Weakness and Strength

There is a section of a letter Paul wrote where he quotes God saying to him "..My strength comes into its own in your weakness."  (2 Cor 12:10 MSG).

I've always struggled with that, because it seems that God wants me to be a failure so he can show his forgiveness (at least that is how I always read it).  I've been wrong for so long that when I see that verse I just kind of shrug and move on because I don't like to wrestle in my mind when I disagree with the Bible.

But that is laziness.

So I started to wrestle with it.  And what I found is God is never happy that we are fallen.  He didn't start the story like that and he hopes the story doesn't end like that.

God is happy when he gets be God in a personal way to one individual.

So I've always read weakness as me sinning.  Because when I do something that I don't want to do my response is to try and stop doing it.  But I don't stop.  So then doing the wrong is my weakness.

But that is wrong.  My weakness is not the thing, my weakness is my inability to stop doing the thing.   I'm actually really strong at doing the wrong things. So we get rid of the word weakness and replace it with inability (this holds up under scrutiny when you look at the greek word for weakness).  So God's strength is shown when I have an inability.  But obviously it is not shown in my inability, it is shown when I am now able.

So God's strength is shown when I am strong doing something I was unable to do alone.  It is in the doing God is shown, not in my failing.  God wants to be shown in my success.

God doesn't want me to fail.  God wants me succeed and he want's to give me what I need to succeed and he want's me accept and acknowledge him giving it to me.  That's called a relationship.  And I think I'm finally ready to be in a relationship with God where I'm better for being in that relationship.  God calls my being better holiness.