The main thought is this: "Our greatest weaknesses are often rooted in woundedness."
Let that thought simmer in your mind for a bit. It's the idea that when you touch on people's greatest weaknesses, you are likely touching their deepest wounds.
This past Sunday, this idea hit me on a deeper level to where I began weeping. I realized that some of the things that I see in others...things that might annoy me, like some of their weaknesses...things I may have approached (or may have wanted to approach) out of frustration...they are often the result of deeply painful wounds that person has endured. I'm seeing these things now through the eyes of compassion...and it breaks my heart. It brought me to the point of telling God, "I never want to approach someone's weakness again!"
That's when I heard Him speak to my heart, "Now, you are ready."
"Ready!?!" The thought left me breathless and overwhelmed, filled with grief. I could see that to approach someone's weakness well takes great care and reliance on God.
After spending a day with this grief, God showed me the hope and the purpose in it.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9 God says, "'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.'"
And in verse 10, Paul concludes that "...for when I am weak, then I am strong."
Paul had been given a (v.7) "thorn in the flesh" (a wound) that invoked his weakness, but God promised His power nonetheless. Paul learned that our weaknesses allow us to become, in the words of Henri Nouwen, a "wounded healer."
You may want to study this for yourself, but it seems that nearly all weakness comes from wounds. In Leviticus 26:36, we see that in certain cases, God would bring weakness to a group of people. This may be an exception where the weakness is totally inflicted by God for a purpose, apart from woundedness. On the other hand, there may be unseen distrust in God on the part of that group of people, and that distrust may be the result of a wound. This is one that may require a deeper level of study....
In Genesis 3, we see that Eve's sinful nature was the source of her weakness in giving in and eating the forbidden fruit. Our sinful nature, of course, is always at the root of all sin. In Eve's sin, it could be that the serpent's betrayal inflicted a wound (even though she didn't recognize the betrayal or the wound at the time) that stirred up her sinful nature in a way that caused her to distrust God and seek life apart from God. Within her sinful nature (as with ours), the wound became the instigator of her weakness.
Aside from Paul's example in 2 Corinthians 12, there is one clear example I can think of in Judges 16. Samson is the strong man. The wound of betrayal by Delilah completely zaps his strength and he is left weak.
Think of ways that your own wounds have brought weakness to your own life. For me, one thing I think of is public speaking or anything that requires my voice. (Now I'm getting vulnerable with you here.) In elementary school, I was taken out of my classroom on several occasions to meet with the speech pathologist, because, from my six or seven-year-old perspective, there was something wrong with me and I didn't measure up...and it became a wound in my soul. It's an area that has been a huge weakness in my life, but an area where God is gradually bringing about healing. A big step in my healing process was having to record audio CDs for use with our carepoint workbooks...and then another part was hearing a friend's positive feedback about one that she heard.
Whatever our wound was and the weakness it brought about, if we want to find the strength that Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians 12, we must trust God. Here's the pattern that we'll hopefully follow:
WOUND ---> WEAKNESS ---> TRUST ---> GOD'S STRENGTH
The question is: How long will we walk in the weakness before we put our trust in God in this specific area to receive His strength?
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