Strong Biceps

I have never really been the type that just goes down to the gym to workout. I don't mind getting sweaty while playing some kind of sport, but I just feel like like it is a waste of time to get sweaty while working out. Maybe it is because I am really impatient. I workout one time, and I expect to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sadly, that isn't how it works out. Apparently you have to work out multiple times in order to see results. Well, one time I decided to go to the YMCA and workout with my little brother (the dude is a stud when it comes to working out), and we were doing a bicep curl exercise. For this particular exercise, you get the curl bar and place a 10 lb, 5lb, and a 2.5 lb. weight on each side. You do ten reps and then take 2.5 lbs. off after each set. You end up doing about 90 reps, but by the end you are only doing the curl bar because you have taken off all the weight. Well, I was on my last set of 10 and I was just just curling the bar (which is like 15 lbs.). As I struggle with the last couple of reps a very good looking girl walks in the door. As I look up, still continuing to struggle with just the bar, I make eye contact with the gorgeous girl. Embarrassed I finished up my reps of just the curl bar hoping that the girl didn't think I was as strong as a 5-year-old girl.

Sometimes all of us feel really weak in one aspect of life or another. In my case, I looked and i stress LOOKED weak when it came to lifting weights, but I think weakness is not always a bad thing.

In Luke 9:12-17 we find the feeding of the five thousand. It reads:

Late in the afternoon, the Twelve came to him (Jesus) and said, "Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here. He replied, "You give them something to eat." They answered, "We ahve only five loaves of bread and two fish- unless we go and buy food for all this crowd." (About 5,000 men were there.)
But he said to his disciples, "Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each." The disciples did so, and everybody sat down. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to set before the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

This is a great story about Jesus' miraculous power and compassion for people, but this weekend at Believe Conference the Speaker for the weekend brought to light for me a new perspective of this passage. As the disciples told Jesus about the crisis, wouldn't it have been a lot easier for Jesus to have just called manna down from heaven? Or why didn't he just snap his fingers and POOF a carriage full of food for 5,000 people all of a sudden comes up over the horizon? But he didn't do either of those things. Instead he asked his disciples what they had? It wasn't much...just five loaves of bread and a couple fish. They barely had anything to offer Jesus, and I think He did that on purpose. You see, when it seems like we are weak and having nothing to give our Lord, he can and will use it to its maximum capacity in order to glorify Himself. But we still have that duty of offering whatever we have to him.

Looking through the pages of Scripture, it is easy to see the continuous theme of God using people who had weaknesses for His purposes. David was just a boy when he defeated the giant Goliath. Moses couldn't speak clearly, but God used him to lead His people out of Egypt. In the New Testament, Timothy was to lead a church in an immoral city even though he was timid and weak. God was born a nobody in a city that had no significance. The Apostle Paul really sums this whole idea up in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God uses people with weaknesses because if he used people with all kinds of strengths, then they would take all the credit for themselves. That is why God tells Gideon to fight a humungous army with just 300 soldiers. Without God, we could never do anything of significance for his Kingdom. Now I know that I am physically weak when it comes to lifting weights, but I also acknowledge that I have certain weaknesses when it comes to ministry. I am not the best speaker. I am not the most outgoing guy. I can't sing or play the guitar. But I know that when God does use me for his Glory, it won't be because of anything I did...For in my weakness, God is glorified.