The Faith of Weakness
By Mike Rule

We often try to overcome in our own strength what can only be won in weakness. In our society we look down upon weakness as a bad thing and even in Christianity we are quick to point out that being meek is not being weak! Why do we have such a problem admitting we ARE weak?

I have had many issues in my life that I could NOT get over. The one thing that I wrestled with for years was anger. I tried everything to overcome it, but the harder I worked at it the madder I got! I could not conquer it! Then one day the Lord spoke to me about it and He said I would never overcome it. He wanted me to trust Him to do it. As I tried to trust I began to learn the blessing of weakness and how hard it is to trust God to do what I had been told all my life I had to do.

As God showed me the blessing in being weak enough to trust Him, He showed me how hard it is to walk by faith and not by sight in a results-oriented religion. For a long time if anyone asked me how I was coming on my anger, all I could have said was that I had quit trying and was waiting on God. Visibly nothing was changing, and many times I prayed for Him to remove it. Finally one day He said, " 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9&10)

God has done a tremendous work in me in this area. Occasionally I still do get angry, but I see that it shows me how weak I am and reminds me of my desperate need for Christ. I know I am totally helpless without His power displayed in and through my weakness. Embracing our weakness requires that we walk by faith and not by sight. Praise God for our weaknesses because through them He is growing our faith!

So why does it take faith to be weak? It's not easy to trust Jesus when you are not seeing results. Especially when many Christians would judge you and say that you can't be saved and act "that way." As I walked through this I would blow fuses and scream and holler at my kids, my wife, or even total strangers. I hated looking like a total idiot. I knew by external appearance my witness was shot. I wanted so desperately to be different. Yet I could NOT make it happen. Through it all Jesus would gently whisper to me, "Trust me, even if you never see results."

Maybe for you it is not anger, but it's your marriage. It's not easy to trust Jesus with your marriage when everything is going wrong. Maybe it's an emotional or physical addiction. It's not easy to trust Jesus when you are involved in things you know are unhealthy for you. Maybe it's a bad attitude. Maybe it's the people in your church or the Church itself. Whatever the issue, the point is when all we see is failure in our lives, it is not easy to wait on Jesus and trust Him to do the work in His time. We are always being told that we need to stop whining and get busy changing our lives to be what they ought. It takes tremendous faith to trust Jesus with our weaknesses. Step by step He teaches us that when we are weak, we are strong. This is the faith of weakness.