This past week, Keane and I took part in Teach Beyond’s orientation for its new missionary candidates. We gathered with over 80 other people to cover a wide variety of topics pertaining to moving, living, and serving overseas. Every day a different Teach Beyond staff member led us in a devotional, and a few of the other sessions felt more like devotionals than seminars. Here are a few of the passages that were covered this past week. Can you find any themes?
I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
I will not forsake them. (Is. 42:16)
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31)
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. (1 Cor. 1:27)
But 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 Cor. 12:9-10)
For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power.Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you. (2 Cor. 13:4)
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. (Eph. 6:10)
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. (1 John 4:4)
What do these passages have in common? We are weak; God is strong. What immediately pops into my mind is that old Sunday School song, “My God is so big, so strong and so mighty! There’s nothing my God cannot do for you!” And in my memory, I hear a multitude of children’s voices shouting those lyrics with all their might, maybe just enjoying the singing and the motions that go along with the words, but also able in that childlike-faith way to believe the words and to know God is big and strong and mighty.
I don’t think there was a single person in our orientation group who did NOT identify with this topic of feeling weak. I know I did. And every time I was reminded that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, I felt a resounding YES swell up inside me.
What struck me mid-week, though, is that this shouldn’t be a new feeling. This awareness that I am weak and that God is strong should not be a phenomenon that accompanies moving to a new country and raising support. It is reality. The problem is that, most of the time, I actually feel pretty okay. We are a married couple with two incomes and no kids; we lead a reasonably comfortable life; we have a nice emergency fund stored away; we have health insurance and life insurance and (tiny) retirement accounts. And before I quit my job and started focusing on going overseas, if I wasn’t careful, I could have gone days without recognizing my need for God and my own weakness. There is a huge disconnect in my mind between my physical needs (financial security, etc.) and my spiritual needs, and sometimes it isn’t until the former is impacted that the latter comes to mind. Is this a culturally American thing? Is this a human nature thing? Or just a middle class thing? I don’t know. But this past week I was prompted to repent of my so-called self-sufficiency and to rejoice in this new awareness of my weakness. Truly, this weakness is not new, but I thank God that I now recognize it. It brings a certain gladness, knowing that “Christ’s power may rest on me” and that, as blind and weak as I am, he is leading me along the unfamiliar paths.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Cor. 4:7)