Turning Point

David Michael Jeremiah: Are you too strong for God to use? So full of your own accomplishments, there's no room left for God to work? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his look at what God can do in the lives of believers who empty themselves of pride and arrogance so that he can fill them with his virtues. Listen as David introduces the conclusion of his message, Finding Strength through Weakness.

Dr. David Jeremiah: And you can follow us in the Bible if you turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter 12. This message has been lived out in my life as I told you yesterday in a major way because during the time that I've been recovering from this dreadful disease, I have continued to minister every week. And there have been so many days when I have been sitting on the front row waiting to go up to the platform and speak when I've thought to myself, there is no way, there is no way I can do this. And I've heard the Lord whisper, I know you can't, but I can, and he does.

And it's an amazing experience. If you've never had that experience, if you walk with the Lord for very long, you will. It's impossible to get from your salvation date to heaven without a moment like that. And 2nd Corinthians chapter 12, verses 7 through 10, explains how it works. We're in the middle of that and we'll get back to it in a moment.

First, let me just remind you that there's a study guide for this series of encouraging messages. This would be a great series for a small group, especially during these days when so many people are discouraged and they need perspective. They need help and they need hope. Why not get the study guide?

If you're the facilitator of your small group, you can get the CD package and listen to the messages each day before the study guide enters into the process when your friends get together. You get a study guide for everybody in your group, you get the CD package, and then you're ready to go. And your study will be about the word of God and its encouragement, not about how you feel, not about how things are going in the world, but how God has something special for each of you. This is a great study guide curriculum, so I hope you'll take advantage of it. And you can do that simply going to our website, getting all the information and jumping in, making it happen. Here is part two of Finding Strength through Weakness.

The Lord told Paul that the only way he would ever experience the fullness of the power of God was to be made aware of his own weakness without it. A.B. Simpson commented on this verse on an occasion and he said, "Here is the secret of divine all-sufficiency: to come to the end of everything in ourselves and in our circumstances. When we reach this place, we will stop asking for sympathy because of our hard situation or bad treatment, for we will recognize these things as the very conditions of our blessing. And we will turn from them to God and find in them a claim upon God's power." The experience of weakness in the believer's life, illustrated by Paul, the exchange for weakness, God's provision of supernatural grace and supernatural power.

Now notice what happened at the end of this exchange is that there is an end of weakness, not Paul's weakness, but weakness in Paul. He says in verses 9 and 10 that when this happened to him, when through his weakness God's power descended upon him, two things happened. First of all, he discovered a new ability. He says in verse 9, "Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me." Paul came to understand, men and women, that his thorn in the flesh was God working in his life.

And what God told Paul was this. He said, "Son, you're not going to be without the grace you need to do your job and get through this. You will not be without strength to be my ambassador, but the creative difference from now on is going to be like this: Your weakness is going to serve to magnify my greatness and my glory in such a way that no one will ever again be able to explain you in human terms." And that's what happened. That's what happened to Paul. In that moment as he describes this experience, it became no longer about Paul and all about Christ. It came to the place where Paul, as gifted as he was, as intellectual as he was, as learned and disciplined as he was, all of that was put aside in his weakness, and the power of Almighty God filled the vacuum.

He discovered a new ability, and then he discovered a new attitude. Oh, how many of you know we could use some new attitudes these days? Have you heard all the complaining and griping about all the stuff that's going on? I mean, this is a sorry thing. We just live in such terrible times. Paul said that what happened when God allowed this experience in his life is he developed a new attitude. Notice what he says in verse 10, "Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and in reproaches and in needs and in persecutions and in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Now please hear me. Paul's not a masochist. He's not saying, "Oh, I just love it when I'm hurting so badly." He's not saying, "Lord God, pour out your wrath on me, the harder the better." No, no, no. Paul is saying, "I now understand that even when I'm going through difficult times, it is because I am still in God's purview. I am still in God's plan. He's up to something in my life, and I take pleasure in it because I can't wait to see what God's going to do." What is it that we ask when we go through stuff? I can tell you. Your first question, it is, "Why? Why is this happening to me? Why is this taking place in my life? Why do I have to go through—Lord, not now, not this."

