God Uses Us Because of Our Weaknesses

“No One is Too Weak for God!”

D.L. Moody was innocent of formal education. His letters, many of which have been preserved, are full of grammatical errors. His physical appearance was not impressive. His voice was high pitched and his tones nasal. But these handicaps did not prevent God using him to shake two continents!

A reporter was sent by his newspaper to cover Moody's campaign in Britain, in which aristocracy and artisan alike turned to God, to discover the secret of his power. After considerable observation, he reported, “I can see nothing whatever in Moody to account for his marvellous work.” When Moody read the report he chuckled, “Why, that is the very secret of the movement. There is nothing in it that can explain it but the power of God. The work is God's, not mine.”

It is a secret joy to find

The task assigned beyond our powers,

For thus, if ought of good be wrought,

Clearly the praise is His, not ours.

An important spiritual principle is involved, which must be mastered by all who wish to be their best for God. God is not confined to the greatly gifted and exceptionally clever for the fulfilment of His purposes. He can use them only as they abandon reliance on their purely natural abilities. All through history God has chosen and used nonentities, because their unusual dependence on God left room for the unique display of His power. When they are content to be nothing, He can be everything. He chooses and uses the richly endowed only when they renounce dependence on their own abilities and resources. God will not use us in spite of our weakness and inadequacy but actually because of them. He refuses to use our most spectacular gifts and unique qualifications until we are weaned from reliance on them. Human weakness provides the best backdrop for the display of divine power.

This is the strategy of God that the world should know that Christianity-all the triumphs of faith in individual lives and the onward march and mission of the Church-is not to be explained by anything in man, any human virtue, prowess, ability. “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (II Cor. 12:9) is God's message to Paul. “When I am weak, then I am strong” was Paul's testimony.

“It is a thrilling discovery to make,” writes J.S. Stewart, “that always it is upon human weakness and humiliation, not human strength and confidence that God chooses to build His kingdom; and that He can use us not merely in spite of our ordinariness and helplessness and disqualifying infirmities, but precisely because of them. Nothing can defeat a church or soul that takes, not its strength but its weakness, and offer it to God to be His weapon. It was the way of Francis Xavier and William Carey and Paul the apostle. This is the strategy to which there is no retort.”

Our trouble is not that we are too weak but that we are too strong for God.

-Selected