Boasting in Our Weaknesses

In today's episode, I'm tackling one of the New Testament's most well known verses: "“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness...for when I am weak then I am strong." But what is rarely talked about is Paul's response to the Lord's revelation that the thorn in his flesh is for the Lord's glory. 

There is power available from Jesus to endure the sufferings and afflictions of this life. Paul makes the conscious decision to boast in the weakness of his body so that he can know the power of Jesus resting on him. The Lord isn't cruel in what He appoints, but desires for us to know the beauty of dependence on Him, that His power, mercy, goodness, love, and joy can be manifest within us. This isn't a fleshy optimism, but a choice to trust the Lord and His desire for us to know Him, be sanctified, and grow in our faith. 

Scriptures Referenced:

• 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
• Hebrews 4:12-15
• John 15:5
• James 1:2-4

Interested in inductive Bible study? Check out Precept.org or this list of resources from Precept Austin. (Not an ad, just resources that have helped me immensely in my Bible study journey.)

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Transcript

Carrie: 0:07

Hey everyone, how are you doing today? I hope you are hanging in there. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to a new episode of Honey from the Rock. I am glad you're here as always. And I am excited to get into today's episode because I think that today's episode is going to be encouraging. Well, I pray that they all are, but I hope that today's episode is particularly encouraging because I'm going to dig into a few verses from 2 Corinthians 12. And they are verses that are really familiar in the church. Verses that people quote, uh, when they're looking for comfort in the midst of affliction, when they're dealing with difficult stuff, yes, they are verses that have sometimes been through, you know, thrown at difficult situations to just, you know, maybe kind of just, you know, put a band-aid on a broken bone or whatever.

Carrie: 1:07

But as I was reading these verses and and contemplating them and thinking on them in light of my own walk with Jesus and in the suffering and affliction that I have walked with and with the Lord in my life and and some things that I'm currently going through, I really felt like the Lord was pulling my attention to the second part of these verses in 2 Corinthians 12, where we usually go right to Paul saying that Jesus said to him, My strength is made perfect in weakness, right? I will, my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness. And man, what a glorious, glorious promise to hold on to, to know that Jesus is going is perfecting himself in us, right? He he sees our weakness, he walked in weakness and knows every point that we have been tempted in. And and yet he he stayed perfect and in his perfection died on the cross for for our sins to transform us into his image, to redeem us from the sin nature that just so easily besets us and entangles us, right? And yet he also died to resurrect within us now.

Carrie: 2:29

And I love these verses from Paul because A, I appreciate Paul's vulnerability. I think sometimes we read Paul and he seems like an impossible paragon to imitate in any way simply because, as he says at the beginning of Corinthians, uh 2 Corinthians 12, that he received such rich depth and magnitude of revelation, right? And so he gets a thorn in the flesh from Satan. The Lord uses it for good. The Lord says, No, I'm not going to take this. And you know why? Because this is going to keep you humble. It's going to keep you from exalting in the multitude of revelations that you've received. And obviously to Paul, it was pretty painful. I mean, he had asked the Lord three times to remove it. And yet, when the Lord spoke to him and said, Here is the purpose for this. My grace is sufficient for you. My power is perfected in weakness. Paul then goes on to say, I will then all the more gladly boast in my weakness, so that the power of Jesus may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Carrie: 3:49

And for when I am weak, then I am strong, and and my grace is sufficient for you. Those are the chunks that are usually quoted from this verse, and we don't really dig into what's in between. And that's Paul's response to what Jesus says to him. And I actually think Paul's response is is it filled with the Holy Spirit. And is it is it amazing and sometimes seem kind of too good to be true? Sure, on the surface, if that's how we're gonna read it, but if we dig into what Paul is saying here, he's not just kind of pulling himself up by his bootstraps and saying, Well, I'm just gonna be really glad that I feel like crap all the time, or you know, just like, woo-hoo, Jesus is doing all these things for me. And, you know, life really stinks, but I'm okay. No, there is there is actual Holy Ghost power that is threaded through Paul's response to what Jesus has said to him, and that same power to endure difficulty and weakness and sickness and affliction and suffering and persecution for the sake of Jesus, it's available to us today because it's available to us through the Holy Spirit. And Jesus died to give us this power. He would resurrect within us, right? And yes, we will resurrect on that day if we are in him. But there's I I think there's so much that Jesus wants to do for us now in walking through the difficulties that life brings to us.

