Strength in Weakness
If you want to introduce two men to each other, you want to be near to them. If you want to introduce sinners to God, you must be near to God and to the sinner, too; and if a man is near God he will have a love for the sinner, and his heart will be near that man. But until we are brought near to God ourselves, we cannot introduce men to God. Somebody has said God uses the vessel that is nearest at hand; and if we are near to God he will use us; and if we are not, of course he cannot. Now, what we want is to be in a position that will give God all the glory. There are some things that make me tremble, at times, as if the work will all come to naught; because there is so much man-worship. Now, we have got to get rid of this man-worship before it will be a deep work. We have got to sink self. If we can only get “I” down in the dust, and get outside of our dignity, and get self out of the way and say: “Here, Lord, use me if thou canst; and, if not, use somebody else;” or in the spirit of the wilderness preacher who said, “I must decrease, but he must increase,” then the Lord will take us up and use us.
It is the weak things that God wants to use. We want the great, the mighty; but God takes the foolish things, the despised things, the things which are not. What for? That no flesh may glory in his sight. Now, what is that written for unless it is that we shall learn the lesson that God shall have the glory, and that we are not to take any of the glory to ourselves. “That no flesh should glory in his presence.” Just the moment we are ready to take our places in the dust and give God his place, and let him have all the glory, then it is that the Spirit of God will be given to us. If we are lifted up and say, “We have got such great meetings and such crowds are coming;” and get to thinking about crowds and about the people, and get our minds off from God, and are not constantly in communion with him, lifting our hearts in prayer, this work will be a stupendous failure.
You will find, in all ages, God has been trying to teach his children this lesson—that he uses the weak instead of the strong. What is highly esteemed of man is an abomination to God. When God was about to deluge the earth, he wanted an ark built. What did he do – did he call an army? No; he just called one man to build the ark. In the sight of the world it was a very little thing; and yet when the deluge came it was worth more than all the world. The weak things of the world that excite our scorn and contempt are the very things that God uses.
We may be very weak in ourselves, but see what a mighty God we have. God likes to take the weak things to confound the mighty. When God wants to move a mountain, he does not take a bar of iron; but he takes the little worm. The fact is, we have got too much strength. We are not weak enough. It is not our strength that we want. One drop of God’s strength is worth more than all the world.
~ This is from “Strength in Weakness” in The Gospel Awakening
