The Power of the Lord in Our Weakness

In a follow up to last week's episode, I wanted to share some of the lessons the Lord taught me about Himself and His Word. Walking through suffering and affliction isn't easy and the Lord is so gracious and kind in His comfort. However, He also uses these things to deepen our union with Him. 

The Lord has used the things I've walked through to not only help me learn about His grace and mercy, but to expose areas of sin in me: where I have believed wrong thing about Him, fallen into self-centered wallowing in the midst of difficulty, and fought to believe Him and not the lies of the enemy. I pray this episode blesses you and encourages you in your walk with Jesus. 

Scriptures referenced: 

• John 8:31-32
• Psalm 130:1-6
• 1 Peter 5:6-11
• Matthew 7:24-27
• Hebrews 5:7-10
• 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

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Questions? Comments? Email me at: carrie@ps8116.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi everyone, just a quick note before this episode. About 20 minutes in, you're going to hear my voice get really muffled and hear some strange, like distorted, muffled sounds. And it's my cat. She decided she wanted to join this episode by starting to chew on my cord. And I was so deep in my thought that I just decided to try and wrestle her out of it rather than stop recording. So if you're listening and you hit that point, you're like, this sounds a little bit weird or muffled or like there's something going on. There is. I'm just fighting with my cat, but I just wanted to let you know. So I hope you enjoy today's episode. Hey everyone, welcome to the next episode of Honey from the Rock. I am so glad that you are here with me today. And before I get into today's episode and what I want to share, I want to take a quick moment and say thank you. So many of you were so encouraging last week as I shared my story and my journey through infertility and with all of my reproductive issues. And I will say I felt really vulnerable putting that out there in a medium where I hadn't shared it before. You know, usually when you're sharing your story with someone, maybe you're being interviewed or you're just talking with friends and you can see people's faces and their expressions, and you can make that human connection. And recording this podcast, usually I'm by myself in a room. Sometimes, like today, I have my cat with me. And I mean, but she's not sitting here looking at me. She's she's got her back turned to me today. But um I was just really encouraged by how thoughtful uh so many of you were in your feedback and sharing your own stories with me. So I just wanted to say thank you for listening. Thank you for your encouragement. And I pray that the Lord continues to use all of our stories the the good, the bad, the difficult, the joys, all of the things that this life brings. I pray he uses it for his glory. And that's actually a little bit what I want to talk about today is as I was thinking about my story, I shared a lot last week about how Jesus really carried me through intense physical, emotional, mental suffering that came with all of the stuff that I walked through. But I would be remiss if I didn't share some of the lessons that he taught me, some of the things that he showed me in walking through suffering. Because while Jesus meets us in our suffering with so much kindness and care and compassion, he also uses our suffering and affliction to show us himself to open our eyes to his word more deeply. And I can speak from my own experience, is in the midst of chronic pain and physical suffering and a lot of the uh emotional struggles that brought, you know, the struggle to understand, the grief, the weariness, the tiredness, the Lord also showed me a lot about myself, areas where he was trying to deepen my faith in him and help me know him in a in a more intimate way, so that when I came through the other side of this suffering, that I would be able to, and even in the midst, I should say, even in the midst of suffering, that I would be able to point to him and give him glory and thank him for everything that he has done for me. And that doesn't negate the difficulty of it, but scripture is so full of the Lord wanting us to be able to rejoice in him in the midst of suffering, to turn our eyes to him, that we can cry out to him and ask him to hear our cry and to know that he will answer. Even in the times where it feels like it's so silent and he's not answering us. We know that scripture says that he has never left us or forsaken us, right? He he promises to those who are his, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. But there are things that that we do have to learn and and things that we don't know, things that we don't know about the Lord, and things that we grow in in the Lord that come through pain and suffering. And so as I go through this episode today, these are just things that Jesus has taught me. He has taught me through the depths of grief in so much loss. Like I said, with the infertility last week, I've also lost a lot of people who are very near and dear to me, which I will I will talk about soon. Uh, which he, I mean, there are things that he has taught me as I have wrestled in my suffering and in my affliction. The Lord has used some of that pain and affliction to to show me things that I believed about him that were wrong, to open my eyes about how I, you know, was asking him to move and wanted him to do whatever he wanted to do. But really, deep down in my own soul, I had an expectation that he would move one way for me. And and just there's so much, there's so much in it. And again, please hear me say that yes, the Lord is kind and he's compassionate. And especially in the early days of just the affliction and the pain and the grief and