7.3 Connect Your Weakness to Jesus
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
We wish to embrace with all our hearts the wonder and salvation of placing Jesus into our human weaknesses and our human weaknesses into Jesus. At the same time, we want to avoid as best we can all the many pitfalls and dead-end paths found in the murky swamps of human psychosis and pretending. Human weakness and difficulty is one big waste of time if we do not connect that weakness to Jesus and to His revelation through us. Yet this wondrous gift Jesus has given us, that of agreeing to drink all that we are, including our sin and our shame, into Himself and to now live as us, living us all the way into life, is the most precious reality we know and will ever know.
Be Real
The primary joy of accepting our weakness is that we then learn to be simply real, to be exactly what God made us to be, no more and no less. This does not mean being rude and crude to others. The more we speak all that God speaks personally as Christ our only life, the more gentle and kind our hearts become. But it does mean that we never accept condemnation when we stumble or fall short. Rather, we boldly and joyfully place all of what we once thought of as mistakes into the Lord Jesus, knowing that He is living now as us. The mistakes are entirely His.
Sin
Paul said, “I boast in my weaknesses.” He did not say, “I boast in my sins.”
Yes, we place all that could be sin into Jesus just the same, Jesus dead upon the cross. But when we are honest about our limitations and share of them with others, we do NOT include our sins in the list. Yet much that Christianity has called “sin” is not sin at all. Too often the human expression as God made us has been called “sin,” things like anger or frustration for example. Sometimes, people trying to get rid of “sin” are only getting rid of Christ through their human person.
No More Pretending
The worst sin is pretending, however, pretending that we are right, especially when our being “right” hurts others. When we accept our weakness as God revealing Himself through us, we no longer need to pretend. The more I see Jesus in all of my personal inabilities and lacks, the more I see all of my personal inabilities and lacks in Jesus, the less reason I find to put on any outward show so that people will imagine I’m some sort of “man of God.” And the more I am free to be real, to be who and what I am as God made me, the more Jesus seems to shine upon my face and the more I desire to bless others. For real – with no need to pretend.
Why Weakness?
What if God, desiring to show Himself to creation through other persons, had chosen persons who were strong and capable? We are talking about being filled with all of GOD! And revealing GOD to all! The problem is the heart. To reveal God, we have to share heart with Him.
God’s heart is absolutely bold. God’s heart is meek and lowly. How on earth does boldness of heart filled with omnipotent power see others as better than one’s self as God does?
The Abuse of the Gift
Read 2 Corinthians 12. Why did God give Paul a knowledge of his own weakness?
All humans live and have lived by pretending. Pretending is the outward sin of Adam. Pretending is most of what we have known as “the Christian life” or of “being like Christ.” What do the majority of our brethren, those who believe that the weakness of human flesh is the source of their problems and thus pretend very hard to “act like Christ” to impress others, do when God gives them any gift of Himself?
They abuse the gift. They use God to place themselves above, to see themselves as better than their brothers and sisters. They use God to reveal not-God, to pretend more desperately.
What If?
There is no question that our human weakness is the counterpoint to God’s strength, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. God is certainly Almighty Power; He is a Consuming Fire.
But what if? What if, as we become fully comfortable with our human frame as God made us to be right now, knowing that God reveals Himself through our human weakness? What if, as we learn to be real and comfortable living as Jesus as us, we discover that God is also meek and lowly of Heart? What if we are, in our weakness, also just like God?
The Greatest
Jesus said that those who would be the greatest in the kingdom of God should be the servants of all. We once thought of this as, now, in this life, we serve, but then, in “the next life,” we get to be the top dog. Here’s what that idea really means. Be like God now, on this earth, then, later on, you get to be just like Satan.
Being servant of all is not the path to being like God, it IS being like God. It is the greatest thing in the universe. Love bears all, believes all, hopes for all, endures all.
Weakness Always Comes First
We will never know Jesus in His power until we first know Him AS our weakness and are comfortable with God showing Himself through our weakness. – That is, until we are thankful. All pretending is unthankfulness, that is, rebellion. All thankfulness of God through us as we are now is – glory.
Jesus lives as us now in our weakness FIRST. Afterwards, we will begin to know Jesus flowing out from us in power. But that power will always come out from our full acceptance of God as meek and lowly of heart. And we will know that God power is far different from what we once thought. God power arises from beneath the lowest in kindness.
God Really Likes Me
How, then, do we connect our weakness to Jesus? Of truth, this is an underlying theme that develops inside of each one of the ten most important verses in the Bible. Each truth of God has an inner fulfillment first and an outer fulfillment coming only out from the first. So many see the outer as the only thing and never know the inner, Christ as them, first. Being filled with all the fullness of God is the “outer.” Such a knowledge can come out from only one source. I must know first that God, really, really, really LIKES me, that He thinks that the best thing ever to do is spend time with me.
Know that Jesus IS
Isn’t that what Paul said? To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, THAT you might be filled with all the fullness of God.
The entire next session is on the likeness and the liking of God. To connect our weakness to Jesus, we must believe that He is. Jesus HAS already taken us entirely into Himself. Jesus HAS already placed Himself into every part of us as we find ourselves to be. Jesus likes us; He likes nothing better than to conform Himself to us as we stumble through our lives. Our part is to believe; it is to KNOW that He IS.
Jesus IS My Only Self
Accepting Jesus as my only self is the greatest surrender to the Father I have ever known. It is the only repentance there is.
Christ is my life; I have no other life (Galatians 2:20 & Colossians 3:3-4). – Christ is all there is in me (Colossians 3:11b).
Speak Christ Jesus as all that you are and pay zero attention to any voice speaking otherwise. Speak Christ Jesus as the only life you are; speak until you KNOW that He IS.
See Jesus alone when you look in the mirror, and give Him thanks.