I will boast

“Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”  2 Cor 12:9

I will boast – Yesterday we heard the emcee speak about the lives we hide from view.  But where do you suppose he found out about all that stuff?  Did you notice that revealing my failures is an active personal decision?  I don’t wait for an investigation to reveal my weaknesses.  I hold them up for view.  I lift them high.  I turn the spotlight on them.  The truth about the world of the God of weakness is that I raise up for His honor the only thing that is really mine – my failure!  I tell God all about it.

It’s all backwards, this life with God.  Instead of asking me to become successful and give God a pat on the back for helping me along, I am asked to glory in my failures.  It’s my life collapsed and trashed that matters to God.  That’s when I discover how much I really need Him.  I have to stop asking God to fix those things so that I can get on with my independent life.  I have to realize that it is precisely what I cannot do that matters most to God.  What I cannot do is the avenue to grace.  And grace will not fix what I cannot do so that I don’t need grace anymore.  Grace is God leaving us in need of Him.

So, are you ready to deliberately make this your headline on the resume?  Are you up there telling the world, “I can’t make it without God”?  “I’m not strong.  I’m not amazing.  I’m just a failure that God uses for His glory.”

When are we going to stop letting the world’s false and sinful paradigms shape how we act?  When are we going to stop worrying about “what they will think” and say, “God rescue me”?   “I am nothing without You”.  When will we learn that God’s grace is not about fixing things but rather about changing me?

I will boast.  I’ll write the introduction for the emcee.  My life of self-pursuit was a failure.  My days of being so busy I didn’t listen to anyone were a disaster.  My accumulation of things just imprisoned me.  I was lost at sea until love found me.  But God didn’t pull me from the water.  He just jumped in beside me and took my hand.