Carrie: 5:30

And and there's been a real focus in the church on being real and authentic, which I think is great. We need to be honest. However, I think there's also been an emphasis. I I've I feel like I've seen a swing of like, that's just that's just then kind of where we live. And if anybody tries to comfort us in any way or, you know, tries to talk to us about joy or about grace or whatever, then you know, you're just trying to, you know, it's a wrong kind of comfort. And obviously, there's a time and a place to try and comfort someone in difficulty and grief. I know that from experience. I know that there are many, many, many times that there is absolutely nothing that you can say that will make some of the difficulty and the grief and the tragedy that we walk through in this life better. Those are the times where the Lord in his graciousness and in his kindness and in his mercy has to step in and minister to to us by his person and his presence, where the Holy Spirit has to reach in and touch us in comfort.

Carrie: 6:37

However, I think there is a place in each of us, in each of our walks, where we can and should seek the Lord. If we've sought the Lord to remove something and he says no, to to then shift our focus from the thing that we are suffering to, okay, Lord, I need your power to resurrect within me so that I can get through this. I need your help to endure. I need your strength to get through these difficult things that that are coming to me. And that's what we see in Paul in these verses. And I I went through a, you know, because I'm a giant word nerd, and one of my favorite things to do is to go in and do word studies.

Carrie: 7:22

And and I looked at all of these words, specifically in verses 9 and 10, and there's just so much richness. There's so much richness in these verses. And and I would encourage you, if you have not done an inductive, an inductive Bible study, whether by K Arthur or there's several places online that can teach you how to inductively study the Bible, which me simply means using scripture to study scripture and also really digging into the word, really digging into the Greek and the Hebrew. I would highly encourage you to do it. We are in a generation where we have so much access to be able to study the word and to really dig into what the words mean. And, you know, a lot of us aren't going to be Greek scholars, but but there is enough provided for us to really to be to dig into the word, like I was talking about last week, and really come to know, come to know it and and have the Holy Spirit then form the word in us. You know, James talks about receiving with meekness the engrafted word. You know, Paul talks about the sword of the spirit being uh being the weapon that we're given. Again, Hebrews 4.12, that sword of the spirit being the same thing that that exposes the thoughts and intents of our own hearts. But friends, I would just, I would encourage you if you're not digging into the word, and I'm not saying it to be an intellectual or to be a Pharisee, but to dig into the word in a way that really opens our eyes to what the word is saying and deepens our knowing Jesus, not just our knowing of him, but that together with the Holy Spirit, that we would dig in the word with him so that he can pluck the scales off our eyes in areas where we are blind, that he would give us holy spiritual understanding and insight where we're lacking it, that we would be convicted where we're in sin, and that sword would cut us and we would understand anew why the Lord is disciplining in us in a certain area, or why he is you know showering us with joy and why his grace is always sufficient.

Carrie: 9:41

So digging in into these verses, I just am so amazed, I'm so amazed by the language the Lord choose to convey his person, his word, his will, and how he does it through his people. And so these are verses about weakness, they are verses about persecution, infirmity, weakness, I think I already said weakness, but also um insults, persecution, distress, things that each of us experienced throughout our whole life. We experienced it in many, many, many different ways. And there are many times when the devil tries to use it to discourage us, to cause us to walk away from the faith, to cause us to doubt the Lord. And yet, if we're willing, the Lord will take those same set of circumstances and he will turn them and he will use them for our good. And as we mature in the faith, and we see that in Paul, as there's maturation in the faith, we begin to recognize how the devil wants to come against us. We recognize our own fleshy proclivities towards wanting to wallow or wanting to just give up or wanting to doubt the Lord, and we and and we recognize how the world tugs on us to say, you don't have to suffer. You don't, you don't have to experience distress. Like that's no, come and enjoy all of these fleeting pleasures, all of these things.

