What? Are You Weak or Something?
2 Corinthians 12:9
February 29, 2004
Intro:
A. [When We Are Weak, We Are Strong, Citation: Joni Eareckson Tada, quoted in My Heart Sings. Christianity Today, Vol. 33, no. 1.]
I relive each moment of my visit with Corrie ten Boom (paralyzed by a stroke). I recall how our eyes met as we were fed our cucumber sandwiches. Helpless and for the most part dependent, I felt our mutual weakness. Yet I am certain neither of us had ever felt stronger. It makes me think of the Cross of Christ--a symbol of weakness and humiliation, yet at the same time, a symbol of victory and strength. ...
For a wheelchair may confine a body that is wasting away. But no wheelchair can confine the soul, ... the soul that is inwardly renewed day by day. For paralyzed people can walk with the Lord. Speechless people can talk with the Almighty. Sightless people can see Jesus. Deaf people can hear the Word of God. And those like Tante Corrie, their minds shadowy and obscure, can have the very mind of Christ.
B. [Citation: N.T. Wright in For All God’s Worth. Christianity Today, Vol. 41, no. 12.]
We live in a world full of people struggling to be, or at least to appear, strong in order not to be weak; and we follow a gospel which says that when I am weak, then I am strong.
C. Today, I want to look at 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 and see if we can learn what the Christian’s attitude should be towards weakness. [read 2 Corinthians 12:1-10]
I. Acknowledge your weaknesses
(2 Corinthians 12:5 NIV) I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses.
A. The apostle Paul acknowledged his weakness.
1. Paul did not pretend to be something that he wasn’t.
2. Paul did not try to convince himself that he was something that he wasn’t.
3. Paul first acknowledged his weakness.
B. Paul allowed himself to know that he had weaknesses.
1. Now that may sound like a strange statement, but when you stop to think about it, we usually try to convince ourselves that we don’t have any weaknesses.
2. And I must say that that is a lie of satan.
4. This is the Word of God as spoken through the apostle Paul.
5. Paul allowed himself to know that he had weaknesses.
6. Deep down, we all know that we have them, but we don’t allow ourselves to know it.
7. We allow satan to convince us that we are strong.
8. We allow satan to convince us that we can handle things.
9. We allow satan to convince us that we are ok.
10. We allow satan to convince us that we really are a good person.
C. But what the Christian does (as demonstrated by the apostle Paul) is that we own up to our weaknesses.
1. Stop pretending that you have it all together and be honest about yourself.
2. Instead of living in denial, you should stop make excuses for yourself and start making a list of your weaknesses.
3. There are too many people who call themselves Christians who are trying to fool themselves, God, and everyone else into thinking that they have it all together.
4. The trouble is that God and everyone else knows that you don’t have it all together and you are the only one you are fooling.
D. Now I know that there are a lot of Christians and preachers that want to talk about the supernatural stuff in this text.
1. They want to talk about the fellow who was caught up to the third heaven.
2. They want to talk about this fellow who was caught up to paradise.
3. They want to talk about out of body experiences.
4. They want to talk about inexpressible things that man is not permitted to tell.
5. They want to talk about receiving surpassingly great revelations.
6. They want to talk about tormenting by satan.
7. But that is not what this text is about!
8. Yes, they are in the Word of God and they are things that some people do receive, but the pathway to receiving such experiences is the pathway of weakness.
9. THAT’s what the apostle is teaching here!
10. Some people just want to hear and talk about and study what they are interested in, but this is not what the apostle Paul was teaching here.
11. Paul said he would go on to visions and revelations, but first he needed to talk to them about the different between strength and weakness and the rewards of being weak.
E. So what are the weaknesses that the apostle is referring to?
1. insults, hardships, difficulties
2. Why are those things so great? Because they drive us to our knees!
3. They convince us of where our real strength is.
4. They convince us that our strength is found in Jesus and not in our own wisdom or abilities.
5. If it takes a crisis to get us to admit that we are only human, then God will not hesitate to allow it to happen to us.
6. Because God loves you so much and wants you to learn to trust and depend on Him, God will allow suffering and hardship in your life to drive you to your knees and cause you to cry out to God for strength and wisdom!