the wrestle, he is so kind and he is so gentle. And and the Lord doesn't change, right? He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. But the Lord also, in his kindness and in his goodness and in grace and mercy, calls us to him. And in his call that we would come to him, he wants to strengthen us and he wants to strengthen our faith, and he wants to strengthen us in knowing him. And so much of that comes through, comes through affliction. And so one of the things that the Lord taught me as I was wrestling through this, and I know last week I I read a lot of scripture that the Lord used in my life as I was as I was walking through making decisions about surgeries or medications. And and the huge basis for being in the word and seeking Jesus is number one. I mean, we're we're called to it. But I remember reading John 8, uh, 31 through 32, where Jesus is talking to the Jews who believed him, right? This is right after the woman with adultery, uh, caught in adultery, and Jesus um, you know, doesn't condemn her but tells her to go and sin no more after everybody wants to stone her. And he's talking to the Jews about essentially being being enslaved. And he says to them, if you continue in my word, then you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And and that's that became one of the foundational verses of my whole life. Uh to be a disciple of Jesus, I need to be in his word. And I can't just, you know, I mean, devotions are great and getting our little snack size verse of the day from the Bible app on our phones or whatever. Those are good in and of themselves. But Jesus says there's a continuing in his word that we need to be walking in. We need to abide, we need to abide in his word, never leaving it, constantly in it, letting the word feed us, feasting on Jesus, right? He said, I mean, Jesus is the word. And he says in John 6, if you eat my flesh and drink my blood, right? I mean, he he was saying, like, you need to consume me. You need to consume me, and you need to consume my word. And and disciples are not above their master. And so as Jesus, excuse me, as Jesus was so committed to the Father and continued to the with the Father, right? He is the very embodiment of the word of the Father. So we have to continue in his word because his word is where we find the truth. The word is where we find him, because Jesus is the truth, and the truth sets us free. Jesus Christ sets us free. And and as I was walking through and have continued to walk through just a lot of different things in my life, there have been a lot of lies that have come my way. And I touched on some of them last week. A lot of them were centered on my womanhood and my femininity and what it means to be a woman in Jesus. And and just that, that in making a decision and having to have, literally having to have a hysterectomy or die. I mean, that was my choice at the time. That I was, I was still a woman. But there were so many lies that came to me. There was so much, there was so much warfare around these decisions, so many things where my brain, you know, you just you just start spiraling right down and and and struggling with what it means, what it means to be a woman in the Lord. And that's why I said last week that I have to trust that the body Jesus has given me is the body that gives him the most glory. And I don't know that as truth, as the truth of of who Jesus is, if I'm not in the word. Then I then I don't know if I if I don't read Psalm 139, which tells me I've been knit together in my mother's womb and I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. I don't know those things. But if I'm continuing in his word and I'm seeking him out and I'm asking the Holy Spirit to help me and lead me into all truth, the Lord is going to answer that prayer. It's a prayer that he loves and it's a prayer he loves to answer. And it was one of the foundational things I had to learn. It's so easy to spiral out of control in my feelings and in my emotions because what I feel and all the things that I get up into in my head, they're not, they're not always true. There may be some truth in how I feel, but if I don't have an absolute truth by which to measure how I'm feeling, then I'm gonna let myself spiral out of control. And believe me, I I did. I did. I there were days, I I mean, it's you're you're processing a lot, yes, but there were days where I just let myself wallow in self-pity and just spiral and really let myself get into why is the Lord doing this to me? Why is he letting this happen? I don't understand. And and those are absolutely I can ask those questions to the Lord. But we all know the difference between Lord help me understand I don't get it, and you know, what what is happening? What the crap? Are you kidding me? You know, and and spiraling into that self-pity. And so that's why when we're walking through anything, if we are not anchored in the Father and in Jesus and in the Holy Spirit, if we're not anchored in the word and we're not feasting on the word every day, we're not taking in the word and just meditating on it, then then we will have no anchor. And we will be tossed about by two, you know, to and fro. You know, we'll be like the man who who built his house on the sand. And I'm not saying that if we build our house on the rock, that the storms aren't going to come, Jesus says they come. Matthew 7, he says those storms assail, but the foundation of the house and the house remains sure because it was built on the rock. And what does Jesus preface that whole parable with? Anyone who hears my words and does them will be like the man who builds his house on the rock. Things are going to shake us. They're going to shake us to our core. There are going to be things that are going to rattle us. There is going to be loss in our lives that comes that is so devastating that we feel like