Carrie: 11:13

As we mature in the Lord, we recognize those things and we begin to stand against them and say, no, I'm going to rejoice in the Lord. I'm going to submit to his hand and whatever he's choosing to do with me in my life. And whether it's in discipline or whether it is in further conforming me to his image or to give me deeper revelation and to strengthen my union and my relationship with him. Lord Jesus, I want to be willing to submit to what you are requiring of me. And Lord, if I'm unwilling, help me to be made willing. Help me to be made willing.

Carrie: 11:52

And so as I was reading and digging into commentaries and digging into words, there was uh a particular commentary that I read, which is Matthew Henry. He was a commentator from the 1600s. Um, he's very verbose. He has a lot to say about a lot of things, but I particularly loved this section that he wrote on these verses from 2 Corinthians 12. He said, Grace signifies the good will of God towards us. And that is enough to enlighten and enliven us, sufficient to strengthen and comfort in all afflictions and distresses. Jesus' strength is made perfect in our weakness. Therefore, his grace is manifested and magnified. When we are weak in ourselves, then we are strong in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we feel that we are weak in ourselves, then we go to Jesus. We restreat we receive strength from him and enjoy most of the supplies of divine strength and grace. And that is in affliction and suffering and disappointment and difficulty and insult and persecution, all of it is designed, and the Lord would desire to use all of it to drive us to him. That in our lack of understanding of what's going on, in in the difficulty, I am not denying the difficulty of suffering and persecution and affliction, but that in every single thing we would go to him, that we would go to the one who has been tempted, as I said earlier, in every way that we have, Jesus, who was afflicted, who was, who suffered more than any of us will ever suffer. And yet he turns to us in his grace and his mercy. And he desires, he desires to strengthen us in our spirit and in our mind, in his person, in his love, in his grace.

Carrie: 14:00

And again, this isn't just turning a blind eye to the difficulty of things or just saying, man, I don't need to do anything else. Prayer is just going to take this away, and I'll be fine. No, but what I'm saying is that the foundation of our walk with Jesus and the foundation that we build upon in walking through difficulty is absolutely trusting, trusting the Lord, depending on him, and then following his leading as we walk things out. Prayer is prayer and going to him is the foundation of all things. Reading his word and gleaning the truth and the wisdom from the scripture, where we are, gaining comfort and and sweetness from him when it when sometimes it just feels like it is impossible to move forward. These are the things that are available to us in Jesus. In Jesus.

Carrie: 15:02

And that's what Paul is showing us here. Jesus gives him the revelation that he had been seeking. Paul had to seek three times. And finally Jesus says, Look, my friend, here's where it's at. Right? Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me, but he said, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. And it was in that revelation that Paul turned and said, Okay, Lord, I'm gonna boast. I'm gonna boast then all the more gladly in my weakness, so that your power will rest upon me. And that word boast is such an interesting word because it can be it was used in a multitude of different ways in the New Testament. So we can boast in our own merit, right? We can boast in our own humanity or whatever.

Carrie: 15:56

But in Jesus, if we if we learn to boast in him, then it moves from boasting in in our own merit to boasting in, you know what, I've done nothing to earn the salvation. But you know what I'm going to boast about is the Lord's mercy, his divine mercy, his grace, that the Lord gets all of the glory and the honor and the blessing and the power because of who he is and what he has done to purchase this great salvation. I'm going to give him glory and honor because even though I am suffering and I'm in distress or I am going through something difficult, the Lord is going to get the glory because I know when I come out of this situation, and I don't know a lot of times how long they will last.

