Weakness is Our Strength

One of the tools often used in business is a SWOT analysis. S.W.O.T. is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis makes sure you’ve considered all of your business’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats it faces in the marketplace. Knowing and leveraging your strengths is critical to business success. And knowing your weaknesses that detract from the value you offer, or place you at a competitive disadvantage is also critical, because these are the areas that will need improvement.

We are typically afraid to look at, much less articulate, our weaknesses because we are taught to concentrate on our strengths. We prefer not to dwell on those things that we do not do well. But suppose you were doing a one-sentence S.W.O.T analysis on weaknesses for you personally. What would you list as weaknesses? Would your weakness be expecting so much of your limited time that you feel paralyzed by the number of demands and opportunities; or maybe it would be the inability to maintain strong relationships, or the ability to tithe regularly, or maybe your knowledge of the Bible is not where you want it to be. If your list of weaknesses ends up being longer than you expected, you’re not alone. Most of us have areas in our life where we feel inadequate, or where we simply placed it in our queues with a low priority which means we will get to it when we can. Or maybe we simply don’t have the skills in that area.  

Fortunately, God’s power is the perfect counterpart to our weakness. It’s more than enough and more importantly, it is completely available to you. God isn’t scouring the universe looking for a perfect person through which He can display His power and glory. He’s looking for the person whose weakness provides God and His power with an opportunity to make their life unexplainable. An opportunity to turn our weaknesses into a Christ-exalting experience. No matter what you’re going through, no matter what or how many weaknesses you have, there’s no reason that can’t be you.

The truth is that the church never ran, and wasn’t designed to run, on human strength. The church runs on divine and supernatural strength. And God tells us, through Paul, that the way to access God’ supernatural strength in our lives individually and collectively as a church ministry is through weakness. So God has given us this door that we can open up for his strength, but most of us have locked it, closed it, or nailed it shut because we don’t like to think about our weaknesses. We don’t like to think about our insufficiencies.

If there’s one thing I hope you you take away from Sunday’s message is that it’s OK to have weaknesses. It’s in your weakness that you find God’s strength. It’s our weakness that draws us to him. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

The Holy Spirit will help us in our weakness. When we feel weak or vulnerable, our power comes from the Holy Spirit residing within us and turning to Him alone for guidance and direction. Romans 8:26 says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

So as we fast and pray for God’s will in our lives, don’t focus too much on finding your strengths. Give attention to identify and exploit your weaknesses. God has not given them to you in vain. Identify them. Accept them. Exploit them. Magnify the power of Christ with them. In the end, you will find that weakness in God’s hand is a strength.

Discussion Questions:
1. What top two strengths (natural talents or learned abilities) has God wired into you from birth or helped you develop over the years? In what way have you used or could you use those strengths to do God’s work on earth?
2. In what way could any of your weaknesses be blocking your desire to serve God wholeheartedly?
3. What are the weaknesses that Paul has in mind here when he says, “The power of Christ is made perfect in weakness”?
4. What is the purpose of such weaknesses? Is there a goal or an aim for why the weaknesses exist?
5. Pray and ask God that your weaknesses will be filled with the power of God and that God will be exalted through them.