And what happens when you begin to get a biblical perspective on all this? You just change your question a little bit. You might want to ask why—everybody does that—but you follow it up quickly with what. "Lord, what is it that you want to do in my life through this time?" And I promise you, if you ask him, he'll help you understand what it is. He'll begin to show you. George Matheson was a well-known blind preacher of Scotland. And one day he wrote these words. He said, "My God, I have never thanked you for my thorn. I have thanked you a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorn. I have been looking forward to a world where I shall get compensation for the cross that I have carried, but I have never thought of my cross as a present glory itself. Teach me the glory of my cross, Lord. Teach me the value of my thorn. Show me that I have climbed to you by the path of pain. Show me that my tears have made my rainbows."

And then we come to the explanation of it all. Once again, the key phrase: "When I am weak, then I am strong." What does it mean? Is this a disconnect? Is this a statement without meaning? No, it is a statement with incredible meaning. And if we can get our arms around it today, it'll change our whole perspective on life. Here's what God is teaching us. He is telling us that when we are weak and confused, he's up to something in our lives. He is teaching us and preparing us, and he is wanting us to be used as we have never before been used. He's making us trustworthy.

And the principle is illustrated over and over again in the Old Testament. He always allows those who are in weakness to be the channels of his great power. Do you remember Abraham said, "I am but dust and ashes"? And Moses said, "Who am I that I should go before Pharaoh?" And Gideon said, "Lord God, my family is the least of Manasseh and I'm the youngest in my father's house." And David said, "I am a poor man and lightly esteemed." And I could go on. Over and over again, Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Isaiah, all of them understood their own poverty unless God broke through with strength.

But the most vivid picture you will find in all of the Bible, the picture of the cross. If you read the writings of Paul, you will discover that at the very center of his writings is the cross. For you see, on the cross was the greatest demonstration of power through weakness. Look at him hanging there between two convicted malefactors, thieves if you will. His hands nailed to the cross, his feet to the cross. Standing there without any of the information of the scriptures that we have today, look at that picture. Is that a picture of power, or is it not a picture of absolute weakness? The weakness of a man strung out on a cross, unable even to suck in his own breath.

But I say to you that out of that weakness on the cross came the greatest power the world has ever known. Through the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the power of Almighty God was released into this world. And if you're a Christian today, that power has transformed your life and is in the process of transforming that life. That power has lifted you up out of your own situation and put you in a place you never dreamed you could be. It's the power of God that breaks the chains of sin in our life, and it all started in that weakness when the Savior hung there for us.

And Paul never got over it. He couldn't get past it. When he wrote to the Corinthians, as he began to teach them, as he was coming to them, as he was writing these two letters that we have to them, every time you turn around, he's saying something about it. In 1st Corinthians chapter 1, verses 23 and 24, he writes, "But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God." When he was coming there to minister to them, he had just left Athens. And that hadn't been a great experience. Athens was filled with all the Athenian wisdom of the day. It was the place where Paul preached to the unknown God—you remember that sermon.

Now he's on his way from Athens and he's going to Corinth. And Corinth has a reputation of being an even more intellectual, sophisticated—it's the place where the Corinthian games were held. And he says in his heart, he's probably thinking, "What in the world am I going to say to these people?" That's like Billy Graham going to Cambridge University. And Paul, as he trudged along the road trying to sort all this out and get it together, we read later on in the book of 1st Corinthians and in the second chapter, he tells us a little bit about what he decided. I want to just read this to you. Just pretend I'm Paul and listen to me as if I were telling you what I went through and how I came up with what I was going to do. Listen.

"And I, brethren, when I came to you, I didn't come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined on my way from Athens not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive speech or words of human wisdom, but my speech was in the demonstration of the Spirit and of the power, that your faith, Corinthians, should not be in the wisdom of this man, but in the wisdom of Almighty God."

