The Strength of Weakness

“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.”

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I’ve been reading a wonderful book, Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life, by Rebecca Manley Pippert (I highly recommend it!). In the first chapter, Rebecca addresses several insights she gained about witnessing. She talks about her conversation with an atheist friend who stated, “All my life I used to think, How arrogant for someone to call himself a Christian, to think he’s that good. But then I got to know you – and Becky, you are far from perfect, yet you call yourself a Christian. So my first shock was to discover you ‘blow it’ like I do. But the biggest shock was that you admitted it, where I couldn’t. Suddenly I saw that being a Christian didn’t mean never failing but admitting when you’ve failed. I wanted to keep Christ in a box and let you be religious during Bible studies, but the more you let me inside your life, the more impossible it became to keep the lid on Christianity. Even your admission of weaknesses drove me to him!” Rebecca goes on to say, “That confession changed my life. What astonished me was that she had seen me in all kinds of circumstances – she had seen the real me – and it gave the gospel more power, not less.”

Sometimes, we hesitate to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others because we don’t ‘have it all together’ or we feel like our testimony isn’t ‘perfect.’ The thing is, God can use our weaknesses to reach others. People aren’t looking for saints; they are looking for individuals who have struggles and failings just like them, who are transparent but also know where to find the answer to life’s problems; Jesus Christ.

 Prayer: Lord, I thank you for using us despite our weaknesses and shortcomings. You aren’t looking for perfect people to carry your message of salvation to the lost. You are simply looking for willing hearts. Use us, Lord, however, wherever, whenever to your glory. Amen.