He said, “My grace is all you
need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about
my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.
(2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV)
What is your idea of power?
What is your mentality concerning power? Are you clamoring for power, wanting
power? Well, it all works out this way. True power from God's standpoint is
Calvary power. Christ crucified is the power of God. What is Calvary power?
Well, it is emptiness of self, you and I being emptied of self – and truly, that
is easier said than endured! Oh, how very much there is of this self about us
still! How we hate – how we suffer – being emptied of ourselves! What a terrible
thing it is to feel our inability – to know that we do not count in ourselves.
Oh, to be ABLE! And yet have we not proved, again and again, that our
times of greatest emptiness and weakness have been the times when God has done
most, and got glory by what He has done? Yes, it has been true. We have learnt
it along various lines and different ways, but God has been working right into
the very inside of us, so that the thing is done – it becomes a part of us. He
does not have to maintain it by external conditions. But He frequently uses such
– very often physical – conditions, to bring us to that place of utter
dependence upon Himself. It is really not good enough, is it, to be forced to
it, compelled to it? That is God's way of education, but it would be very much
better for us to be fit and well and as dependent upon God as ever.
So it all resolves itself into
the need, in the first place, for what is meant by being born from above: an
entirely new nature and disposition, to begin with, and then a letting God do
His work of conforming us to the image of His Son. I am not saying that works
and words do not come in, but it is a heartbreaking business to be working and
speaking with no power, and no registration of heaven. The Lord give us light as to
what He means by this.