we will never crawl out of the deep hole of grief. But friends, I am here to tell you, if we anchor ourselves in Jesus, we have that sure and firm hope, right? The hope, the anchor behind the veil, I think is how the writer Hebrews puts it. This the storms may come and we may be buffeted, but we will not sink and our foundation will not be eroded. And so if you are going through anything right now, I would encourage you to grab your Bible, get into the word, and and don't be over, you know, we're not going to the word being like, okay, I got to be in the word. And so I've just got to have this all figured out. No, it it's it's a going to the word and saying, Lord, help me understand. Help me to know you better. I don't get this. Lord, I need your help. I need your help. And you've told me that if I come to your word, if I come to you, if I cry out to you, you will, you will hear my cry. And he does. And he does. So even in the midst of all of the doubts you may have in the struggles you may be having with the Lord, don't run from him. Don't run from him. Grab, grab your word, grab the Bible, get into it and seek him. Because Jesus says, the Lord says that he will show himself to those who seek him earnestly. That's what faith is. We must believe that he is who he says he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. He will do it. And so as I was walking, you know, through, I mean, the Psalms are also a, I mean, Lord, again, you know, I know a couple of weeks ago I was like, Lord, thank you so much for Peter. And today, Lord, thank you so much for David. Yes, he was a man after the Lord's own heart. He was a man who sinned. He was a man who repented. And he wrote so many vulnerable things. And the Lord and his goodness put them in his scripture. He put them in his book. So that as we wrestle in this life and as we as we strive and press on to know the Lord, that we would see how the Lord can, how He He can take anything from us. He can. Now, do we need to be reverent and do we need to be careful? Absolutely. Absolutely. And we also have plenty of examples of that in scripture. You know, we need to, we need to know that the Lord can take all of our questions, but we also need to make sure that we don't accuse the Lord. And there's there's there's lines to walk in it. And obviously, if we do accuse the Lord, we can repent and turn back to him. Again, Job being a great example of that. Being a great example of that. The Lord can take everything that we can throw at him, but the Lord is also holy. He also deserves our reverence. He deserves our faithfulness. And so, and that's part of what makes this Christian life a wrestle. And again, the comfort is that the Lord's not expecting us to get those things 100% perfect. We can't do it. We're sinners. It won't happen. But if we're wrestling and our heart is for him and toward him, and we're wrestling and we're falling down and we're getting back up and we keep coming to him, I am a living example of the Lord answering, answering so many prayers in the midst of so many questions. And that was where Psalm 130, verses 1 through 6 became such a huge comfort to me. Because like I said, I the Lord was comforting and he was kind in my suffering, but there were places that he was also dealing with me. And it was through this psalm that he showed me that. So Psalm 130, 1 through 6 says, Out of the depths I have cried to you, Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the sounds of my pleadings. If you, Lord, were to keep account of guilty deeds, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you so that you may be revered. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and I wait for his word. My soul waits in hope for the Lord more than the watchman of the morning. Yes, more than the watchman of the morning. I love these verses so much, and they so ministered to me because I was crying out to Jesus in my pain and asking him to end it, asking him to take away the chronic pain that I was in, asking him to help me, help me with my mind and help me with my emotions. And and yet also I knew in the midst of it, as I said earlier, he was showing me things where I didn't trust him, or I had a wrong idea about him that wasn't scriptural, or he was just simply convicting me of my sin. There were times, and like I've said, in the midst of wrestling with this, where I knew the Lord was saying, you are being a brat. Knock it off. Repent of that. Repent of your snotty disposition, you know, and and again, this is my story, and I'm speaking from my own experience because in the Lord's kindness and goodness, he also doesn't leave us how we are. And suffering and affliction do so much in the secret places of our heart that that sometimes we're not even cognizant with, uh cognizant of to refine us and and and to make us that beautiful gold in his refiner's fire. Sometimes we're not even aware of sins that we're committing against him, and yet in his graciousness and walking through the fire with him, walking through pain and suffering and grief with him, that he just he just refines things out of us. But then there are also things where he's where he says, This is this is wrong. You've sinned against me and this, and you need to repent. And that's why I love in the mix, in the midst of David crying out to the Lord and saying, please hear my cry. Lord, I'm I'm I'm gonna lay myself bare before you and I'm gonna repent, Lord, because if you held my sins against against me, I would never, I would never be able to stand. I can't stand. But Lord, thank you. Thank you for hearing my plea, not only in the midst of my pain and suffering, but in the cry of my heart for your forgiveness when I repent and when I sin against you. And that's where it's in the Lord's forgiveness and in his grace and in his mercy and in his kindness and in his discipline, right? I