Ecclesiastes 4-6, 2 Corinthians 12 • Key Verse: 2 Corinthians 12:9
As usual, strength is “in.” Join the fitness center, work out, eat right, take supplements, be strong.
Then be self-reliant, capable, assured, accomplished, using your connections and abilities to get
where you want to be. Overcome your weaknesses and conquer the world.
You hear this over and over again, don’t you? What you don’t hear is an encouragement to be
weak. The closest thing to that is the current emphasis on “servant-leadership,” but notice that it
is still “leadership.”
What Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:9 is truly counter-culture: “I will boast all the more gladly
about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” When did you last hear someone
say, “Let me tell you about my weak points”? We think they are to be hidden, put out of sight,
covered up. But Paul said he would boast about them.
The difference is Christ. Paul knew, and we need to also, that Christ’s power rests on us in our
weaknesses, not in our strength. Where we say, “I can’t,” Christ says, “I can.” And as long as we
say,
“I can,” Christ says, “I can’t.” It is not that He can’t but that we won’t let Him. We are like a
child, unwilling to let a parent help. It is only when the child in weakness admits he can’t that the
parent, in strength, can help.
It’s the same for us. Stay strong and you are weak. Stay weak and by Christ you are strong.
“God, help me be weak, to put aside my arrogant self-sufficiency, drawing instead on the
strength of Christ. I can’t, but He can. ”
Woodrow Kroll & Tony Beckett
www.backtothebible.in