I am Weak, But He is Strong

Most of us know the Sunday school song “Jesus Loves Me.”

Jesus loves me this I know / For the Bible tells me so

Little ones to Him belong / They are weak but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.  The Bible tells me so.

Now, who doesn’t remember that?  Good times, huh?  Anyways, I just thought of that song right now after looking at my notes from Sunday’s sermon and Tuesday’s small group.  It’s interesting how they are connected.

It was my dad’s installation service on Sunday and the sermon was delivered by Rev. Dan Peterson, the executive minister of the Mideast Baptist Conference (MBC).  I really liked the passionate and sincere way he delivered God’s message.  He based the message on 2 Corinthians 4:1-7.  He discussed three things: Attitude of the congregation (recognize the role of the pastor as called by God), Attitude of the pastor (leadership with integrity in life and ministry and proclaiming Jesus), and the combined effort of the pastor and the congregation (authenticity, vulnerability, genuine relationship).  The last point he made struck me.  He said something about us being jars of clay and what that really means.  As jars of clay, that means we are fragile and sensitive.  We are weak but we were designed to be used not to be displayed. What does that mean for us followers of Christ?  Well, this was the part where I was struck and my perspective totally changed.  This just reminded me that God uses the weak for the fulfillment of His will, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31.  Ok, now I’m going to talk about the topic we talked about in my small group, hang in there, and you’ll realize how they connect.

In my amazing small group (I truly thank God for them), we talked about Esther’s characteristics.  We had a homework, which is to read the whole book of Esther and pick one characteristic of Esther that struck me the most.  I did that and I picked Esther’s genuineness.  Cos in one part of the book, Esther was honest about her fear of punishment but still had faith in God and asked for prayer and fasting from her people.  I just thought that was cool.  And true enough, that was one of the things we discussed about Esther — that she had unselfish modesty and authenticity.  She did not hide her fears or weakness but showed it with grace and faith in God, and asked for help.

So from both of those times, I learned authenticity and vulnerability.  More often than not (especially when in position of leadership), we show ourselves strong and tend to build walls up to hide our weaknesses.  But I think this shouldn’t be the case.  Yes, we should be strong — IN CHRIST and in support of our brothers and sisters in Christ, not of ourselves. In other words, we should be honest with our weaknesses and shortcomings but ask God for strength and ask other Christians to pray.  Keeping to ourselves and trying to be strong by ourselves would only wear us down, while being vulnerable to our personal God and to our brothers and sisters in Christ shows real courage and real faith. I’m sure that encouragement from both sides would make us stronger and can keep us going.

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