weakness

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There is an amazing strength that comes from within when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt whose you are: that you were created for a purpose and how much you are deeply loved.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3, ESV

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalm 139:13-16, NIV

No lie from the Enemy can steal that truth away. You have to see it and really believe it, no matter what life seems to present you with. We may bend with the wind, but we won’t break.Bend in the Wind

It is the One who has carried you through every high gale and storm; He is the One who sings over you joyfully and holds you tenderly in the palm of His hand. The God from everlasting to everlasting!

Don’t you know, you are a child of God?

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Romans 8:16-17, ESV

and 

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12, NIV

This is our positional and eternal truth! It is hard to be shaken from that reality once you get it!

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“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9a

I never used to like being weak. To me, being weak always meant you couldn’t take care of yourself. It meant you had to admit you needed help. To be strong meant competency and reliability. But there is a sense of competency that comes as a believer, when you practice your reliability on the One that can provide for every need that you have. As I have been through so many life lessons and matured more in my faith, I have begun to understand that weakness is for my benefit. When I am weak it causes me to seek out my God, a rock and a refuge, who holds me up with His mighty right hand and protects me under His wing. When I am weary I can rest and trust in Him.

God was more concerned with Paul’s integrity and that he didn’t brag about his own knowledge, but that he would brag all the more about his weaknesses and frailty, his sufferings, so that Christ could be known through Paul’s weaknesses. And that is exactly where He wants me to be, too. The areas in my life where I have been weak and will still be weak; the hardships that I suffer, or insults for what I believe in, those are the areas in my life that God wants to glorify Himself through for others to see.

What a comforting thought: behind every suffering, every weakness, every difficulty, is an opportunity for you to shine for Christ. Paul even said he delights in these… that may seem a bit tough to swallow, but as I start to see the big picture in this and in my own life, I tend to not hold onto the grumbling so much anymore when these trials come. Instead, I am learning to embrace them (mind you they are not delightful yet, but one day…); I am catching glimpses of this power being made perfect in me through these times of weaknesses. Such a testimony we can be, one to another. Allow your weaknesses and watch His grace work mightily in you!

“For when I am weak, then I am strong.”rainbowfarm