “meaningless, utter meaninglessness!”

Choosing weakness when in conflict

Here is an astounding thing:

… in being revealed as wrong,
we get to choose to be weak.

In the moment of correction, we get the choice to listen. In the place of rebuke, we get to choose whether we will accept feeling small or not. In the moment of humiliation, when we’re revealed as being wrong—and let’s face it, nobody enjoys being corrected—we’d much rather be praised—we have the only opportunity available to us to sit up and listen and show humility.

That’s right, humility shines out of us when we sit humbly in humiliation. That takes strength; the resolve to be honest; the patience of bearing pain wisely. Few people do this well. This is raw Christian character at its maturest.

Not many people can do this. And Christians, though they should be adept at this, are really no better than non-Christians, because we all must deal with our prideful flesh.

Choosing weakness in conflict is a boon for relationships. The feature of the best relationships is both parties do this well.

Choosing weakness when we’re weak in ourselves

Here is another astounding thing:

… the more willing we are to be weak,
the more of God’s grace we get access to.

What does God’s blessing truly look like? How does God want to bless us most?

It’s looks like all kinds of material favour but is nothing of the sort. Truly God’s wealth of grace exists in the spiritual realm, and especially as it pertains to weakness.

“Satan’s angel,” Eugene Peterson says of Paul, “did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty!” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10 Msg)

We never mature in the faith until we get this. Indeed, we never mature in the faith until we LIVE the life of being weak interpersonally and intrapersonally. In the context of intrapersonal weakness, the more patient and still we can be when all access to worldly power diminishes and vanishes, the more willingly weak we’re able to be then, the more of God’s grace we gain access to. And God’s grace is a never ending and mountainous supply, yet we’re only given as much as we need. The weaker we get, the more of God’s grace is bestowed to us.

~

Do you remain to be convinced? Okay, I know this is all pretty standard Christianese rhetoric. It’s probably more the case that you want something more challenging and revolutionary to read. Then, I challenge you to practice this. The challenge is in living it. That’s where this ends:

Want wisdom? Want virtue that wells up unto the fruit of the Spirit? Want all that God could ever give you? If you answer yes to these questions (and why wouldn’t you?) then you will find one common answer.

Be weak. Accept weakness. Choose weakness. Don’t disdain weakness. Delight in your weakness. As Paul did. Don’t expect the world to celebrate with you. It won’t understand you. But you will win the world over strangely enough. In weakness is the alluring fact: it’s the inspiration contained in every boy-or-girl-next-door story. It’s central to every come-from-behind story they make movies out of.

But none of us wants to pay the price. We only pay the price when the choice of strength is taken from us and we bear our weakness because all options are taken away.

This is WHY grief is a good thing. We don’t have any other choice than to be weak.

See how grief is not only a good thing but a great thing? From the end, comes the beginning.

Now here is the clincher. It was only after my life was crucified with Christ that I came alive in him through some kind of resurrection. Many, many people think this is ludicrous, because they haven’t borne witness to the crushing that precedes the true impartation of grace. Weakness is good, I tell you!

Acknowledgement to Carmel Wright who inspired this reflection.

Image above: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (Msg)