When We Can’t, God Can
II Corinthians 12:2-10
by Rev. Dr. David Rogne

David Lusk tells of an experience he had as part of an evangelism team that was holding a Christian crusade in the small village of Leguan in Guyana.  Monkai, a mentally limited man from the village, came to the tent asking for a Bible study.  Though Monkai was limited, he could read and reason.  One of the workers took the time to teach him, even though he felt that Monkai would not be able to grasp very much.  After two days of study, Monkai asked to be baptized, and the Christian workers welcomed him as part of the Christian family.

The evening of the day after his conversion, Monkai came to the crusade and asked to say a word at the end of the service.  The workers were hesitant, but they felt that God would take care of Monkai's inabilities, so they allowed him to speak.  When the time came, Monkai stood up and walked to the front.  He told everyone there that he had been studying and that he had become a Christian.  Then he added, "I have been able to study the Bible with these people for the first time in my life, and I wanted to share some of what I learned with you."  He didn't move.  He didn't open his Bible.  He just opened his mouth and started quoting scriptures!  The retarded one that people had discounted for years was now quoting passages from the Bible as though he had studied for years!  They were scriptures that the workers had read with him in their study, and Monkai had committed them to memory.  There wasn't a dry eye in the crowd.  That night God used Monkai to win the hearts of the townspeople.

The Apostle Paul faced a similar challenge in his own ministry.  How do you picture the Apostle Paul?  Dynamic?  Robust?  Magnetic personality?  Eloquent preacher?  Someone who looked like Mel Gibson?  A second-century document describes Paul as being a short, bow-legged, bald-headed, squinty-eyed Jew with a speech impediment!  More like Danny Devito than Mel Gibson!  This lack of personal charm became a problem for him.  He had spent considerable time and effort establishing a church at Corinth, in Greece.  When he left there to work elsewhere, some "super-Apostles" came in and began to undercut his work by pointing out how inadequate Paul was in comparison with themselves.  Obviously, if the Lord were really on Paul's side, things would have been bigger and better at Corinth, and Paul's personal qualifications would have been better than they were.

In the letter from which we read this morning, Paul spends several chapters defending himself, his message, and his ministry.  To do this, he feels compelled to challenge those "super-Apostles" on their own ground by doing something he had been reluctant to do--to boast.  The more he boasts, the more foolish he feels, until he recognizes that his accomplishments are not the result of his superiority, but the result of God's gracious acceptance of what Paul had to offer.  If those "super-Apostles" could point to all their endowments as evidence of God's blessing, then how much more must Paul's ministry have been under the blessing of God to have accomplished what he had accomplished in the absence of such personal endowments!

Paul then goes on to state a paradox which he had discovered in God's dealings with him.  "Whenever I am weak, then I am strong." ( II Cor. 12:10)  It is that seemingly contradictory statement that I would like to have us consider together this morning, for I think that from it we, who have weaknesses and limitations, may derive some hope.

The first thing we have to do is to get rid of some mistaken ideas about where power resides.  Some assume that power is found in numbers.  At the beginning of the Second World War, France had the largest conscript army in the world.  I can still remember as a child seeing newsreels of vigilant French soldiers peering out of pill boxes through field glasses, ready for the attack of the enemy.  Military experts said that Germany had moved too fast.  She would break herself against the Maginot Line and find herself overwhelmed by France's great army.  But in six weeks France was overrun.  She was out-maneuvered.  She had assumed that routine training and mere numbers meant protection, but they did not.  Numbers are not always an adequate index of power.

Some think that power is found in the capacity to create fear.  Louise Degrafinried of Mason, Tennessee, astounded the nation some time ago when she persuaded an escaped convict from a Tennessee prison to surrender.  He had a gun, and with his gun, he thought he had control.  He had surprised Nathan Degrafinried, her husband, outside their modest home and forced him inside.  But Louise was not afraid of the gun.  The short, black grandmotherly woman told the convict to put his gun down while she fixed him some breakfast.  She spoke of her faith and how a young man such as he should behave.  In no time at all, he was on his way back to the Tennessee prison.  The escaped convict thought he had power, but when he couldn't create fear, he lost control.

Some think power is related to past success.  Any coach of a winning team knows that it is important to deal with the overconfidence that infects winning players.  Tom Landry, former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, in an interview, said:  "I'm sure that we're all very different.  But we each have our way of handling winning and losing.  People are always talking about defeat.  You have to handle winning too.  If you get over-bloated, too proud of what you've accomplished, it's a good way to take a quick fall."  When a team thinks it is invincible, that is the time when some second-rate team, with nothing to lose and everything to win, comes through to defeat the champion.  The danger of past success is the danger of overconfidence.

Real power is the capacity to accomplish our purpose, and neither numbers, nor violence, nor past success can insure that that will always happen.

The second thing I would like to point out this morning is that dependable strength begins with an acknowledgement of our weaknesses.  Consider Paul's situation.  He had a handicap.  He called it a "thorn in the flesh."  People have speculated for centuries about what it might have been:  epilepsy, faulty eyesight, physical appearance, persecution, temptation, malaria, headaches; no one knows.  The word translated "thorn" is the same word for "stake," a pointed pole used for impaling criminals, so it is likely that he was describing something which gave him physical pain.  In this situation he did what any of us would do: he prayed for relief.  But the thorn, whatever it was, was not removed.

