This week I was sitting in a room of 7th and 8th grade girls when one of them said, “We impress people with our strengths, but we connect with people over our weaknesses.”
I looked at her and my jaw literally dropped. This precious, young woman understood what took me years to comprehend. She understood the beautiful reality of recognizing we are imperfect and weak in our own right, but God is perfect and mighty in power. Although we are incapable of deeming ourselves as worthy before a righteous God, the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf makes us worthy of his grace, his mercy, and his love. We can rejoice in our weaknesses because it is there that we lay aside our pride, our judgment, and our self-reliance. In return we receive unmerited grace, true freedom, and an unwavering hope.
Many of us have believed the lie somewhere along the way that for us to bring God glory in our lives we must have a life that is picture perfect. Then we find ourselves in a place of feeling complete and total embarrassment because our lives are far from picture perfect. In fact, every literal picture of our lives makes it glaringly obvious that they are quite imperfect because something has changed—someone is missing.
Though our stories at times take turns we may not have been expecting, as long as we have breath God is still at work in our lives. The message of the gospel is that it is right there in our weaknesses, in our hardships, in our persecutions, and in our difficulties we find the one and only source of strength that can provide ultimate endurance and perseverance. That source is in Christ alone. He is our strength. We can rejoice in coming to a place of total dependence on the Lord because he is always faithful.
It’s funny how God works. What seems like it would never draw people to the Lord is somehow the exact means he uses to draw people to himself. He chose to call us his ambassadors. He chose to give us a testimony that is meant to be shared with others. It’s in those moments of vulnerability and transparency with others that we are drawn into even deeper relationships and come together to rejoice in the incredible gift of salvation. We truly connect with others through our weaknesses.
That student’s words have continually come to mind the past few days. In a season focused on thankfulness, I am truly grateful for all Jesus accomplished through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. What an absolutely amazing gift we have been offered of life, hope, peace, joy, and love through the blood of the Lamb.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 says, “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. 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.”
