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This is day four of our look at 2 Corinthians chapter 12. We're talking this
week about how you survive as God's servant in this world. We've talked about a
vision to sustain you.

Now we're talking about a thorn to humble you and the fact that the thorns of
life, the difficulties of life, those things I have to live with in my life that
show my weakness, that thorns purify hearts, thorns magnify grace, thorns
perfect God's power. How does that work? How do thorns perfect God's power in my
life?

Understanding how God works to perfect his power helps me to understand how I
can trust him with that weakness in my life. I want you to understand how your
weakness becomes God's strength. And Paul talks about it in verse 10.

He says, "That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses and insults
and hardships and persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am
strong. " You want to do great things for God, you're going to face great
weaknesses.

I guarantee it. Now I like the first part, do great things for God. I do not
like the second part, face great weaknesses.

But if I'm going to understand how God works in my life, I've got to understand
this all-important truth from scripture in verse 10, "When I am weak, then I am
strong. " Let me just walk you through what's behind this truth, four things.
Number one, my strength pulls me away from God's strength because I depend on
myself.

This is why weaknesses work to give us greater strength. My strength pulls me
away from God's strength when I depend on myself. The cycle I fall into so
often, and I found it's such a common experience, is I recognize my need for
God.

I depend on Him. God, I've got to have you show up here. This is not going to
work.

People are not going to be saved. People are not going to be taught. Lives are
not going to be changed without you.

I've got to have you. I recognize my need. I depend on God.

And God fills me through His Spirit with His strength. And God works in a great
way. And as He works in a great way, I start to feel great about what God is
doing.

I start to feel great about myself being involved in what God is doing. And
something happens, and I slip into beginning to depend on my strength and not
His strength. And all of a sudden, I fall flat on my face.

And when I fall flat on my face, I recognize my need for God, and I depend on
Him again. And I'm filled with God's strength. And I go through this cycle again
and again and again.

If I'm going to understand how God's working in my life, instead of going
through that Don't wait until you're headed back down until you fall flat on
your face to depend on the Lord. Depend on Him in a fresh new way when you're
tempted to depend on yourself. Depend on Him when you feel at full strength
because you realize me at full strength is nothing compared to God's strength.

My strength can pull me away, almost always pulls me away from God's strength
because I start to depend on myself. Here's the second truth in this process of
how God works. My weakness draws me towards God's strength because it invites me
to depend on Him.

My weakness draws me towards God's strength because it invites me to depend on
Him. Let me give you two pictures of this, two stories from the Old Testament,
Samson and Gideon. You might remember these two stories from Judges.

Samson, that great strong man who ended his life in a crumbling temple because
he depended just on his strength. Because he depended just on his strength, he
did the most foolish things. He let his enemies come into his own house.

He let his enemies capture him and destroy him. He let Delilah take him down
this path of temptation because he thought he could handle it. He was relying on
his own strength.

He thought, "I have so much strength in myself that there's nothing anyone can
do to me. " And he found that he was wrong. He's one of the greatest stories of
failure in all the Bible.

Strongest man in the Bible, one of the greatest failures in all the Bible
because he depended on his strength. But then there's Gideon, Gideon, that man
who was so weak that when God was looking for a mighty warrior, he hid out in a
press, in a deep, deep barrel so that God would not see him, hopefully, but God
saw him. God said to him, "Hail mighty warrior," which Gideon looked behind his
back and thought, "Who in the world is that?

" But God had plans for him. God called him to go and deliver the people in a
battle. And you'd think that God would say just Gideon saying yes was enough,
but it wasn't enough.

When Gideon goes out into this battle, this man who already feels weak, who
already feels like he can't have any victory, instead of giving him a great
army, God actually begins to cut down the numbers of his army. Judges 7-2, the
Lord said to Gideon, "You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into your
hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me, their own strength has
saved her.

" And the scripture goes on to say God had a plan to cut down the army. He sent
this frightened man into battle. He cut down his numbers.

He made him weaker and weaker, and eventually Gideon's weakness became God's
strength. He made his army so weak that only through God's strength could it be
victorious. You want to do great things for God?

You're going to face great weaknesses, I guarantee it. And again, I say I like
the first part. I don't like the second part, but it's how God works.

My strength pulls me away from God's strength. My weakness draws me towards
God's strength. My weakness, here's the third part, shows God's strength when I
act in faith.

