Paul dealt with the barrage of
accusations that had been thrown at him from many directions and the believers
in Corinth had surely heard.
Paul wasn’t a
real apostle. He didn’t walk with Jesus. He wasn’t one of the twelve. The other
were super apostles. Previously, he had tried to steer these same
believers away from this compare and contrast game and get them to the mindset
of we are all on the same team.
We are reaching the lost with good
news and trying to live a holy
life. We don’t have time for this nonsense, but the
logic did not slow down the debilitating effects of this nonsense.
So Paul says, Finna play the game
for a minute. Yes, I took some liberties with that one.
Have those others been beaten and run
out of town? Imprisoned? Shipwrecked?
Bitten by a snake? Stoned and so much more?
Paul was told that he
would suffer for the name of Jesus and for preaching the gospel and he was.
While most of the other apostles would eventually die a gruesome death; they
did not endure the litany of trials that Paul did.
Paul might have thrown a pity party
over all of his trials and suffering. His shortcomings might have been his
undoing. His weakness might have disqualified him from service to God and those
to whom he was sent.
But…
In baseball, if you get a hit one out
of three times, you are superstar. In basketball, if you hit one out of three free
throws, you are riding the bench.
The pitcher who threw a perfect game,
threw a lot of balls—and probably even bounced a couple in the dirt—even though
nobody successfully got to first base. If he threw every pitch over the plate,
he probably wouldn’t have that perfect game in the books. Batters would be
teeing off if they knew every pitch would be over the plate.
Resistance training—weightlifting—builds
strength. If you can lift a lot of weight, you are considered strong. The more
you work out, the stronger you get. Do the work and do it the right way and you
can lift more over time.
But there are limits, right? You can’t
just show up one day and add fifty or a hundred pounds to your max and expect
to lift it right then.
But what if you could? Sometimes you
can. On many Navy ships, the weight room
is forward. Sometimes the up and down movement of the ship can help us lift
more than we can really lift by ourselves. What?
You settle in on the bench press and
instead of getting ready to lift 300 pounds, you go for 400. Just before the
front of the ship goes down, you lift. It’s like you are just holding the
weight in place and the ship moves you away from the weights.
Just like that your arms are fully
extended with a 400-pound lift fully accomplished. Should have gone for 500
pounds Lowering the barbell can be tricky. If you lower the weights as the ship
rises up again, it’s like 500 pounds coming down on you. Don’t try this without
a couple of good spotters.
Anyone know how to climb a rope? It
can be a challenge but less so if you use your largest muscles. They are in
your legs.
The preacher has really lost it today.
How do you climb a rope with your legs?
Stand before the rope with this
hanging ascension device centered between your legs. Wrap one leg around the
rope. Jump as high as you can and grab on and hold on. Now raise your legs—your
knees—to your chest, higher if possible. This is a hands-free procedure as you
are holding on with both hands. It may take a little practice to catch the
idiom.
Next, put the heel of your boot on top
of the ankle of the other leg with the rope sandwiched securely between. Remember that you are not climbing with your
arms. The arms and hands are just holding on.
Now, stand up with the rope secured
between your feet. This lets you reach farther up the rope. Reach as high as possible
and hold on. Now raise your legs again.
Your legs will be singing old Sam and
Dave songs. OK, they just sing Hold On, I’m Coming.
Repeat until you reach the top of the
rope. Your arms are not nearly as strong as your legs. They just need to be
strong enough to hold on.
The truth of the matter is that
compared to your legs, your arms are weak, even if you think you are strong. Your
legs are so much more powerful. Now, back to the letter.
Paul might have thrown a pity party
over his many trials and suffering. His shortcomings might have been his
undoing. His weakness might have disqualified him from service to God and those
to whom he was sent.
But…
God’s strength was manifest in Paul’s
weakness. God’s strength is fully
present in our weakness.
We have discussed gestalt
before. It is integrity. It is complete.
It is the whole is more than the sum of its parts business.
We are not complete without God. We can’t do
what we are designed to do without God. We are not able to do what we are called
to do without God. The daily trials of our lives show us that we can’t do this
alone.
Actually, we can for a while. I know
the force of personality drill. I’ve done it many times. It gets you up the
hill. But we can’t sustain it. It’s like climbing a rope with only you arms.
We are too weak, but in our weakness
lies either defeat or clarity. In the letters
to the 7 churches of Asia, John noted a word that Jesus used several times.
Overcome!
We are to be overcomers, but we are
too weak. The challenges of this world will defeat you if you count only on
your own strength, which is so often too little, too weak to accomplish much.
But with
God, we are complete and overcome
the troubles of this world.
