To keep me from becoming
conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a
thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to
take it away from me.  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 Corinthians 12: 7-10

Tolerate
weakness; endure weakness—that I understand. But boast in weakness? Delight in
weakness? Who wants to be weak? Not me. I prefer the many times the Lord commanded
Joshua to “be strong.” I want to be strong and to be seen as strong, don’t you?

What’s
Paul saying? I’ve been considering that lately. Is it similar to the idea that suffering
is where God gets our attention? For most of us, it is when we feel the stress
and pressure of life, when we feel too weak to handle it ourselves—that’s when
we cry out to God. That’s when we realize just how utterly dependent we are on him,
the source of our life. That’s when we understand that we are contingent beings.
That’s when we see the truth of our insufficiency.

 From
Adam and Eve on, Satan has told us we are self-sufficient. Maybe we need to
depend on other people a little bit to grow our food, make fabric for clothing,
produce that which sustains our life, but we can do it without God’s daily
involvement. That’s what the enemy says.

 That lie
gets put to the test when we are on our backs in a hospital bed, when a child
dies, when we are overwhelmed with anxiety. Then we remember our weakness. That’s
when we are strong in our dependence. We remember our very life is in Him.

 Dear Papa-God, teach us more of
dependence.