How Weakness Takes Us to Jesus

We are not as strong as we think we are.

…A line from on old song by Rich Mullins that seems to always come to mind in my moments of weakness, when I most feel those reminders of just how weak I really am. When sickness strikes, as it has this week, or when some other assailer comes and swipes my legs from beneath me, then I remember what has always been true.

I am but dust. I am utterly dependent, like a child. I am weak but He is strong.

I’m laid low today. My pace and spinning speed that I usually operate at is down to a crawl.

My world has narrowed. Or perhaps I’ve just slowed down enough to see how really small my world actually is.  And how that’s all it’s supposed to be.

We love to be strong, don’t we?

We just really push hard against that thing called weakness in all of its shapes and sizes, don’t we?And when circumstances don't remind us of something otherwise, we love to imagine that we are as strong as we feel.Yet that's not strength. That's just the absence of hard circumstances. And how quickly we drink in their cheers to our stability and lose our grasp on our poverty. Oh, the endless cycle.

He Waits for the Children to Come to Him

And Jesus waits. He waits to be our source, sometimes until we've run ourselves ragged, with no other options. Until we've spent all of our strength. 

How long He waits for the proud, for the comfortable, for the strong one to finally see...to remember again...to accept again, their need. And to come to Him.

Let the little children come to Me," He says (Matt. 19:14).

His arms are full of poor ones. Children. The brokenhearted. Those with broken bodies. They never let go of Him —like my children that cling to me for dear life whenever their little world is somewhat troubled. They're the last to let go.

We’ve much to learn from little hearts that cling to Him, He said. His arms are filled with such ones as these (Matt. 19:14).

The Sweet Drink of His Strength

True, we do not like to be weak. but the genuinely weak have a different perspective. Rather than resisting the bitter taste of their weakness, they relish the sweet drink of His strength.

They don't view these times as a moment of recouping so as to resume to life as normal. They've settled into the vulnerability of living here, perpetually.

It’s those that already know their weakness that you find here first. Those who are blessed to know their poverty, though it is true of each of us. To know our weakness and spiritual poverty, then, is to be first in line to cling to Him—as a child—readily and wholeheartedly.

For we alone have a God who lifts the poor from the dust (Ps. 113:7). We alone know the One who revives the heart of the lowly and contrite, though He is the high and lofty One (Is. 57:15)

Rushing into His Arms

As for me, I'm rushing into those Arms today and tasting the sweetness of His strength. I'm moved by the fact that though I am not as strong as I think I am, His strength is my sweetness - not my own.And I'm saying yes to His invitation to stay here. To cling to Him here, continually.

For though I am weak, Jesus loves me. This I know.And His nearness is my good (Ps. 73:28).