Man! That’s some powerful but maybe a
bit too philisophical philosophical and theoretical stuff. I don’t know if I
can relate. It’s a little too conceptual to put
into practice, or is it?
When the car that is still a dozen
payments from being paid off breaks down and it’s big-time repairs on the
horizon, it can seem like game over.
When the sheriff delivers the eviction
notice, it seems like all you can do is cry.
When the 200th day of
sobriety doesn’t become the 201st, it can seem like it was all for
nothing.
When you have been busting your butt
on the job for a year, but you are among those getting the pink slip in the
downsizing, it can feel like everything is hopeless.
When the loved one is gone far too
soon and we feel helpless, we can feel as if the very essence of life has been
sucked out of us.
When the marriage doesn’t seem worth
the effort and both people are ready to throw in the towel, you might just ask,
“What’s the point?”
What’s the point?
Paul could have said, “I deserve a
medal.” He could have said, “Enough is enough!”
He could have just thrown in the towel. He could have become bitter or
cynical or angry. He could have cried out, “Why me, Lord?”
But surely, he remembered the words of
Jesus, though he did not quote them. You will have trouble in the world, but
take heart—take courage—I have overcome the world.
Our trials and tribulations, our
suffering and sadness, our tests and temptations might just be the best vision
plan on the planet. For in
our weakness, we hone our vision. We have eyes to see the strength of the
Lord completing us in the very things we dread the most.
James
noted that we should consider such trials as pure joy. They are the means
to our completeness. These terrible things reveal that the greatness and
strength of the Lord lives in us.
It’s not game over, it’s game on!
Game on!
Had our lives been smooth sailing every
day, our
vision would have never been what it is. When we realize and affirm that we
are broken, fall short, and can’t do it all ourselves, then we can have eyes to
see God’s human design, and that design says we are incomplete without the
Lord.
That’s just the way the owner’s manual
reads. God’s strength is manifest in our weakness.
Our legs climb the rope. If we could
climb it with only our arms, we might never know the power in our legs.
The movement of the ship lifts more
than we possibly can. If we could press 400 or 500 pounds just because of the toned
muscle bulk in our arms, we might never leverage the laws of physics. We don’t
actually get stronger, but we still moved that 400 pounds like it was nothing.
This weakness in ourselves revealing
God’s strength in our lives, is like soaring
on the wings of eagles. Without God’s strength realized within us, we are
surely grounded.
And without our weakness, we are too
often blind to his strength. There’s a paradigm shift for you. There’s a
paradox many never realize. There’s the power of God taking us from
death to life.
It’s not something that happens
automatically. There is this little thing called trust.
We must trust that our weakness is an opening to God’s strength. Only in faith
can we realize
this.
Our own understanding says throw in
the towel. Paul says, “Don’t you dare give up!” The best is yet to come, but
only if we have eyes to see this dynamic of God’s strength manifest in our
weakness.
So, what is this morning’s message?
Dive into life. Don’t despair with
every mistake. Swing for the fence or bunt and run like crazy, but don’t hang
your head when you don’t make contact or get thrown out by half a step. Live!
Only in forsaking worldly expectations
and criticisms, can we find abundance.
And abundance does not always reside in making every shot or batting
.400. Sometimes abundance, the fullness of life, is only manifested in our
mess.
I have put my weakness before you in
this morning’s message. The guy who likes to write mixed far too many
metaphors.
In my menagerie of mixed metaphor
madness and missteps, it will not be my alliterative recovery, but God who can
tell you and I believe is telling you to live and live to the full and realize
his strength in our weakness.
You still need to study for tests,
show up on time for work, make your car payments, take
every though captive, and the other good steward type of things that we
know to do, but weakness is not always failure. Sometimes our weaknesses become
our corrective lenses and we see God’s strength at work in us.
A macro view of Moses’s life might say
that he spent 40 years thinking he was somebody, 40 years finding out he was
nobody, and 40 years realizing what God can do with a nobody.
If you are in Christ, the end of the
road is never the end of the road. The end of your rope is never the end. Weakness
is not failure unless you refuse to see God’s strength at work.
That doesn’t mean that we try to mess
things up and cause trouble for ourselves and deliberately put ourselves in bad
situations. It means that we press on towards the goal of loving God and each
other and if we don’t measure up somewhere, God is more than enough to measure
us up to the challenge and he brings completeness to us.
We know that God
uses everything for good for those who love him and are called according to
his purpose, and that includes our weakness.
We should embrace that recognizing and
owning our weaknesses is part of the journey that gets us to God’s strength.
God has no shortage of win-win
dynamics for us. Let’s trust him more today than we did yesterday and go for
it. Live with passion for our mission and commission and kick fear to the curb.
God has more than enough strength to
account for our weaknesses. Trust him and then trust him more.
Amen.
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