Weakness Is A Feature
By Scott Seaton
How do you feel when you’re physically and emotionally exhausted, and someone in need asks you for help?
Let’s say it’s Friday at 4:00 pm and you’re ready to turn off for the weekend, and someone needs you. It may be a work associate calling with a problem they deem urgent, a stranger on the street pleading for money, or a friend who wants to complain about that issue, again. Maybe you’re like me and feel a little irritated. Or a lot. Their problem is an interruption to your agenda. You don’t want to be callous, so you ask your colleague if it can wait till Monday, you give the stranger a couple bucks, or you half-heartedly listen to your friend without really engaging.
Serving those in need can sometimes feel like you’re going through the motions: your mind knows you should, your body is engaged, but your heart isn’t really connected. It feels a bit like a performance. But how else could you feel?
This post is the third reflection on our five core values, inspired by the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ call to live as followers of his new Kingdom. In previous posts, we’ve looked at “Holistic Concern” and “Humble Influence,” and today we look at “Faithful Dependence.” This kingdom value helps transform outward performance to inward realities. Here’s how we state it: “When Jesus says our righteousness must exceed that of the religious leaders, he means that outward obedience alone is not enough. True flourishing goes deeper, where our hearts are inclined to Christ’s heart, and we desire to follow his ways. But that kind of faithfulness is impossible in our own strength. And so we are called to abide in him and his kingdom, in order to live as faithful followers. (Mt. 5:17-37)”
In the fourth chapter of Luke, Jesus is teaching and healing in Capernaum when Peter’s mother-in-law becomes sick with a high fever, too sick to move. The disciples ask him to heal her, and he does. Maybe word spreads, for that evening a long line forms outside the door, “all those who had any who were sick with various diseases.” That’s a lot of people.
Imagine you’re the 20th, 30th, or 50th person in line, waiting to see Jesus. What are you thinking? How might you imagine his face when he finally sees you? Maybe, “Jesus won’t have time for me. With all these people here and their demands, he’ll run out of power, or patience, by the time I get to the door. Maybe he’ll seem disappointed to see me, even exasperated.”
But that’s not what happens. Jesus meets with each person individually, one after the other, long into the night, hearing their stories and healing them all. You simply can’t imagine him looking at you, #54 in line, with anything less than his full attention and empathy. Like you’re the only person on the planet, no matter how busy he is. Of all the ways Jesus seems so different from us, perhaps his limitless compassion is most striking.
Arlington similarly has long lines of people in need. Sometimes those lines are easy to see: people waiting for free food, free medical care, or free clothes. Other needs aren’t so obvious: the student who is failing behind in school, the immigrant who feels like an outsider, the youth who aged out of foster care. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by their needs. Or more honestly, inadequate—lacking the requisite mercy, patience, and strength for the work. I just don’t have it in me.
In that moment of weakness, we can try to gut it out. Or simply quit and return to our agenda. Or the right response: lean in by crying out for God’s help. What kind of help, though, are we asking for? It’s natural to think God would answer our prayer by making us more compassionate, patient and stronger. Our weakness is a problem to be fixed.
But that’s not how it works. In his most famous work, “Abiding in Christ,” missionary and pastor Andrew Murray said, “The Christian wants to conquer his weakness and to be freed from it; God wants us to rest and even rejoice in it. The Christian thinks his weakness his greatest hindrance in the life and service of God; God tells us that it is the secret of strength and success.” Or as we might say less eloquently today, “weakness is a feature, not a bug.”
God doesn’t strengthen his followers by removing their weakness. Instead, he does exactly the opposite! Through hardship and circumstances, he continually increases our awareness of our helplessness, revealing layer after layer of our utter inability. He gives us those Friday at 4 pm encounters to open our eyes to our leaky buckets of empathy and inexhaustible reservoirs of impatience. Why does God do that?
He wants us to flourish. To be reconnected and whole. He wants us to live like he designed us to live: utterly dependent on God in all things, continually fed by his abundant life. The Bible calls it “abiding.” On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus told us, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” (John 15:4).
No amount of human striving can produce the fruit of the Spirit, of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Not even a single morsel. Only abiding in Jesus can. It is our part to practice “faithful dependence,” where we embrace our weakness (dependence) as a gift, trusting (faithful) that “when I am weak, then—and only then—I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10).
So when we encounter those seemingly long lines of people in need just like Jesus did, our response must be, “Lord, I don’t have your compassion and patience. I am weak, an empty vessel. Please fill me and abide in me, that you may bring wholeness to these people who are just as needy as I am.”
And then serve, faithfully dependent on him to show up. And keep an eye out for how that Spirit will transform your heart, filling it with Christ’s love for others. And for you.