POWER Is Made Perfect in Weakness

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

Apologies if the title overly emphasizes the word power, but I think more and more about how important that is to realize.

There's a lot of talk about power these days as something that comes from being awesome and, well, that certainly has a certain cache to it.

But I think more about how you have to be willing to fail, a lot, to get any good at any thing.  A friend wrote in his own blog years back about being willing to be beginner-bad at something as an adult keeps a lot of people from growing.

But power is made perfect in weakness.  Where else do you learn what to do?  What to do better?  When else do you listen to anyone who will teach you so you can cobble together everyone's wisdom into your own?  When else do you let people help you who do it better than you would have thought to and give you ideas for the future?  When else do we grow?

But as I work at improving the empathetic skills of teaching, I realize all the more how that power HAS to be honed in weakness.  Even if it doesn't match the vulnerabilities and struggles of those I try to counsel, there is little use in a "teflon strong" person trying to help a wounded person learn to heal.  Only in weakness is the power to help those who are suffering honed.  Only in weakness do we find that all important strength.