Carrie: 16:44

But when I come out of it or I move further along in it or or I just start to mature in my own faith, I will be able to look back and see the hand of the Lord and how he pulled me through, how he walked me through, how he loved me through, how he gave me revelation of himself. Even though in the midst of it, many times I couldn't see it. There are so many times when I look back at things I've gone through and I can see. I can see that the Lord's moved and his hand has been on me and with me. And I love here that Paul makes a conscious decision. He gets a revelation from the Lord and he has a conscious decision about what he is going to do with the revelation he has been given. And he decides to praise the Lord. He decides to boast in what the Lord is choosing to do because he knows then the power of the Lord is going to continue to manifest within him. And we see that it's not power to say, I'm going to name and claim that I'm going to be well and made whole.

Carrie: 17:48

No, Paul then leans in and says, you know what, Lord, I'm going to boast in what you're doing in my weakness. I'm going to boast in the suffering that you appoint to me. Because what you're saying to me then is that you will give me the power to endure and walk through whatever you are requiring me to walk through. And you will do it, Lord. And I trust that you will. And I know there are many times we see it in Paul's life: calamities, shipwrecks, sleeplessness, homelessness, all sorts of things. And yet he kept returning back to I'm going to rejoice in the Lord. I'm going to boast in the Lord. I'm going to trust the Lord no matter what. And that's what I love. I love about it. And that it's not just boasting in what's going on so that the Lord gets the glory, but boasting in who the Lord is and what he has done also then grows the fruit of the spirit of joy within us, right?

Carrie: 18:50

And this weakness that Paul's talking about, it's no small thing. It is no small thing. It describes lack of strength, infirmity, bodily sickness, moral frailty, or human limitation. That's from the topical lexicon. Paul boasts in these kinds of weaknesses, but what is he boasting in? He's boasting in knowing that resurrection power operates most clearly where our human adequacy is absent. And that's such an important thing to remember. The Lord desires for us to be dependent on him. And so many times, suffering and distresses and all sorts of things that we walk through, they the Lord uses them in a way to strip our own dependence on ourselves. Is in the Lord's resurrection power and mercy and comfort being found in our lives. Where we can boast is in the fact that when I submit to the Lord and I depend on him, he will come through. I don't know how he will do it. I don't always know what it will look like, but I I go to the word and I read of who he is. I trust his character.

Carrie: 20:27

And I don't, I it's something that I've really had to work on and really had to reconcile with the Lord is I don't go with presupposed expectations of how things are going to turn out. Because that's not actually faith. And if I go to the Lord, I can ask him for things, I can tell him what I desire. Absolutely. But I if I'm going to him with an expectation that this is how things are going to turn out, then I will always be disappointed. And and it won't be the Lord's fault. It won't be the Lord's fault. But if I go to him in a disposition of, okay, Lord, I'm going to boast in you. I don't know how you're going to do this, Lord, but help me. Help me to endure. Help me to press into you. Help me to not doubt you, Lord. And confess our doubt when we do, to lay everything that we're feeling on Him. And then to stand steadfast saying, I'm going to trust you, Lord. One thing that you say in your word is that your power is made perfect in my weakness. And I trust that you are going to help me get through this. You are going to help me, Lord, because you are not just, you know, saving me for a future event and eternity, but you are saving me now so that I can be conform to your image, so that I can know you now. The Lord wants us to know him now. And he wants us to know his power resurrected in us. He wants to operate his power on our soul to conform us to his image. And I love, I love that picture.

Carrie: 22:16

The topical lexicon says for the word power that that in personal holiness, weakness becomes the arena for Christ's empower and grace. And it's so beautiful. But my my favorite thing in doing the word study here is what Paul uses for the word that the power of Jesus may rest upon me. And it goes beyond Jesus just giving us help. So I love this. So the topical lexicon says for the word rest, it conveys the picture of a dwelling place erected over someone, evoking the image of a protective tent or overshadowing presence. This idea is intensified by the preposition used in the Greek word. It's not merely dwelling with, but resting upon in a way that covers, shelters, and empowers. This is the only place in the New Testament that it's used. And you know what the picture of it is? Tabernacle. This is the Lord tabernacling over us. Right? The Lord doesn't remove the affliction from Paul, but he promises an abiding, overshadowing power. Right?

