2 Corinthians 12
v.7
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
v.8
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
v.9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
v.10
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
She leaned on her Beloved because she was weak. Strength will not lean—conscious strength scorns dependence. My soul, do you know anything of your weakness? It is a sorrowful lesson to learn. But oh! it is a blessed and profitable lesson which not only must be learned, but which it were well for you to pray to learn more and more, for there is no leaning upon Christ except in proportion as you feel you must.
I do believe that as long as we have a grain of self-sufficiency, we never trust in the All-sufficient. While there is anything of self left we prefer to feed on it, and only when at last the moldy bread becomes too sour for eating, and even the husks that the swine do eat are such as cannot fill our belly— it is only then that we humbly ask for the bread of heaven to satisfy us. My soul, learn to hate every thought of self-sufficiency.
Brethren, do you not find yourselves tempted at times, especially if you have had a happy week, and have been free from trials, to think, “Now, really I am better than a great many. I think I am now growing to be an old experienced saint. I have now escaped the power of ordinary temptations, and have become so advanced in grace that there is no likelihood of my sinning in those directions wherein new converts show their weakness”?
There is your weak point, brother. Set a double guard where you think you are strongest. Just when you are most afraid, and say to yourself, “O that I might be kept from such a sin—I know that is my besetment, and I am afraid I shall be led into it,” you are less likely to sin there than anywhere. Your weakness is your strength, your strength is your weakness.
Be nothing, for only so can you be anything. Be poor in spirit, for only so can you be rich towards God. The spouse leaned because she was weak. Brother, sister, is not this good argument for you? for me? are not we also weak? Come then, let us lean wholly upon Him who is not weak, but to whom all power belongs to bear all His people safely through.
v.11
I have made a fool of myself, but you drove me to it. I ought to have been commended by you, for I am not in the least inferior to the “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing.
v.14
Now I am ready to visit you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you, because what I want is not your possessions but you. After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.