It shows God's strength when I act in faith. Now, why does God work in this way,
by the way? My weakness becoming his strength, to show where the strength comes
from.

Earlier in 2 Corinthians, we read about this treasure he's put into clay pots.
The treasure is in a normal, ordinary clay pot, because he wants to show where
the glory comes from. Remember, he's trying to draw a world to himself.

People who are impressed with you, people who are impressed with me, will still
die and go to hell without God. But people who are impressed with the Lord, who
see him for who he really is, are drawn to him, and who trust in him, accept him
and live forever. He's trying to draw a world not to us, but to him.

And so that's why Paul is able to say, "I've got weaknesses, I've got insults,
I've got distresses, I've got persecutions, I've got difficulties, but I take
delight in them. " Now, he didn't take delight from the problems, he wasn't
crazy. He took delight from the knowledge that God worked in and through the
problems in ways above and beyond what he could imagine, to draw a world to
himself.

God works in your life through your weaknesses. He does it when you choose to
act in faith. One of my favorite stories about this comes from Ray Stedman.

Ray Stedman was the pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California
for 40 years. He not only had a tremendously impactful ministry in the church he
served, he also became a nationally known Bible teacher, best known Bible
teacher in America for a few decades. He was powerfully used by God.

I want you to hear what he said to this church that he had served for so many
years in his last message to them before his death. He didn't know he was going
to die, but he preached his last sermon and then he went on to be with the Lord.
And these are the words of a wise and experienced saint about how the power of
God works in our lives.

Ray Stedman said, "What I'm trying to say is that the power of God, the
resurrection power of God, is not a power that makes a great demonstration. It
is quiet. We are so used to power that makes noises that we don't think we have
power if we don't have noise.

Things buzz and hum and pulsate and pound and explode and bang, and these are
seen as power. But this is power that you don't feel. You don't have any sense
that it is happening, but it is happening.

This power has a peculiar characteristic. It only happens when you begin to act,
when you begin to exercise the gifts that God has given you. Then the power
begins to flow, not before.

Then God will work through you to accomplish things that will leave you gasping
sometimes at what he has done. You don't feel this power. You don't suddenly
feel strong, capable, mighty.

No, you feel weak. Paul says that God's power is made perfect in weakness, but
we pay no attention sometimes to such a statement. If you feel weak, if you feel
inadequate, if you feel ineffectual, this is no hindrance to being used of God
and exercising the power of God, not in the least.

That is what this is teaching us. Many people never discover what God could do
in their lives because they keep waiting to feel powerful before they act. No,
you won't feel powerful.

Begin to reach out and act to meet the needs of the world around you, and
suddenly you discover that there's an unusual power at work. Resurrection power
works when you reach out to somebody. It works when you sit down to exercise a
teaching gift, to comfort someone who's in trouble, to confront someone who's
taking a wrong course.

It works when you expect it to be there and you act. It works by faith. That's
the third truth.

Ray Steadman teaches us, the scripture teaches us. I begin to experience God's
power when I act in faith. When I begin to act in faith, I experience my
weakness becomes God's strength.

Now if you're going to experience God's strength in your life, there is a fourth
very important principle you have to hold on to, and we're going to talk about
it more tomorrow. And it is the principle that all of this is done in the depth
of a relationship with God. You see, if I want power, but the power I want is
just so that people will be impressed with me or so that I can do more or build
something bigger.

If all the power I want is power to show myself more powerful, it's never going
to work. Even if I try to attain that kind of power through weaknesses. The
question is, not only what power do you have, but what is that power meant to
do?

And we're going to see tomorrow that that power is meant to love God and to love
others. That's where the change, that's where the difference comes in people's
lives. But for today, as we talk about God's strength in your life, I want to
take a moment to once again ask, pray for you and I to have the wisdom of God in
this.

Our Father, we need your wisdom. We need to know how to trust you even in spite
of our weaknesses, even through our weaknesses. We need you moment by moment to
do this.

This is not a one-time prayer. So once again, we bring it to you. Once again, we
trust in you.

And I pray for each of us that we begin, even this day, a new journey of
trusting you with not just once, not just once a month, not just once every six
months, but on a daily basis, trusting you with our weakness, trusting you that
you're working, trusting you that when we feel weak, it doesn't mean we should
not act, trusting you to act in faith even though we feel weak and then to watch
you work. When I'm weak, then I'm strong because then I know I have to depend on
you. So help me to act in faith today, I pray, however I feel.

Help me to act in faith. I ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.