mean, David is this is the same man who wrote, your rod and your staff comfort me. Lord, there is both comfort in your discipline by your rod and comfort in the drawing to you with your staff. Lord, that is what he does for us. And so I love that David tells us, like, we need, Lord, if you hold on to my sin, I can't stand, but thank you for forgiving me and help me to reverence you. Help me to reverence you, help me to wait on you and to wait for your word. And and this tied in with um just like I said, I only the Lord could do it. Only the Lord can perfectly walk us through pain and suffering, through affliction. If Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered, how much more so do we need to? How much more does the Lord teach us how to obey him, how to follow him, how to know him through suffering and happiness and joy and good things, the Lord giving us good things. We learn in those things too, but we learn, I will say from my own personal experience, and I believe scripture bears it out, that I have learned much more about the faithfulness of the Lord, about the true joy of the Lord in walking through suffering, in in experiencing his grace and his perfect and holy blood washing me clean as he has dealt with me and refined me and and can and continued to conform me to his image. And he has used suffering to do that. He has used pain and affliction to do that. And so I just I want to keep encouraging you when it feels like, you know, because the devil wants to tell us that the Lord's picking on us and that he's cruel and he's a hard taskmaster, and it is not true. Like I said in the episodes talking about the love of the Lord and loving the Lord, Jesus is our example. Jesus is our example. He has suffered temptation in every way as we have. You know, we often have this idea that if we just had a perfect life, that everything would be okay. Jesus literally lived the perfect life as man and they killed him for it. He was crucified for it. We have crucified him. Our sins have crucified him, right? And so we have this idea about perfection. We have this idea about what life should look like and what we think we're owed or we're just what we deserve. And again, I just I am, I want to encourage you that Jesus doesn't leave anything behind. Every single thing that we walk through in him, he uses. Even the sins that we committed and the things that we did before we came to him, before we've come to him. He used he uses it all. You know why? Because there are men and women in this world who are walking through horrible, horrific things, things they've done themselves, things that have been done to them, and they need people who know the Lord, who have walked through the fire of refinement, who have walked through the fire of affliction and suffering, both in Jesus and out of Jesus, who have a testimony of the faithfulness of God and drawing them to himself when they were sinners, right? I was with you in your sin, the Lord says, because I was drawing you to myself. And then being in him, being in him, knowing that coming to Jesus means that we we get to be one with him, and we also get to be put to his use. We get to be put to his use, and we have a part to play in his kingdom, and it's amazing, and it is amazing, and so I want to encourage you, I want to encourage you with these things, my friends. Because in the midst of it, the Lord also showed me and it he led me to First Peter and and First Peter 5, and they're verses that we're really familiar with, and um we tend to just read, you know, maybe one or two, you know, so and sometimes you know it's where the Lord leads. We just read one or two verses and we just kind of sit on those and we encamp on them, and and it's great. But first Peter 5, 6 through 11, the whole context of it is so important. And it was something that the Lord showed me because on top of walking through health issues, you know, there's a lot that comes with it. There's the mental, there's the mental stress and the mental war, you know, and and we cannot forget that as as disciples of Jesus, as as Christians, we have an enemy. We have an enemy because Jesus has an enemy, and that enemy is the devil. And so in the midst of pain and suffering, I mean it can get it can get crazy, you know, and just you can find yourself going down rabbit holes, you can find yourself swirling into things, and you're like, what on earth? But then there's also this the seduction of lies, the the temptation to to not believe the Lord, right? The temptation to to believe that he's a harsh master or that he's forgotten about us or that he doesn't care about us, or that he, you know, we our life is just gonna really suck and be full of all of this crap. And everybody else, uh, you know, who walks with Jesus, you know, their lives get to be better, but my life just has to has to stink for the Lord, and it's not true. And it the scripture is is very clear that those who who want to live a godly life will experience persecution, they will experience pain and suffering. My cat just fell off the couch. Sorry if you heard that. Um, but that we will experience these things in the Lord. So 1 Peter uh 5, 6 through 11 says, Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, having cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares about you, he cares about you, cast every anxiety on him because he cares about you. Humble yourself before him, be of sober spirit, be on alert, right? So humble yourself before the Lord. I need to humble myself before the Lord and and trust that He will He will exalt, you know, He will lift me out of what I'm going through at the proper time. And I need to continue to cast every anxiety on Him. That word in anxiety, when Jesus uses it in Matthew 6, it talks about the mind being pulled into two different places. So to cast my anxiety on the