The Weak Made Strong

One day I casually dropped in to see a friend and found him in bed.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Then he told me the story of his repeated setbacks. “And it is generally when I am going to do something for the Lord,” he added.

“Well, friend,” I ventured, “it seems to me that what you need is to use the Sword of the Spirit more (Ephesians 6:17). The Holy Spirit always anticipates your need by giving you some word or germ truth with which to battle, and He intends you to use it.”

Later he told me this:

I did not relish what you said to me about the Sword that day. “It is all very well for him,” I thought, “but he hasn’t got my thorn in the flesh.”

“The Sword—use the Sword more!” Let me see, what word did the Lord give me this morning? I paused, and then slowly it came back: “Out of weakness… made strong.”* (Hebrews 11:34) That’s it! Well, how striking—I had forgotten that.

“Yes,” the Lord seemed to say, “which will you have—My strength, or your weakness?” I had never thought of it like that, and I found myself changing my attitude, for, of course, I wanted His strength.

I rang the bell. My wife came. “Give me my clothes, dear. I am going to see ——,” I said.

“No, you are not,” she objected. “You are not well enough.”

By this time I was more assured than ever that I had to act (Mark 3:5). So I dressed myself, saying, “ ‘Out of weakness… made strong.’ Your strength, Lord, for my weakness.” I walked to the streetcar, repeating the verse over and over, and definitely looking to the Lord Himself to make it true if I were to go on. I went. I did the bit of service I had intended to do. I came back. But the marvelous thing to me is this, that I walked home. “Out of weakness… made strong.” Praise God!

Well he might praise God, for he had taken the Holy Spirit’s clue and resisted the devil’s covert attempt to keep him on his back, when by a deliberate, daring appropriation of the strength of Another he could be enabled to do the “impossible.”