Strength in Weakness

      Isaiah  40:28 – 31  Have you not known? Have you not heard, that the everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not grow weak nor weary? There is no searching of His understanding.   He gives power to the weary; and to him with no vigor; He increases strength. Even the young shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall;  but those who wait on Jehovah shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

The central promise here is: He gives power to the weak.

The Apostle Paul experienced and demonstrated this: “When I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:10). It’s interesting to note that Paul wrote these words to the Greeks who exalted intellect and physical beauty and prowess – man and his achievements – and had no use for a weakling. Yet, we know St. Paul had some physical impairment, his “thorn in the flesh”.

(2 Cor. 12:7). The Greeks had said of him “His bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible!” (2 Cor. 10:10). The fact that he had been scorned, stoned, scourged, ship-wrecked and imprisoned had not helped his reputation either. Paul did not measure up to their ideas of strength.

The passage at 1Corinth 1:18-25 has this to say: For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written ‘’I will  destroy the wisdom of the wise  and the cleverness of the clever I  will set aside.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.  For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom;  but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,  but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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What the Greeks didn’t understand is that God frequently works contrary to human logic and natural expectations. He says in His word “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor My ways your ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8, 9). What the Greeks called weakness, God calls strength.

It is very often that people who are not particularly gifted, nor highly trained, nor learned in man’s wisdom that God is able to do the most with. Because they are humble, emptied of self, weak in themselves, and depend on God for strength, He can work through them. He supplements such weakness with His strength, and they become truly strong. “To those who have no might He increases strength” (Isaiah . 40:29)

Isaiah’s depiction of Jesus’ appearance, prophetically described 750 years ago was not very flattering: “He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care”. (Isaiah    53:3)

God commanded prophet Samuel to go and anoint Jesse’s son as the successor to Saul. Now, Jesse had several sons and who is to be chosen as the future king of Israel? Samuel meets the eldest boy, powerfully built and very handsome and thought he had the right person, but apparently  he was not God’s chosen. Nor were the other boys. David was busy in the field herding sheep. The father had not thought much of the boy, so he had not brought him before the prophet; but eventually he was the one God anointed and  become the most famous king of Israel, the founder of the dynasty in which the Saviour of the world was to be born!

Goliath was a giant of a man who had totally destroyed the morale of the Israelite army. Fear had paralysed them on hearing the philistine’s taunts and boasts and nobody was ready to fight him. When young David offered himself for the task, Saul was skeptic. As David stood before Goliath he must have appeared like a gross hopper. But he openly confessed that the Lord of Heaven’s armies was behind him, attacked and killed the monster enabling  the Israelite win the day. 

Gideon defeated the powerful Medianite army with the help of only 300 men and freed the submissive Israelite from their oppression. Not that no one was ready to fight. He had amassed a substantial size of reserves itching to fight, but God brought down the numbers through a selective process and declared, the jealous God He is, that He didn’t want to ‘share the glory of victory with any flesh’. We can take heart from the fact that when God is with us, nobody can be against us.

Tamar, Rehab, Ruth and Bathsheba were four women immortalized through Jesus’ genealogy in Mathew 1:3-6. These ladies were not exactly the cream of Israeli womanhood, as one would expect. The less said about their antecedents, the better! But we remember them today more as Jesus’ ancestors than for their accomplishment or resourcefulness.

It was through the indigent provision made by a little boy—five loaves of bread and two little fish—that Jesus performed what was arguably His most spectacular miracle. It was to a simple Samaritan woman (who was probably living in sin) that he Jesus revealed His true identity. She became the first person to spread the good news outside Judea.

2Corinth 8:9 says “You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that by his poverty He could make you rich”. Although He was weak when He was nailed to the cross, He now lives by the power of God. We are weak, just as Christ was. But you will see that we will live by the power of God, just as Christ does (2Cor 13:4). 

All of God’s spiritual giants have been weak men and women who became great by God’s power. Moses was such a poor public speaker that God said his brother Aaron could do his speaking for him! But because Moses had learned to depend completely on God, he became the greatest law giver the world has ever known. Most of Jesus’ disciples were uneducated, but influence of those weak men is felt to this day. God was able to use them because they realized their weakness and put no confidence in themselves.

There were men and women who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the raging fire, and escaped the edge of the sword; who gained strength from weakness, became mighty in battle, and put foreign armies to flight (Hebrews 11;33, 34).

In the parable of two men who went to the temple to pray (Luke 18:10-14), Jesus makes it clear that it was not the self-righteous Pharisee who was announcing His good deeds to God , but it was the tax collector who beat his breast and cried to God He should have mercy on him that made the grade.

A primary qualification for serving God with any amount of success, and for doing God’s work well and triumphantly, is a sense of our own weakness. When God’s warrior marches forth to battle, strong in his own might, when he boasts, “I know that I shall conquer, my own right arm and my conquering sword shall get unto me the victory,” he is not far from certain defeat. God will not go forth with that man who marches in his own strength. He who reckons on victory thus has reckoned wrongly. They who go forth to fight, boasting of their prowess, shall return with their gay banners trailed in the dust, and their armour stained with disgrace. Those who serve God what man does, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. God rejects the mere fruit of the earth; He  will only reap that corn, the seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love.

God will empty out all that you have  before He will put His own into you; He will first clean out your  granaries before He will fill them with the finest of the wheat. The river of God is full of water; but not one drop of it flows from earthly springs. God will have no strength used in his battles but the strength which He Himself imparts. Are you mourning over your own weakness? Take courage, for there must be a consciousness of weakness before the Lord will give thee victory. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.

“It is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6)

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