UNPACK This...The Greatness of God's GraceChikamu

When Weakness Results In Strength

When a team loses in the postseason primarily due to injuries, we wonder what the outcome would have been if player health wasn't an issue. No team relates to this more than the 2021 Brooklyn Nets.

Brooklyn was the clear favorite to win the title until the injury bug hit two of their three stars, causing their elimination.

Kyrie Irving's ankle injury and James Harden's nagging hamstring left Kevin Durant as the only healthy member of Brooklyn's "Big Three" to carry the load.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Harden confidently remarked about his expectations for the next season: "At full strength, nobody can beat us. I'm just going to leave it at that."

As followers of Jesus, what does operating at full strength in a world with overwhelming hardships, persecutions, and calamities mean?

In contrast to sports teams, we are at full strength when we are weak.

God says to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness."

Paul then writes, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Dr. Thomas L. Constable offers helpful words to give us insight into these verses: "Our success does not depend on our natural abilities but on God's power working in and through us. Human weakness can be a profound blessing if it results in our depending more on God and less on self."

Paul doesn't delight in weakness but rather the grace God afforded him because of his weaknesses. We are stronger when we are weak because we realize we must rely on God's grace to empower us to be faithful.

Today, let's boast about God's grace as superior to our abilities and celebrate that we are at full strength when we are weak.

I'm Luke Heaton, and you can UNPACK that!

Prayer: Help me depend on You more as I realize that my weaknesses result in strength as I rely on You. In Jesus' Name, Amen.