Strength In Weakness: Embracing God’s Power In Our Frailty Series

Title: Strength in Weakness: Embracing God’s Power in Our Frailty

Text: 2 Corinthians 12:10 “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.”

Introduction: The Christian life contains a profound paradox: strength is found not in self-reliance, but in surrender; not in achievement, but in humility; not in boasting, but in admitting our weakness. The apostle Paul captured this mystery in 2 Corinthians 12:10 when he wrote, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

To the world, that statement makes little sense. Strength, culture tells us, belongs to the self-made, the confident, and the capable. Weakness is something to hide or overcome. Yet God works on a different order. Paul learned this truth through painful experience when he pleaded with God to remove his “thorn in the flesh.” God’s answer was not the healing Paul expected, but a greater revelation: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). The weakness remained, but so did a deeper strength—God’s strength.

Tim Keller often pointed out that the gospel is full of paradoxes—“the way up is down,” “to live you must die,” “to gain you must lose.” One of the clearest examples of that paradox is the Christian idea that real strength is found not in our power, but in our weakness.

There’s a story Keller liked to reference from history about Saint Augustine. Augustine vividly remembered how, as a young man, he was the picture of capability—brilliant, articulate, respected. He believed that strength looked like self-sufficiency—that the goal of life was to need nothing and no one.

But years later, after encountering Christ, he said something remarkable. He wrote, “My weakness was the door to Your strength.” Augustine realized what many of us resist: the things that we believe disqualify us are often the very things that allow God to work most powerfully in us.

Keller would compare this to how modern people think about strength. In the city (he often said “in New York,” but it’s true everywhere), strength is measured by independence, by résumé lines, by how put together we appear. No one wants to be weak—weakness feels like failure.

But the gospel says, “Yes, you are weak—and that is precisely how God’s strength gets in.”

It’s like a surgeon performing a heart transplant. Strength doesn’t come from a patient gritting their teeth and saying, “I’ve got this.” The patient must lie still, unable to help themselves, and trust the surgeon to do what they cannot do. Their helplessness is not an obstacle—it’s the condition for healing.

Keller would say the cross itself is the ultimate example: Jesus saves the world not by overpowering His enemies, but by submitting to them. He triumphs not by wielding a sword, but by bearing a cross. God brings salvation through apparent defeat, life through death, power through weakness.

And then Keller would turn it back on us: if God worked through the weakness of the cross, then He can surely work through ours.

Our weaknesses—our failures, our limitations, even our sufferings—become the very channels through which God does His most transformative work. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Not because weakness is pleasant, but because it makes us cling to the One who is truly strong.

HOW DOES OUR WEAKNESS HELP US?

I. Weakness Exposes Our Need

The first gift of weakness is that it exposes the illusion that we are self-sufficient. Our limitations, failures, and wounds reveal our desperate need for a Savior. When we finally come to the end of ourselves, we discover that God never expected us to carry the weight alone.

Many Christians do not grow strong until God dismantles their pride.

• Jacob wrestled with God and walked with a limp.

• Gideon led an army reduced to 300 men.

• Peter failed publicly before preaching boldly. Weakness becomes the soil in which grace grows

II. Weakness Invites God’s Power

God does not despise weakness—He inhabits it. The same power that raised Christ from the dead does not enter strong, independent hearts, but surrendered ones. Often we pray for God to make us strong, but instead He makes us dependent—because a dependent believer is undefeatable.

Consider that Jesus Himself embraced weakness: “He was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4). The cross looked like defeat, yet it became history’s greatest victory. In the same way, the situations that humble us may be the very places where resurrection power enters our lives.

III. Weakness Becomes Strength When Yielded to Christ