God Speaking

“He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

(1 Corinthians 1: 8)

We sing a song in our church, that always lifts me up and makes me realise that I can make it through another week, with the help of the Holy Spirit holding me up. The refrain of each verse says;

The weak made strong through the Saviour’s love.

The permission to be weak is one of the most beautiful aspects of being a follower of Christ Jesus. In a world that often despises weakness and actively preaches another message of be strong and achieve your goal and promote stories of people going off into the wilderness by themselves, camping, foraging for food, living off berries, giving all the glory to the person and making all those who could never accomplish this a feeling of being weak and useless.

We have often heard this deriding of weakness in these sayings;

• He is such a weak person, never standing up for himself
• She is so weak she just gives in to everybody, she has no backbone

It is so refreshing to read in Scripture, that the Lord does not judge us on how strong we are.

Paul has quite a different slant on what weakness means to him. He revels in his weakness because he knows that when he succeeds, glory will go to the Lord;

“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 Corinthians12: 10)

The Psalmists knew where to find the strength to get them through whatever was happening around them. We too can call out to the Lord when our strength is failing;

“Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me.” (Psalm 31: 3)

We often come across in our own lives, of people who are genuinely weak through a physical handicap, or from some terrible trauma, or a mental problem, these are the ones who need to hear the wonderful news, that the Lord does not see them having to be trapped in their weakness , but is willing to make them strong in his love. We too by our actions need to see them as children of God, deeply loved by him and to tell them this.

Sometimes life overwhelms us so powerfully that we feel we cannot even pray and feel weak and helpless. This is when we can remember that we have a powerful advocate, the Holy Spirit who offers to pray for us if we just come and ask him;

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself, intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” (Romans 8: 26)

Then the Saviour will make us strong through his love.