Paul said, "I'm not going to come here and try to impress you." One of the things he's criticized for in 2nd Corinthians is he's a very unattractive person. They tell him that he doesn't look like they want him to look, he doesn't preach like they want him to preach, that his speech is contemptible. Not exactly what you want to hear on Monday morning after you've given your heart to preaching. The whole book is about their criticism of Paul because he doesn't match the oratory and the sophistication of their great leaders and speakers. And Paul just turns it upside down and says, "That's right, I'm not any of those things. All I am is a humble servant of Almighty God. I am so humble, I am so weak," says Paul, "that if God hadn't done something, nothing would have happened."

And later on in 2nd Corinthians chapter 3, he puts it so succinctly you can't miss it. He says, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God." It was only in Paul's weakness that the power could be of God. Let me tell you what I've learned. God loves to use people without abilities and lift them up, and that is no excuse for not getting an education. But God uses people—I mean, if you go through church history, you'll find some of the greatest preachers had very little opportunities for seminary training and education.

But he uses some other kinds of people too. He uses people who have gifts and have training and have abilities, if they will renounce their dependence upon those things and put their dependence instead on God. So he wants to use all of us, but he won't use us if we're stuck on ourselves. There is no way to have the divine power of God in your life if you're all puffed up with yourself. If you're so full of yourself, there's no room for God. And that's what Billy Graham found out. I told you I was going to tell you about him.

Billy Graham learned in England what Paul is teaching us in 2nd Corinthians 12. Writing about this, he said that his arrival in Cambridge was really very unsettling. The night of the Cambridge mission was Sunday, November 6th, which was the day after Guy Fawkes Day, a day of fireworks, bonfires, and general revelry, something like the July 4th of our country. He was getting his team together to prepare for this, and he was in the debating hall on the Cambridge campus, and a firecracker was tossed through an open window right into the middle of his meeting, even though there were police all around the perimeter of the building.

Along with that, Billy was told that C.S. Lewis was there and wanted to talk with him. Oh my goodness. Does that strike terror into the heart of every preacher? I've quoted C.S. Lewis all my life. How would you like to go to a meeting and you're getting ready to preach, you're already scared out of your tree, and they say, "Yeah, C.S. Lewis is here and he wants to talk to you"? So he went, and I guess the conversation went fairly well. But at the end of the conversation, C.S. Lewis said to Billy Graham, he said, "Billy," he said, "Son, you got a lot of critics. But," he said, "you know what? I've never met any of your critics who's known you personally."

Well, Billy thought about that for a moment. He was in a strange land, nobody knew him personally, but he had critics. What does that mean? So he meditated on that. And then he began this three-night meeting. And according to the record, he began to preach these three nights, and what was happening was very modest, very, very below what he had expected. His sermons were, by his own estimation, too academic. He knew that he was not getting through to the hearts of the students, and he felt like he was preaching to please the audience rather than the Holy Spirit. And so Billy Graham sought the Lord.

And then came the breakthrough. Following the third sermon, the day after his 37th birthday, Billy Graham set aside his university focus sermons and he preached the ordinary evangelistic sermons he always preached to human souls. And in his weakness, through the all-sufficient transformation of the gospel and the power of Almighty God, a revival broke out at Cambridge and began to spread throughout the campus and throughout England, and its effect is being felt in some places even today. Some evangelists were saved in that meeting. The paradox of strength through weakness.

God chooses to use us only when we become dependent upon him. It is when we are out of answers. It is when we are out of confidence. It is when we are out of strength. It is when we have nowhere else to turn but to God. It is when we are no longer full of ourselves that Almighty God begins to break through into us and his power shines through. There is no one who is too weak for God to use, but there are probably several who are too strong for God to use. You've seen them, you've known them, perhaps you've sat under them. They're so full of their own accomplishments, there's no room for God to get glory.

But if you're here today and you feel God wants you to preach or teach or go to seminary or maybe go to the mission field, but every time you turn around, you start thinking about, "Oh, but I'm not—I can't do that." Oh, yes you can. Not in your own strength, but in his. He's just looking for people like you who will come and say, "Lord, I'm weak. I'm like Gideon, the least of my family. I'm like Jeremiah, I can't speak. I'm like Moses, I can't speak." And you just wait. If you come with a heart of yieldedness and surrender, God will take the emptiness that you feel and fill it up with himself.

