Author and businessman Harvey Mackay told the story of a ten-year-old boy named Mark who wanted to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in an automobile accident. Mark began his lessons with a Japanese judo master and was doing well. But after three months had passed and he had only been taught one move, he questioned the master. “This is the only move you’ll ever need to know,” was the master’s reply.
Perplexed, but trusting, Mark kept training and several months later entered his first tournament. Surprising himself, Mark won the first two matches. The third match was more difficult, but soon his opponent became impatient and charged. Mark deftly used his lone move to win the match.
He was now in the finals, but this time his opponent was much larger, much stronger, and far more experienced. Mark was nervous, and it was showing in the match. The referee, concerned for Mark’s welfare, called a time-out. He was about to stop the seemingly imbalanced match when Mark’s master intervened, “Let him continue,” he said.
The match resumed and Mark’s opponent made a critical mistake. Instantly, Mark used his move to pin him, winning the match and the entire tournament. On the way home, Mark summoned the courage to ask the question on his mind: “How did I win the tournament with only one move?”
“You won for two reasons,” the judo master answered. “First, you’ve almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all judo. And second, the only known defence for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm.”
Mark’s weakness had become his greatest strength.
A new paradigm of weakness and power
Each one of us has weaknesses we’d rather not have. Most of us are acutely aware of them. If we’re not, then we can ask ourselves when we last felt inadequate. Not just a lack of confidence, but the thought of I’m just not up to this; I’m not the person for this task. Whether we feel like that often, or only occasionally, the truth is that we all have weaknesses.
Now these weaknesses can frighten us; we want to feel bold and powerful. The common perception is that weakness equals a lack of power. The logic seems clear and obvious. But the Bible actually says that weakness can be an opportunity for power. For a Christian, weakness does not equal a lack of power. In fact, we need to understand and accept a new paradigm: our weakness is an opportunity to experience God’s power! The Bible shows us that like Mark, the ten-year-old judo fighter, our very weaknesses can become strengths in God’s hands.
When I am weak
The apostle Paul knew this well. He spoke of his experience of weakness in one of his letters to the Corinthian church.
“He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10)
Notice that Paul doesn’t just say he was “content” with weaknesses, as in “I’ll endure them since I can’t do anything about them anyway,” but he “delights in weaknesses”. How could he (or anyone) delight in weaknesses?
What Paul grasped was that our weaknesses are the very vehicles through which God reveals His power. Our world tells us, “Embrace your strengths; overcome your weakness.” Only in Scripture are we encouraged to embrace our weaknesses and through them experience a power that we could never know otherwise. This power is not our own, but the power of the risen Christ.
The path to true power—the resurrection power of Christ in our lives—doesn’t come through trying harder, but by giving up the attempt to be powerful. God’s power is demonstrated in our lives by admitting our weaknesses and getting out of God’s way—not by desperately trying harder than ever before to overcome them.
That’s exactly what the Bible teaches us over and over again. It explains why God didn’t remove Paul’s weakness and why He may not remove ours (see 2 Corinthians 12:7-9). As strange as it sounds, revelling in weakness is the Christian way of life.
Paul was not alone in experiencing God’s strength through weakness. David is just one of the many examples of this we see throughout Scripture. He was a young shepherd with no military training, so small he couldn’t even fit into Saul’s armour. Yet God used him to defeat the greatest military warrior of the age, Goliath (1 Samuel 17). Read the description of Goliath and remember that David defeated him with just a sling and a stone!
So, how do we embrace weakness and experience God’s power?
We embrace our weaknesses and experience God’s power by realising, admitting and accepting it. God is not waiting for us to become weak, but rather, to admit that we are. Like Paul, we are to boast not in our strengths, but in our weaknesses. Then, we will know God’s power.
So, when we face those moments in life when everything seems to be against us, and when all our efforts to fix the problem have failed, we can realise that our human resources have failed us and that nothing short of God’s intervention will sustain us. It is God’s strength that holds us up when we can barely stand (Psalm 3:5; 41:3; 55:22).
This isn’t just a new idea; it is a new way of living. Hopefully, you’ll see it’s the life God has always wanted you to live—a life of depending on His power.
Respond: You may wish to reflect on Dan’s article and this idea of embracing weakness by reading Psalm 73 which speaks of these ideas of strength, weakness and true power in God. Perhaps memorise this phrase from Psalm 73:26: “God is the strength of my heart”.
If you’d like to dig deeper into embracing your weaknesses, Dan Schaeffer continues his exploration of this idea in this Discovery Series.
Dan Schaeffer is an award-winning writer who pastors Shoreline Community Church in Santa Barbara, California. His work has appeared regularly in more than thirty different Christian magazines and periodicals, in many different countries and languages..
