16. Can Truth Be Found in Weakness?

Can truth come through weakness? Can grace be found in failure? Can love proceed out of one who is unable to connect with people in a social or political way? Can you find the King of the universe in a cow trough? We must be careful on how we make those decisions when we look at other people.

 

From a brother:

“I have so much to share and there is so little time left to share it. Because of the neurological condition I have borne, Aspergers Syndrome… I am beset on all sides by fears. The greatest fear of all is that I am fake, and that you will now find me out. For 35 years I have had His word burning in my heart… for the most part I have been unable to share. That is fine, because I did not know before that Jesus is my life, that I have no other life.” [Written by D Yordy]

    Daniel, what does that mean? Are you saying you have a short time to live according to doctors? I’m concerned about all this fear you are speaking about. I have a hard time believing someone surrounded with fear can teach the truth.

~~~

Thank you for your concern.

As far as time is concerned, I am speaking of the situation in the world. I do not believe life as we have known it has many more months before it is gone. America is racing towards an all-out open confrontation with the Lord Jesus, though Christians in America imagine the opposite. Utter ruin is upon this nation, and so many live in unswerving denial of its iniquity.

The “fear” I speak of is inherent in Asperger's Syndrome and can be understood only by that. It is not the same as what would normally be called “fearfulness.” It is primarily an inability to read other people. But that inability has worked in me a greater reaching for the Lord and His grace and life in me.

Nevertheless I am not afraid to boast concerning the weakness the Lord has crafted for me. Yes, it has made my life difficult, but how could it prevent me from knowing him? In complete contrast, you will find that many of those who are great religious leaders including some I have known who were called “apostles” carry no fears whatsoever about being wrong or about what people might think, or worse yet, what actually happens to the people who follow them and hit disaster and confusion by doing so. These people exude great confidence and mighty anointing so that people think, “My, this guy knows what he’s talking about.”

I think, rather, that we should be far more suspicious of those who do not know fear and weakness, whether they really know the Lord Jesus or not, than someone who, like the Apostle Paul, is beset by fears on every hand.

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.  For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 2 Corinthians 4

It is in our weakness that His power is made known. So many are afraid that if they express their weakness or discover their own failure, that it will mean the opposite of Christ. I suspect that in the end we will discover that so many who appear strong are nothing more than incredibly skilled at weaving a front that appears to be something other than what they really are inside.

I am really no good at pretending.

I have understood this bit about Asperger's only for the last two weeks, yet it answers so many questions for me over a span of 50 years.

But here is a terrible thing. I walked and taught school amongst a group of dear Christian brethren. I am good in the classroom in my role as teacher, but I have little ability at all to connect with other people. Yet God has given me understanding of His ways, and these brethren could catch glimpses of that from time to time, yet often I wept, because they, in reacting to my outward inability (as you say, “I have a hard time believing someone surrounded with fear can teach the truth.”) chose not to draw from me the wells of truth and understanding that God had placed in their midst. I do not say that with any presumption, but I knew that it was true. It is their loss and my sorrow.

And as far as the accusation that comes from some that, “Well, if the Lord were really teaching you, you would overcome all this stuff!” I have heard that accusation against me from inside and out all of my life. I am confident enough in what God says in the Covenant I signed with Him and He with me to believe that my simple faith of casting that accusation down where it belongs is part of that which is causing kingdoms of darkness, even now, to come crashing into ruin.

God does not choose the bold or the strong or the great in this world (not that He doesn’t use them, He most certainly does, and many such belong to Him as well and they are doing many mighty things for Him), but in this hour it is the weak, the outwardly timid, the least, who will shake the counsels of the mighty and who will bring this age of human folly to a close.

Gandalf and Aragorn used their wisdom and strength to draw the attention of the enemy onto themselves, so that he would utterly miss the terrible threat of weakness that was penetrating into the very heart of his dominion. (If I may use story to illustrate.)

Can truth come through weakness? Can grace be found in failure? Can love proceed out of one who is unable to connect with people in a social or political way? Can you find the King of the universe in a cow trough? We must be careful on how we make those decisions when we look at other people.

Really, I am doing nothing more than attempting to be honest and real. We do not major in our weakness, we major in Christ. Yet it is only the weak who will know Him as He is.

~~~

There is a terrible conceit in the human mind that someone’s weakness and inability is a “problem” that needs to be “fixed.” The assumption is that “obviously, if you were really filled with Christ and truth, you wouldn’t have this ‘problem.’” All of my adult life I have had this assumption imposed upon me by well-meaning Christians who preferred to move in their assumptions about me with no regard whatsoever for connecting with me as I really am.

More than that I have had it presented to me in no uncertain terms many times over the years that whatever Christ is, He is something that I definitely am not, and that if I would just get out of my flesh and stop rebelling against God, I would be more like so and so, who is so obviously like Christ.

This conceit is evil.

This very attitude is the fatal flaw in Adam that precipitated his collapse. Adam did not like the way God had made him – unable and weak. He had the choice to be filled with the God who expresses Himself only through our weakness or to “fix his problem.”

We know the choice that He made.

And I have watched dear brethren, who believed it when they were told the same thing as I, that if they would do thus and so and “submit” then they would be “walking in the Spirit.” I watched them try so very hard (I never did “try”) and I watched them implode, and the wreckage of the lives just of those whom I know is beyond belief. Does that stop the pretenders who impose pretending on others? No, they simply justify themselves (“those people who left broken and confused are that way only because they rejected God – their present hurt proves we were right”) and keep at it.

But I will contend without pretence that the weakness God crafted for me in His wisdom, a weakness that I have borne all my life, is a precious gift from God. For by it, I have come to know that Jesus is my life. And by it, I have come to understand the terrible way we Christians have treated one another – to understand it with the point of truth and with the tender heart of Jesus.

I speak strongly, because I know firsthand the cruelty of this conceit and the wreckage of human lives that it leaves in its wake.