Carrie: 23:47

This verb underscores the topical lexicon says that the divine presence actively envelops the impossible. The apostle, excuse me, turning an apparent deficiency into a venue for divine strength. Again, this is this is the power that rests upon us that the Lord desires to envelop us in when we choose to be dependent on him. Authentic ministry rests on the sufficiency of grace rather than our own competence. And so many times I will confess to you, in my own suffering, in my own affliction or difficulty, there have been so many times I've really just tried to pull myself up by my bootstraps and really just tried to knuckle through and just power through. And thinking that that's what the Lord expected of me. And is there a disposition of endurance that I need to get through things? Absolutely. But I can't do that separate from Jesus. I can't do it separate from the Holy Spirit. My endurance is produced in my dependency upon him because Jesus is the one who endured all things. And so it is his endurance that that resurrects within me because he's within me.

Carrie: 25:11

Friends, when Jesus says in John 15 that without him we can do nothing, that is literally what he means. There is not a piece of this salvific walk of discipleship that we can do apart from Jesus Christ, apart from the Holy Spirit, apart from the Father. There's not a piece of it, nothing that we can do without him. And we have opportunity, and we're not going to do it perfectly, and the Lord's not expecting us to do it perfectly. But and that's why grace is so important, right? And why grace is is so amazing because we do screw it up so many times. But in our repentance and in our continually going to the Lord and our continual submission and dependence to him, he delights in working within us. He delights in helping us overcome ourselves, the world and the devil. He delights in our perseverance, in our endurance, in knowing him, in our desire to honor him in what we suffer and where we're afflicted.

Carrie: 26:20

And so I just I love, I love the word that Paul uses for the power of Jesus resting upon us, right? Trials become platforms for the manifested presence of Jesus. And then we get in turn, we become the vessels of honor that Paul talks about. We become vessels, those jars of clay that then shine bright, the grace of the Lord. That when people look at our life and they say, How did you, how did you get through it? And you are able to tell them with a testimony that is that is rooted deep in your soul, it is only because of Jesus that I have gotten through anything. He has strengthened me, he has encouraged me, he has loved me, he has poured his grace and mercy out upon me, he has carried me and he has taught me and he has revealed himself to me. Friends, in these verses that that this verse that comes after the Lord saying, My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness. What Paul gives us in the rest of 9 and 10 is the key, and Paul's not doing it separate from Jesus. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Jesus, for his sake, for his gospel's sake. I am content with weakness, insults, hardship, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Carrie: 28:00

Paul the revelation that Jesus gives Paul works in Paul's spirit unto further revelation of, okay, Lord, then I am going to rejoice. I think it's why he could write again in Philippians 4, rejoice in the Lord. Again, I say rejoice. It is no hard thing for me to say these things to you again. This is the disposition of Paul. We have a conscious choice in our infirmities and in our weaknesses, in our calamities and in an insult and persecution, we can either choose the Lord or we can choose ourselves. We can choose to complain about what we're going through, which man, I can confess that. There have been eight million times it's been easier to complain than to turn to the Lord. But in growing and walking with Him to turn to the Lord and to choose to say, you know what, Lord Jesus, I'm going to rejoice. I'm going to thank you for these things. I'm going to thank you for these sufferings and these difficulties that you are giving me because I know you are using them to sanctify me. I know you are using them to conform me into your image. I know you are using them in me so that I will know your power. I will know deeper union with you, so that I can do what you've called me to do. I can obey your commandments, and I grow deeper in knowing you.

Carrie: 29:30

And that's what I love about these verses from 2 Corinthians. Paul had gotten a ton of revelation, and the Lord allowed him to be afflicted so that he would not become proud. And Paul understood, instead of being proud, man, I must be God's favorite. He's given me all of these, all of these revelations. No, he turned and he understood, Lord, in the magnitude of revelation that you have given me, thank you for afflicting me. That I can boast in your power alone. I can I that it's because it is in your power alone, Lord, I can endure and I can I can get through whatever comes my way. And I can testify of you, Lord. I can testify of your goodness in the midst of loss. I can testify to your comfort in the midst of grief. I can testify to your joy when when when sadness is absolutely cleaving my heart in two.

