Get Off Your Own Back by Freda Crews

Author:Freda Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780768454451
Publisher: Destiny Image, Inc.

Chapter 9

The Reality of Your Weaknesses

To be human means to experience limitations. This means that we are not always powerful and strong. God is, but we are not. Our weaknesses distinguish us from God. The eighty-ninth Psalm makes it clear that the sovereign God does whatever pleases Him. We live on a fallen planet, however, and we cannot always do what we want to, when we want to, or how we want to. There are times when we do not even have the strength and power to comply with our own wishes and desires. To admit this makes us feel vulnerable.

We are convinced that to look good to others, we must appear to be in control of ourselves and our lives. We carefully cultivate the illusion that we can handle anything! The truth is that this desire to always be in control and be able to handle anything is just another form of perfectionistic thinking. Once again we need to join the human race by confronting the reality of our weaknesses.

A friend of mine told me in a letter shortly after her husband died, “I know it is not supposed to be a sad time, but it was and still is. We all miss him terribly.” (Note one of those “supposed to be’s” I refer to.) I asked her, “Who says it is ‘not supposed to be’ a sad time?” What voices whispered this lie to her? My friend actually needed someone to give her permission to let it be a sad time and to own and feel her pain. The reality is that we are weak when it comes to losing in death someone we love. I have some good news for you: It is okay to be weak in such times. It is okay to join the human race and quit worrying about how it is “supposed to be.”

The apostle Paul continues to be a great role model for us through his New Testament writings. Paul would frequently “self-disclose” and open a window into his personal and inner self. On one such occasion he wrote:

Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying (2 Corinthians 11:28-31).

Can you imagine yourself standing in front of a group and saying, “Let me tell you about my weaknesses”? Most of us can come up with a whole list of objections and cautions. In the first place, does anyone want to hear about them? In the second place, how many groups could handle this revelation of your weaknesses? Third, how many in such a group would resist the temptation to delight in your weaknesses and begin to gossip about what you shared as soon as they left the group?

We are not superhuman, and neither are we demigods.

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