Chasing the Beautiful God

I have found, by much experience, that I am one of the weakest people I know. The problem with weakness is thatwhen you feel weak you believe there’s something wrong with you. You feel like you need fixing. But that’s not what God says. Hear 2 Corinthians 3:9-10 – And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I’ve been realizing that I try to run away from my weaknesses. Yet God is actually deliberately putting me in situations that will require a strength that is not my own.

When I finished as a full-time staff member at Sydney House of Prayer, I wondered where I would live and how I would get a job. I had no money, I hadn’t worked a paying job in 4 years, I had no rental history. Yet that was the main reason I resigned. The Lord called me to come and trust Him as Father. He said, ‘Your first response to this point in your life has been to trust other people to provide, direct and look after you. I want to teach you that I am your Father. I am your Father. Depend on me.’ Fast forward a year and I felt Him leading to rent a place of my own. I still did not have the income required. He was once again putting me in a situation where I would require a strength outside myself.

So it would seem He wants me weak. Yet what I have been finding is that in the place where my strength ends and there is still more required He makes up the difference. And when He comes through again and again in the midst of my weakness trust is built. Unbelief falls away. Peace abounds and confidence in grows.  Love for Jesus swells full in my heart.

Remember what David wrote in Psalm 3:1 – “You have relieved me in my distress…” (NKJV). Yet when you look at the Hebrew of that word we read as “relieved” it actually says “enlarged”. David actually writes, “You have enlarged me in my distress…”. He writes, ‘God, in the midst of my distress you enlarged my heart so that I could trust you more and experience you more.’

Misty Edwards and David Brymer sing, “The measure of a man is the measure of his heart…” And Jon Thurlow sings, “Everything else is fading away only love, only love remains…” God is love and the only thing that will remain with you after the grave is how much of Himself He has written on your heart. If in the place of weakness He enlarges my heart with Himself I don’t want to run away anymore because it is right there, in that place, that my eternal inheritance is at stake.

J. Ratcliffe