Carrie: 30:29

And again, I understand that these things take time. They're not immediate, they're things that we wrestle through with the Lord. But friends, my encouragement to you today is that these are things that we can have. And they are things that Jesus desires to give to us. They don't negate the difficulty of what we walk through. They don't negate the heartbreaking circumstances we often find ourselves in. It doesn't negate the difficulty of the wrestle with sin and flesh and the world and the devil. But instead says, instead of focusing on those things, Lord, I'm going to turn and I am going to boast in the power that I know you are going to give me to endure. I'm going to, I'm going to glory in the afflictions and in the sufferings that you appoint for me because praise God, these are the things that are making me more like you. They will make me more compassionate, Lord. They will make me more attuned to your conviction to pray for my enemies, to love my neighbor, to minister to those in my life who I perceive as difficult. And yet, who am I to say that, Lord? That who maybe I'm the difficult person in someone's life. Lord, that these things would make me soft and malleable in your hand. And that I wouldn't harden my heart against you, but that I would give you glory and I would worship you in these things.

Carrie: 32:04

And so I pray that that encourages you. I know that there are just a lot of a lot of friends who are listening, who are going through difficult things, who are experiencing affliction and suffering and grief, insults, persecutions, all sorts of things. And again, what's so beautiful about Scripture and what's so beautiful about the Lord is that is that Scripture and Jesus, they never shy away from the difficulty of this life. Ever. But Jesus makes it plain and clear how willing He is, how willing, how willing the Father is to minister to us in what we suffer and what we go through, and how He desires to use it to show us that dependence on Him is actually the most beautiful place of strength because we may be weak in our flesh and weak in our mind and weak in our spirit. And yet the Lord will come and He will strengthen us. He will strengthen us. He will tabernacle over us in his love.

Carrie: 33:15

I love what Spurgeon says, and I will close with this. Spurgeon says, our afflictions are like weights and have a tendency to bow us to the dust, but there is a way of arranging weights by means of wheels and pulleys, so that even they so that they will even lift us up. Grace, by its matchless art, has often turned the heaviest of our trials into occasions for heavenly joy. Friends, I pray that this truth is so manifested powerfully in your life and mine that the occasions of our heaviest, our our heaviest trials turn into occasions for joy because we see we see the hand of Jesus moving in our lives. We come to know him more, and we come to see that it truly is, it truly is an honor to not only know the power of his resurrection, but to fellowship with him in our sufferings and to count all things as loss, that we may know him, right? And the power of his resurrection, as Paul says in Philippians 3, that we would forget what is behind and press forward to attain knowing Jesus, that his power is made perfect in our weakness, and that it is right and it is good to then boast in the Lord, knowing that it is he who will absolutely sustain us and hold us and absolutely equip us for everything that he requires us to walk through, friends.

Carrie: 35:10

The Lord is not absent in our trial, and he is not far from us. He loves us, he desires to shower his grace on us, he is merciful toward us, and he will help us endure the things that so easily beset us, the sufferings that come to us, and ultimately he will turn them into things for his glory if we will fall on him and seek him and trust him. Be blessed in the Lord, friends, no matter what you are facing, trust, trust that Jesus is with you, and that he has you, and that his purpose will be done, his will will be done, but that it is not a cruel and absent God who is with you. No trust he will show up, you will see his grace made perfect in you, you will know the depth of his love, you will know his mercy, you will know his leading, and in all of these things you will know him more deeply, and you have no idea how your your wrestle and your faithfulness to Jesus will be a witness and a light to those who are coming behind you and who are watching your life. You are a witness to the Lord, my friends, in ways you don't even know. And so I pray the Lord encourages you in this. Amen.