7. And in that moment of so-called weakness—you are strong!
8. You are strong because now you are emptied of self enough to let all of the strength of God into your life!
9. So allow yourself to know that you have weaknesses.
10. List your weaknesses on a piece of paper.
11. Acknowledge your weaknesses, and…
II. Accept your weaknesses
(2 Corinthians 12:7 NIV) To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
A. God knew that these surpassingly great revelations would tempt Paul to become conceited and therefore not in a position to receive the fullness of God in his life, so God gave him a thorn in the flesh.
1. Paul never tells us what that thorn in the flesh was, but he does tell us that he asked for it to be removed three times and God said no.
2. How many of you know that God sometimes says no?
B. Not only do we need to acknowledge that we do have weaknesses, we also need to accept them.
1. God told Paul that he would just have to accept this weakness.
2. You see when God says no and we have to be content with a weakness, we have to trust God and tell Him that we believe He knows what He’s doing even if we don’t.
C. Accepting our weaknesses causes us to depend on God.
1. Now we’re not talking about a one-time thing.
2. If it were just a one-time thing, God would remove the weakness the first time you prayed.
3. But perhaps God is not removing the weakness because He wants you to stay on your knees.
4. Perhaps God is saying no to keep you crying out to Him.
5. Perhaps God is saying no to teach you to live a broken lifestyle.
6. Perhaps God is teaching you a lifestyle of brokenness so that you can have all of the fullness in your life all the time.
7. Accepting our weaknesses causes us to depend on God.
D. Accepting our weaknesses causes us to not get prideful.
1. Paul said that God gave him this thorn to keep him from becoming conceited.
2. We have a tendency to do that, don’t we?
3. We have a tendency that when we get what we ask for, to begin thinking that we don’t need God anymore.
4. Once we’ve overcome the struggle, we don’t tend to continue on our knees, do we?
5. Once we’ve received a gift from God, we begin to think that we are special now that we’ve got something that someone else doesn’t have.
6. Maybe God loves us more than others.
7. Some Christians begin to think that they have somehow arrived and they no longer sin.
8. Some Christians begin to think that somehow now that they’ve received some special gift from God that must mean that God thinks they’re OK and that is pride.
E. Accepting our weaknesses causes us to seek fellowship with other believers.
1. Strength causes us to seek independence.
2. Accepting our weakness should drive us to seek some confidant to hold us accountable to God in overcoming this weakness.
3. Accepting our weakness should drive us to seek fellowship and protection from other believers who are weak as well.
4. Strength causes us to stay away from others.
F. Accepting our weaknesses causes us to have heart for ministry to others with similar weaknesses.
1. The things that you are most embarrassed about and ashamed of and reluctant to share are the very things God can use most powerfully to minister to others.
2. God wants you to have a ministry on hear and it is only when you can acknowledge and accept your weaknesses that you can be powerfully used by God.
3. It is only when you acknowledge and accept your weaknesses that God can supernaturally use you to minister to others.
4. When you are confident in yourself you cannot be used of God.
III. Admit your weaknesses
(2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV) But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
A. Paul said he would BOAST about His weaknesses.
1. Not only did Paul allow Himself to know that he was weak, he was going to admit his weaknesses to others.
2. Why would He do that? He would do that because of what Christ said to him: God’s power was made perfect in his weakness.
3. So Paul boasted about his weaknesses because it was in His weaknesses that God’s power was made perfect.
4. So it only makes since that Paul would boast about God’s power!
5. Not only did Paul allow Himself to know that he was weak, he was willing to admit his weaknesses to others.
B. Now I must tell you that I have taken quite a bit of heat in my ministry for admitting my weaknesses.
1. Of course there is a time and a place for doing that and there is a proper way to do it.
2. And that was not what I have taken the heat for.
3. It wasn’t that I admitted my weaknesses in an inappropriate way, because I have not even said publicly what they are.
4. I’ve simply said that I have them and I struggle with them.
5. I have not said things that are inappropriate or said them in an inappropriate way, I just said that I have weaknesses and I know what they are and I struggle with them.