Lord, Lord, I'm I'm feeling anxious about these things. Anxiety, I and I do, I've I struggle with anxiety. And and it's the consistency of Lord, I know I need to cast this on you and ask you to help me so that I'm not divided from you. You know, and again, that's not just a like, oh, and then I'm just over my anxiety. Again, all of these things are a wrestle. Because not only are we trying to overcome ourselves, again, we are trying to overcome an enemy. The devil who hates the things that the Lord has created, the devil who hates the Lord's people because he hates the Lord, the devil who hates every good thing that the Lord has created and tries to distort and create counterfeits and lure us away from the goodness of God, from the goodness of Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us because he loves us. And that's why Peter here ties these two things together. The Lord cares about you, so humble yourself before him, lay yourself out before him. But as you do, be on your watch, be alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowl prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. So resist him. Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brothers and sisters who are in the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you, he has called us to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be dominion forever and ever. Amen. This is what we are called to when we are walking through suffering and pain and grief. The Lord wants us to come and throw ourselves on him. Right? I know my grandmother used to quote Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 all the time. It was her favorite. And she loved the promise that the Lord would direct her path no matter what. But that word trust in the Hebrew means to lay your face in the ground. That's what trust means. And I just throw that in there in the context of us humbling ourselves before the Lord. And so I again the encouragement being that the Lord, He has us, He cares about us, but we are in a war. We are in a war. And and in this war, we have an enemy who seeks to devour us. And and the Lord wants to give us Himself, He wants to give us everything we need to be able to resist Him, firm in our faith. Well, who or what is our faith in? It's in the Lord, it's in Jesus Christ and who He is and what He has done. It's in the word that He's given us to show us His character, to show us the character of the Father, to show us the character of the Holy Spirit. And we are promised suffering. We are promised affliction. And we need, and and and Peter tells us that, because I think the other lie that we get stuck in our heads is that we're the only ones going through things like this. And we're not. We're not. There are brothers and sisters, and we certainly know that. We should know that today. That there are brothers and sisters around the world who are suffering for the sake of Jesus, who are walking through intense persecution and horrible sickness and pain and suffering for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But the Lord doesn't leave us without hope because what does he say? What does he say? He says, after a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. He will establish you to him, be the dominion and the glory forever and ever. And so these are just a few of the things that the Lord has taught me in the midst of my own walk through grief and loss and pain and suffering. And I pray that they encourage you today. That no matter where, where you are with the Lord, my prayer always is, friends, for each one of us, that no matter where we are with Jesus, that we would, we would not be satisfied with where we are with him, but that we would keep pressing, pressing in. Let us press on to know the Lord, right? I love it in the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis, as as at the after the last battle, and they're all walking towards towards Narnia. Further up and further in is what they keep being called to. And that is what we are called to in Jesus. Further up and further in and knowing him and in and trusting him and growing in not only love for him, but growing in the knowledge of the love that he has for us, right? That's what Paul talks about in Ephesians 1. And so, and and this is truly honey from the rock. When we are pursuing the Lord, even in our weakness, especially in our weakness, right? It's what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians 12, right? He had that that thorn in his flesh. It was a messenger of Satan to torment him. A messenger of Satan to torment him. Why? Because of the greatness of revelation that he had gotten. And he and it and Paul says it was to keep me from exalting myself. This man had gotten a ton of revelation about the Lord. We know it. We're reading it most of it. And then here comes this thorn in the flesh, and he pleads with the Lord three times to ask it, asks the Lord to take it. And the Lord says, No. He says to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness. And I and I want to leave you with this. This is my benediction, this is my blessing for us today, because this is how Paul responds. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I delight, I rejoice in weakness, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties in behalf of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. And friends, that is my prayer for you and me today, that in our weakness, in whatever we are facing, that we would trust, we would trust Jesus, trust his love for us, trust his goodness, and know that he is perfecting his power in our weakness, and he is also showing us the grace that he has so beautifully purchased for us by the power of his perfect and holy blood. Friends, let us rejoice in the things that the Lord is doing in our lives that we may know him and that we may make him known. Amen.