My weakness

Well, I want to write about weakness. I guess in a way, this is another personal outpouring like the one I had about doubt. Can I trust you once more with words only my diary tends to hear? I’ll take the plunge.

As I tried to explain in the last post, Christianity is a matter of extreme humility. For a person to make that first step into church and that decision to follow Jesus, they must have realised how weak and screwed up they really are.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

Wretch: A despicable person
Despicable: deserving hatred or contempt

That is the confession we get to when we decide to follow Jesus. We realise our uselessness and discover his everything.

Yet, our confrontation with unworthiness does not stop there. It continues throughout our Christian lives. We are made whole one weakness at a time. The process for sorting through each weakness remains the same: Realise your weakness, admit that you have the weakness, and submit to God to walk you through the mess.

I have a particularly annoying weakness and I don’t know what to do with it anymore. There is nothing I haven’t tried and no prayer I haven’t prayed. However, recently (like this morning), it dawned on me that I had missed a step. I had realised that I had it and prayed to God about it, but I never admitted to myself that I was weak in that area.

I feel so ashamed and irresponsible when I think about my weaknesses that I often don’t admit that I have them. I have a Christian blog for goodness’ sake! People know me in church! I need to hold myself up as a respectable individual. What will people say if they find out what goes through my thoughts?

So, because of pride, I am trying to hide and suppress so much, not addressing my issues head-on. The problem is that I know that as time passes these ‘little’ weaknesses will morph into something serious and burst out in chaos.

From the very beginning, all we need to do is admit our shortcomings and seek help and encouragement. Instead, we let them fester till they eventually lead to cover-up scandals. You’ve heard of pride comes before a fall? Well, pride comes before an apology press conference.

It is proud and un-christian of me not to admit my weaknesses. Even though I work hard on this site and write to draw people to God, it will be arrogant and un-christian of me – an insult to the very gospel I teach – if I don’t come humbly before you and tell you that I struggle with doubt, I struggle with depression and I struggle with the desires of this body.

My weakness does not deter God; my pride does.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James 4:10

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