6. So why did I take heat for it?
7. Well, I was told that it is embarrassing to have a pastor who says he has weaknesses.
8. After all, if I really am a man of God, I ought to be able to overcome my weaknesses with the help of God.
9. I should just stop doing what ever it is that I am doing that I shouldn’t be doing.
10. I shouldn’t stand up there and tell people that there are things that I struggle with.
11. Pastors are supposed to be good people.
12. How in the world can a Pastor have weaknesses?
C. But friends that is not the attitude that Christians should have.
1. Christians should be able to admit that we have weaknesses.
2. Christians know that ministry begins with vulnerability.
3. The more you let down your defenses and take off your masks and reveal your struggles, the more God will be able to use you.
4. If you pretend to be something that you are not, people can see through that phoniness and you won’t be able to minister to them.
5. You don’t want anything to do with people who think they have it all together and neither does anybody else.
D. This is not the only place that Paul revealed his humanness.
1. Paul admitted his failures in (Romans 7:19 NIV) For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.
2. Paul admitted his feelings in (2 Corinthians 6:11 NIV) We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you.
3. Paul admitted his frustrations in (2 Corinthians 1:8 NIV) We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.
4. Paul admitted his fears in (1 Corinthians 2:3 NIV) I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.
F. God calls all Christians to this same honesty and humility.
1. Many people think that humility is putting yourself down and denying your strengths, but humility is being honest about your weaknesses.
3. You are good at some things and you have weaknesses.
4. All of these things the apostle Paul did and so should we.
5. We should admit our failures, feelings, frustrations, and fears to ourselves, to God, and to others.
6. God works in that.
7. How do you get people to trust you? Not by pretending to be perfect, but by being open and honest.
8. Don’t hesitate to admit your weaknesses.
IV. Admire your weaknesses
(2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV) That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
A. Now that may sound like a strange thing, but remember that the apostle Paul said that he boasted about his weaknesses and he said that he delighted in them.
1. When satan or someone else points out your weaknesses, don’t defend yourself, agree with them.
2. Tell ole satan that Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus sympathizes with your weaknesses.
3. And tell him that Romans 8:26 says that the HS helps you in your weakness.
B. Don’t let your weaknesses get you down.
1. Admire them and believe that Jesus understands.
2. Admire them and let the HS help you with them.
4. Admire them and remember that when you are weak, he is strong.
5. Admire them and let His power fill you in them.
6. Admire them and let His grace be sufficient for you.
Conclusion:
A. Hebrews 11 is the Hall of Fame of the Heroes of the Faith and verse 24 says that their weakness was turned to strength;
1. Listen to how beautifully Hebrews 11 speaks of how the weaknesses of the great heroes of the faith were turned to strength…
2. [Read Hebrews 11:1-40]
3. Emphasize “the world was not worthy of them” and “whose weakness was turned to strength”]
B. [Beauty’s True Source, Citation: Jim Congdon]
A jarring TV commercial didn’t say a word. It simply shows a series of people who have one thing in common—a nasty injury or scar. There’s a cowboy with a huge scar around his eye, and something wrong with the eye itself; a fellow with a bulbous cauliflower ear; another with horribly callused feet. There’s no explanation at all, simply the Nike swoosh and "Just Do It."
The ad has been analyzed and criticized widely as being incomprehensible and extreme. But the key to the controversial commercial lies in the background music. Joe Cocker sings, "You are so beautiful . . . to me."
To these athletes—the wrestler with the cauliflower ear, the surfer with a shark bite, the bullrider blind in one eye—their injuries are beauty marks. And to their fans, these athletes are beautiful because of their scars. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," says Mike Folino, the ad’s creator.
God’s grace is just as jarring and controversial. Our beauty is found not in us, but in him. He looks down at us—injured, blind, and scarred—and sings, "You are so beautiful . . . to me."
C. That is the essence of this message, that is the essence of the Scriptures, that is the essence of the Passion of the Christ.
1. You are so beautiful that God sent His Son to be the ultimate sacrifice to buy you back from satan.
2. Satan will try to convince you that you are OK and that you can handle things with your own wisdom and abilities.
3. But Christ simply says He understand your weaknesses.
4. He did not deny His strengths but He took our weaknesses upon Himself and underwent the scourgings and the mockings and the crucifixion.
5. Did he do it because you are ok in and of yourself and that you are a great person.
6. No, just the opposite. He did it because you needed Him to do it.
7. Did He do it because you are perfect and talented? No He did it because you are imperfect and weak.
8. Jesus looks at your weaknesses and infirmities and sings, “You are so beautiful…to me.”
