“Get rid of all your weaknesses and someday God might be able to use you effectively in the ministry.” Although it wasn’t stated quite as blunt as this statement, this was the underlying philosophy of the Bible College Donna and I attended. When we enrolled, we only had a limited church background. We were like sponges soaking up all we were taught. However, through the years I’ve realized some principles of our learning were not based on God’s Word. This erroneous idea that we should conquer all our weaknesses before being effective is one example. Adam and Eve’s fall into sin left mankind with weaknesses in every area of life—our minds, our personalities, and our abilities.
Paul learned that God’s grace was sufficient in his weaknesses and God’s power was even perfected in them (2 Cor. 12:9). As we learned last week, Paul is referring here to his physical frailty, but this principle also applies to any limitation we may have. After we moved to Zambia, I was still intently focused on conquering my weaknesses, as I had been taught. The problem was I wasn’t being effective even in my strengths. During our first year, someone sent me a tape that revolutionizes my life and ministry. The teacher essentially showed from scripture that God called and accepted us knowing our strengths and weaknesses, and we should focus on our strengths and let God take care of the weaknesses. WOW! What a release from bondage that was! Now over thirty years later, I still have a truck load of limitations, but I’ve learned to depend on the Holy Spirit when life demands something in these areas.
One example of human weakness we all have involves our personalities or temperaments. Psychologists divide temperaments into four major categories. All of these have both strengths and weaknesses. Some of the strengths of my temperament are leadership, practicality, and striving for perfection. The weaknesses for us with this particular personality tract are hot-tempers, moodiness and self-centeredness. Other temperaments have strengths of dependability and compassion while also having weaknesses of emotional instability and indecisiveness. However, instead of being hampered by our weak areas, we must embrace our strengths and depend on God’s power being perfected in the weaknesses. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to improve our weaknesses. But, we don’t let them impede what we do well.
Another area we must consider is the gift/s the Holy Spirit gives every believer—or maybe better said, don’t struggle over the spiritual gifts you don’t have. I was also taught we should strive to minister in every spiritual gift. As with human weaknesses, this idea leads to bondage, defeat, and ineffectiveness. It is as important to know the gifts we do not have as it is to know the ones He gave us.
I do not have the gift of evangelism, but until I correctly understood scripture, I tried as hard as I could to do the work of an evangelist. The results were failure and guilt. Finally, the Holy Spirit helped me understand that He had not given me the gift of evangelism. He gave me the gift of teaching and that is where I would be effective. This became quite obvious to me when I was taking an evangelism course. The teacher could share the gospel and lead someone to Christ in an elevator in a 10 story building—BUT he was a lousy teacher. That’s when the light came on for me. God made him an evangelist and made me teacher. The lesson here is the same as with weakness. Work in your gifted areas and let God take care of the rest. If we face opportunities when it requires something in our weaknesses or our non-gifted areas, His grace is sufficient. God made you and knew both your weaknesses and strengths when He called you.
Sustaining Word for the Week:
God has only one superman—Jesus. The rest of us will have weaknesses as long as we live in this life. Until then, focus on your strengths and leave the weaknesses and lack of certain gifts to His grace and power.