Living strong in the Spirit

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.  2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Anyone who pulls out a club and tees up the ball soon learns the agonizing truth that golf is “the game of opposites.”  When the clubhead passes through on a leftward trajectory, the ball “slices” to the right; when the pendulum swings right, the ball “hooks” left.  If we want the shot to go higher, we don’t “scoop” underneath the ball, rather we swing down on it.  But most of all, to hit the ball farther we must loosen our grip and (repeat after me) slow down!  It is the relaxed, easy swing that powers the longer, stronger golf shot.  It’s all so counterintuitive!  So frustrating!  Yet so true.

And so similar to living strong in the Spirit!  For the less we cling to our own will and the less we travel our own path, the more powerfully the Spirit of God flows in us and through us.  Jesus has coached us in this “opposites” principle clearly enough: “My power is made perfect in weakness.”  And ever his student, the Apostle Paul attested, “... when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The concept is hardly new, but a consistent truth throughout the Biblical narrative.  It wasn’t the 40 year-old, “kill-a-man-with-my-bare-hands” Moses who led Israel out of Egypt, but an older, weaker Moses, now “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.”  And what “mighty warrior” did God commission to save Israel from the Midianites but Gideon, the runt of the litter in the weakest clan of Manasseh!  (Who?  Me?)

On its face, strength in weakness seems so unnatural.  And perhaps that’s the key!  For God’s power is always aligned with his purposes, while our sinful nature always hacks away at our own. 

Yet we are his people, and he is our God.  His purposes have become our purposes, and our struggles he has taken upon himself.  So we do well to put on Christ and rely on his strength working in and through us.  For “The spirit is willing,” said Jesus, “but the flesh is weak.”

To what impossible task has God called you?  Can you trust him to be your strength for it?