“But he [God] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness””
2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
Jesus: Our Inescapable Need
Let’s face it finding yourself in a place of a behaviour, emotion, thought or physical characteristic that you or those around you consider weak, it is not a pleasant place to be. This place does not tend to encourage either socially reverence or earn you the stamp of acceptability in the secular culture we live in.
However, the above verse turns the whole experience, encounter and even the definition of weaknesses in ourselves on its head. Such things we notice in ourselves that may provoke shame or stoke the unhealthy habit of comparison because we consider them undignified or even abhorrent are actually cracks through which God most visibly pours out his power, love, healing and deliverance. In our weakness, we find a vulnerable meeting place with Jesus whose arms we finally fall into again. It is where our saviour reminds us time and again the valuable truth of our fundamental need of him.
The Door Into God’s Heart
But what about moments where we in moments of frustration or impatience are tempted to think that God is not answering our prayers and we feel he is keeping us unjustly suffering just to prove a point that we can do nothing without him? How I, as we all do, in these moments wrongfully forget the very heart of God that is at work and evident in our dark places of weakness that we find ourselves.
For God’s power is made perfect in yours and my weaknesses because it offers an unfiltered view, stripped of our own reservations, distorted views and self-sufficiency, of the power of God’s loving, compassionate heart. In our weakness we discover the boundless reserves of the well spring of love and heartache that cascades down from the heart of the Father and reaches out to meet us; that chooses to meet us in our place of suffering, suffers with us but crucially the perfect Father in him desires to be our all sufficient one.
Jesus the Father’s Heart Incarnate
Jesus demonstrated the power and glory of God not primarily in the miraculous signs he did but in revealing the compassionate heart of Father God through them for the most rebellious sinner; for the outcast, sick and lonely. Jesus met not just with people but met with the broken, wounded soul within them – their point of need. In Jesus, the outcast Samaritan women found the living water she had been searching for; the woman caught in adultery found mercy and the unclean leaper an extended hand of healing but more than that the experience of someone willing to touch him touch that he received in years.
Jesus meets us in our point of need showing us the supreme power of God’s perfect love expressed for us that is mostly keenly seen in our places of weakness.
The extent of God’s love in Jesus not only meets us in our suffering and meeting our broken failures with compassionate love but in the case of the cross Jesus goes way beyond this showing the extent of Heavenly love and compassion to the worst offender, the most broken or lost soul. He suffered instead of us to prevent the ultimate pain of eternal separation and instead birthing newfound joy of union and face to face encounter with the God of love himself. Does this not remind you as I’m grateful it does me the power that God demonstrates in our weakness?
It is the power of a love that comes to meet us, sit and reside with us in the most spectacular of our failings, sufferings and weakest moments.
Hallelujah, praise be to his glorious, precious name.
Abba's Dearly Beloved 