It is the same with us.  We discover some area where we are weak, we cry out for help, but God does not always answer as we expect.  We pray for courage, and God leads us by roads that expose us to danger.  We pray for patience, and we get a disagreeable neighbor.  We pray for love, and life throws on us the need to care for someone who may be irksome and difficult.  We pray for humility, and life brings us into circumstances that break our pride.

This is what Paul discovered.  The difficulty remained, but it served as a reminder of his own limitations, and that awareness kept him useful.  He discovered this principle:  that divine power cannot be released in the lives of people until they are prepared to acknowledge their own powerlessness.

Others have found this to be so.  Alcoholics Anonymous has discovered this truth and applied it to the recovery from alcoholism.  The first three of their "Twelve Steps" are as follows:

     "First:  We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.

     "Second:  We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

     "Third:  We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to God as we understand him."

They acknowledged their powerlessness.

When Reinhold Niebuhr prayed the now famous "Serenity Prayer," he was preaching in a little church in Massachusetts.  Just a handful of people were in the audience.  Someone liked the prayer, and after the service asked him for a copy.  It was written on a crumpled-up piece of paper.  Niebuhr said, "Here, I doubt I'll have any more use for it."  The prayer became the most published prayer in America, and Alcoholics Anonymous adopted it as their theme.  It goes like this:  "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

Most of us will discover God far more often in our weakness than in our strength.  God is more likely to meet us in our frustration, vexation, and suffering, than in our victory.  God often becomes real for people who are facing marital breakup, disability, serious illness, or the death of a loved one, for in all of those situations we are made painfully aware of how limited is our power and control, and we instinctively appeal to God.  Like Paul, we seek relief, for we sense that we are children before a more powerful Father.  And, like Paul, we may discover that we do not receive what we seek.  God may not take the problem away, but God will give us the power to bear it.  "My grace is sufficient for you," says the Lord, "for power is made perfect in weakness." (II Cor. 12:9)

Now the third thing I want to point out this morning is that God not only sustains us in our weakness, but that God in fact uses weak things to accomplish God's purposes.  This thread runs all through the Bible.  Centuries ago God called upon Gideon to deliver his people.  To Gideon was given one of the strangest commands ever presented to the leader of an army.  God told him to prepare for victory by reducing the number of his forces.  Consequently, Gideon offered a discharge to every man who was fearful or afraid.  Twenty thousand of his soldiers went home.  Two-thirds of the army melted away.  Then he applied a second test to determine the alertness of the remaining ten thousand.  Only three hundred warriors passed.  Yet with this little handful of fighting men, and in complete dependence upon God, Gideon won a resounding victory.  He could have identified with Paul's words:  "Whenever I am weak, then I am strong."

Moses, who protested that he stammered, was nevertheless sent to Pharaoh to secure the release of his people, and he succeeded in spite of Pharaoh's might.

The best example is Jesus himself.  That God should seek to win the world through a peasant chosen from an obscure tribe at the eastern end of the Mediterranean seems ridiculous.  If we were choosing, we would have chosen someone from the ruling race; someone from Rome, not Nazareth; a general, perhaps, but not a carpenter.  Then, that this man should be crucified and killed contradicts everything we understand about power.  Yet, even at his birth there was an understanding that God could use the weak to confound the mighty.  Luke has Mary sing a song of joy before the birth of Jesus in which she says:

     "He has shown strength with his arm,

      He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,

      He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

      He has filled the hungry with good things,

      And sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1:51-53)

This has been the case in more recent times as well.  In the published diaries of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, there are several references to Gandhi.  In each case Goebbels refers to Gandhi as a fool and a fanatic.  He intimates that if the Indian leader had had sense enough to organize militarily, he might have hoped to win the freedom of India.  But Goebbels was sure that Gandhi could never succeed by following the path of nonresistance and peaceful revolution.  Yet, India continued on that path and obtained her independence; Nazi Germany followed the path of military might and was destroyed.  It would appear that what this Nazi leader regarded as weakness was strength, and what he thought was strength was actually weakness.

The words of Paul are really a message of hope.  The All-stars in life may not need such a message.  There may be those who are good enough at everything they try, that they can make it on their own endowments.  But there are very few of them.

The great majority of us suffer under numerous limitations:  limitations of health, ability, knowledge, time, willpower, motivation, skill, and other things which trouble us.  In my own life, I know what it is to come home from the office with more things left to do than I started out with at the beginning of the day:  unmade phone calls, unmade visits, unfinished sermons, unwritten letters.  But God is teaching me, little by little, that I don't have to be the best minister there is, only the best I can be.

And the same is true for all of us.  Whatever we are, we are called to be the best we can be:  husbands, wives, parents, professional people, students, whatever.  We can stop blaming ourselves that we are not the best there is.  To think that we have to be in control of every situation is the height of pride, and it will bring us to destruction.  When we have done our best, we offer it to God to do with as God chooses, and we discover, as Paul did, that when we acknowledge our weakness, we give God the opportunity to work through us.  "Therefore," says Paul, "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." (II Cor. 12:10)