When you are weak, receive

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here or even gone to church. I’ve been … scared to be in God’s presence. I don’t know if it is the lack of trust I had in Him over my future or frustration because it seems like nothing is working out the way I want it to.

God has been a big and vague concept to me lately. This Being that I once aimed to understand and sought out with everything in me was just too big to wrap my mind around.

God was just scary to try to understand. He was immense and difficult to grasp.

Was it my sin? My frustration with singleness? My constant desire to have some great sex (Oh you know we are honest around here)? Maybe it was my disgust with being lonely but refusing to turn to God.

Whatever it was … I ignored God. I felt Him whisper to me and I plugged my ears. I felt Him tugging on my heart and I tugged away.

I told someone recently that I thought my life would be easier if I wasn’t a Christian. At the time, being a Christian just meant a bunch of rules I needed to follow and I was doing a piss poor job of being obedient. Being a Christian meant a constant state of confusion and anger that God would ask me to be abstinent until marriage but would create me to have these strong desires for sex.

I was just about to get to the point where I just stopped trying to be obedient altogether. I was ready to just live my life as I saw fit and trust that ‘God knew my heart’.

Then I met a brother in Christ, J, at a cross-country meet and he invited me to his church.

In that moment I was excited and scared. How many times has my journey back to God started with me attending a new church? How many times has it honestly been someone else’s fire that warmed me up? How many times has the relationship dissolving, resulted in me turning my back on God?

Regardless, I went to the church and I enjoyed it. Then I went back and I knew the message was for me. I was in tears by the end of the service. I was moved by the Spirit of God.

So I gave in.

Again.

I told God that I would try.

Again.

That’s the beauty of God, He accepts me each time I run back to Him. I’m really tired of running though. I’m tired of doing life on my own. I’m sick of falling over every time I try to lean on me.

I want to live a life where God is always my source. Where I truly just live in His world and allow Him to be my guide.

Let’s go back in time for a moment.

It’s June 2020 and I have just finished praying and God gives me a literal vision. I wrote it down in my journal because of Habakkuk 2:2 and got excited about seeing that vision come to fruition.

Now we are back in the present and if I can be honest, I forgot about that vision. I forgot because it took 2 years and 4 months for it to come to fruition.

Y’all last night … it happened.

It came to pass.

God fulfilled a promise that was shared with me in the quietest moments of our intimate prayer time. God literally told me this would happen and I eventually stopped praying over it because it took a long time for it to happen. When God said October I thought He meant October 2020 not October 2022.

Habakkuk 2:2 is a powerful verse in its own right but to really fully grasp what it means to trust God, you have to read Habakkuk 2:3 (NIV) ‘For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.“

I was incredibly impatient. I tried to do everything in my power to speed up the revelation being shown as true. Sunday night I prayed and said ‘God, I’m not sure anymore about this vision but I do still trust You, I’m just getting really worried that maybe I heard you wrong. So if it’s going to happen, please let it happen soon.”

I won’t share what it is because it’s deeply personal to me (and I’m honestly still a bit in awe that it happened). This revelation lit a fire inside of me. I’m not on fire for God because of someone else’s excitement for Him but I’m on fire for Him for me. I’m excited because I see, with my own eyes, the words written in a journal and can hold that up against the events that happened last night.

So how does any of this relate to the title? I’m glad you asked. 2 Corinthians 12:9a says “But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

This verse follows Paul talking about the thorn in his side and how he pleaded with God to remove it. Theologians don’t know if this was a spiritual affliction or a physical affliction but they agree that Paul was desperate for a change. Jesus told Paul that His power is made perfect in weakness.

It dawned on me. My lack of faith and occasional doubt is a weakness… something that I have been clinging to. I feel like God is telling me that if I cling to Him instead of my weakness that His power can be magnified and perfected in my life.

Am I nervous? Heck yes. Am I willing to let go of my fear and cling to God? Yes.

I am weak. I can admit that. I struggle with my desire to remain abstinent and sometimes I slip. I struggle with the words that I use because my tongue isn’t always used to lift people up. I struggle with trusting God because I can’t see what He is doing.

I’m very weak but God’s Word, His living and breathing Word, tells me that His power is perfected in my weakness. So here I am, weak and a little broken, choosing to accept this weakness so that I may receive this perfected power.

Maybe one day I’ll share what the vision was and maybe I won’t but for now, I am resting in the promise that God’s power in my life is magnified in my submission to Him.

I am resting in the knowledge that, at least for right now, His power has been made perfect in my life.