Weak

September 11, 2024

From Jackie Payne

I woke up Wednesday morning with a migraine. I’d had a headache on Tuesday and had done the things I normally do to make sure it gets no further…but it didn’t work. After trying to alleviate my symptoms, I gave up and went back to bed, telling Greg he needed to take the kids to school. I felt defeated and weak.

When our bodies don’t behave the way we want them to or think they should, we feel weak. There is something in us that craves sustainability, our own sustainability. We want to be able to function on our own and properly. We want to be strong and capable. We want to be able to take on the day and do whatever we put our minds to that day. We don’t like being weak.

I think that’s why so we struggle with giving our all to Jesus. It means we must admit that we can’t do it all; we aren’t everything we want to be. The truth is that we can’t be our best selves without the Holy Spirit. We can’t love others the way we want or deflect the harshness of the world the way we’d like to without the Holy Spirit. We can’t do our best or say the right things without Jesus’ transforming grace and peace. It’s a hard pill to swallow when we admit we aren’t as strong as we’d like to think we are.

What are you holding onto today because you don’t want to admit defeat? What can you give Jesus today that would indicate you are weak? How can God soften your heart if you just give something up, something you’ve maybe been holding onto for a really long time, putting up a wall of strength or protection? Where can you lean into His strength today, letting Him mold and comfort you?

Imagine what God could do in us and through us if we admit we are weak and let His strength guide us?

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 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 12:8-10