And if you happen to be someone that God has gifted—this is not a put-down on giftedness—but it is a more difficult process for a gifted person to find dependence upon God than a person who doesn't have some of those gifts. And that's why, over the period of history, many people who are not as gifted are used of the Lord in a more powerful way. If we have been given gifts, if you have been given a gift, here's what you should do: "Lord God, thank you for the gift. I know I don't have it of myself." Here in Corinthians, there's a little argument about this in a place. It said, "If you got this gift from God, why do you keep telling everybody it's not from him?"

Everything you have is from God. Amen? If you have a gift, it's from God. Everybody has a gift. If yours is unique and powerful, give him praise and gratitude and always be humble about the fact that whatever you have, it's from him. And then put aside your dependence in those gifts. Say, "Lord God, thank you for these gifts, but that's not going to get me where you want me to go. That's not going to make happen what you want to see happen. So, Lord God, thank you for the gifts. Use them as you feel led to do, but Lord God, my dependence is upon you, you and you alone. Lord, in the weakness of what I know myself to be, break through with your power and give me a sense of the God of heaven working in me."

As I look back on my life, I wish I could tell you I've had multiple experiences like that. I remember one, though, and I want to tell you about it. When I came back from being in the hospital for a stem cell transplant, I was gone for seven weeks. I came back really before I should have, but I missed it so much I just couldn't stand not being here. And I was pretty weak. I didn't have much voice. In fact, I've listened to some of the tapes of those messages and I'm wondering, "Man, how did you all listen to that?" I was talking in a raspy voice. I was emotional, kind of shaky.

But I remember as if it happened yesterday, going home during those days and telling my wife, "Honey, I never had an experience like this before. It was almost like I was standing over here and somebody was preaching in that pulpit and I was watching it. Like it wasn't me." I'm not a mystic and I'm not trying to scare you because it really was me, but it was the strangest feeling. I heard myself preaching in a way that I felt no human ability to preach. God had broken through in the weakness of my life to demonstrate his power.

And I remember when I came back, I told you guys one thing that I want you to remember, and that was this: God is enough. He is. He was sufficient during that time and he was filling me with his power in a kind of weakness I had never felt before. I'm not saying we should go out and get sick and get weak so God can empower us. I'm just saying that in the process of life, you will have your moments. And sometimes when you see those things come along that you wish weren't coming, you say, "Oh, no, no." And maybe you should instead embrace them and say, "Lord God, what are you going to do in my life through this time? Whatever it is, I'm okay with it. I'm willing. Show yourself strong in my weakness, God. Use me during this time."

You know, people watch us when we're weak as they never watch us when we're strong, because they want to find out if in our weakness they can spot the difference Jesus makes. So I encourage you today, embrace this paradox. Say it with me: "When I am weak, then I am strong. When I am weak, then I am strong." And you don't have to worry about engineering this, just let God direct it in your life. But recognize it when it comes and accept it for what it is and thank God for the opportunity he's going to provide in this time in your life.

Amen. Amen. Hey, tomorrow we're going to talk about how to get through the wilderness. Have you ever felt like you're in the desert and you don't know which way to go and it's dry and you're thirsty and it's uncomfortable? Well, sometimes that's what it's like spiritually, but tomorrow and Thursday we're going to talk about how to get through the wilderness. Don't miss it as we continue our discussion of Making Sense of It All.

Do you know there are 100 verses that I want you to know? And it's because these verses are in a book by Rob Morgan called 100 Bible Verses That Made America. 100 verses that powerfully impacted our leaders during defining moments in American history, and reflect upon what these verses mean for us as a nation today. Short, easy-to-read entries and beautifully told stories. It's yours from Turning Point during this month for a gift of any size. Make your gift, ask for your copy of this 370-page book. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

David Michael Jeremiah: Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note and let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Write to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio or calling 800-947-1993.

Ask for your copy of Robert J. Morgan's book, 100 Bible Verses That Made America. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also view over 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's sermons on any screen anytime you like on our Turning Point Plus streaming service for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Making Sense of It All on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.