This does not mean God Himself is closer, per say, but it means that our openness to Him is wider and more attuned to Him when we are feeling very weak and unstable. These moments are also times when we naturally do not want to think about God. We just want to feel the pain of our weakness or instability and fear. However, it must be every Christian's deep rooted faith in God that reminds them of the truth that when we are weak He is strong. WHEN is referring to a specific time or a number of minutes or hours-however long the feeling of weakness is there-that's how long we can avail ourselves to see the power of God more vibrantly.
The pain of weakness is real. It's feeling unsatisfied, discouraged, wretched, hopeless, and unstable. It's feeling like you cannot overcome the fear or anxiety that is rising in your mind and physical body. It's the lusts for the things of the world that impale you mentally. And you are, in that moment, weak to fight against it. That is weakness of which Paul spoke of as the believers' glory. For in such moments we are most acutely aware of our condition, and by throwing our minds and bodies at the feet of God for His power and mercy to sustain us will convince us that He is real and working in our lives with awesome and wonderful love.
There is great pain with great love.
Do not choose a life of numbness. You'll be good and numb when your corpse is rotting in the grave and all you have left is either the fullness of joy you had within your spirit or the gaping cavity where you had once filled that with things no longer of value in eternity. Those with the fullness of joy in Him will be welcomed by the Father in reciprocal fullness of joy, while those with gaping cavities will not be known by the Father.
Right now we go on with our lives being more and more full in Him, meaning that God is helping us have more joy in the eternal place than this physical place. He is allowing us to feel the heartbeat of heaven here and now, and it will look very strange to the those with their eyes solely on the physical heartbeat of their anatomical bodies. They do not see what we see because we see with faith. We see the heartbeat of heaven, an invisible force much like the wind, and it is a mysterious beauty to be wrapped up in. The currents of heaven blow most forcibly the more we open our senses to it. And we open our senses to God most noticeably in our weakness.
For when we are weak He is the strong current of power surging around us, and this we know by our weakness! We know it cannot possibly be from ourselves since we are so convinced and certain that the amount of control we have in a given situation is almost zero. Once we have lost all control and have called upon God...
We break. We fall apart. We writhe in the pain of our true condition.
This is the hardest part of attuning to God. Being in our true condition. Seeing it, feeling it, knowing it, and hating it.
It goes against the root of sin in us.
How can we stand up to what is so deeply ingrained in us? How can we be helped from such a thing as natural to us as our knowledge of it being there? It's like telling a blue pen to be red. That is what it is like fighting the sin in us.
So what on earth can we possibly do about this?
Many years ago, when God came down to earth in the form of a man He answered that very same question:
"And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?
And He said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God."
-Luke 18:26-27
In other words, by faith in God. Not by faith in our ability to avoid temptations or even faith in our ability to resist, but only by faith in God.
So then another way of viewing this truth is: how much faith do you have in God? Is your faith satisfied in Him or does is waver and worry at the point of breakage?
We only experience faith in God once we have experienced belief and satisfaction in His power as a good and righteous God.
This is an experience of our weakness, but not JUST our weakness. It is an experience of growing when we not only can admit to being weak, BUT we also take freaking pleasure in it! That sounds insane to normal people who don't rely on God to do the impossible.
"So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ.
For when I am weak, then I am strong."
-2 Cor. 12:10
I pray that today, in my horrid felt weakness, that somehow God produces my joy in the midst of painful instability. So that in my heart, God would reign powerfully.
Jmegrey
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