A well-known minister shared a story how one night he laid on the floor of a bathroom and cried out to the Lord because of how inadequate he felt. With high hopes that the Lord was going to give him a “word of encouragement,” the minister cried out, “God! I’m a sinner!” To which the minister said the Lord replied, “You’re right.” This totally threw the minister off because he expected Him to give him a pat on the back and tell him, “No. No. You’re better than that.” But that wasn’t the case. The minister detailed how that night changed his life. He realized God wasn’t wanting him to be superman. God was just wanting him to acknowledge his inability and focus on God’s ability in him.

John the Baptist said, “He must increase. I must decrease.” (John 3:30). Paul said “in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing” (Romans 7:18). Jesus said, “the flesh profits nothing” (Jon 6:63).

The Bible never paints a picture where we ought to pursue a type of human flawlessness where we radiate with super Christian personalities. That’s not what God wants for us. In fact, that vain pursuit prevents us from embracing God’s perfection. A pursuit of impenetrable human wisdom prevents us from embracing God’s heavenly wisdom. A pursuit of invincible human strength prevents us from embracing God’s divine strength.

Sometimes we get it backwards. God prescribes His strength to those that are weak. He guards those that are defenseless. He is a friend to those that are lonely. Being a King, He made himself of no reputation. Being the Master, He became a servant of all. Being the Creator, He inhabited creation. Being worthy of everything, He still looks for personal relationship with us.

We try so often to protect ourselves from vulnerability and weakness that we escort God’s grace right out the door and we become incarcerated by our own inadequacy. God is not focused on making one of us the next powerhouse of Pentecost. He’s focused on each of us becoming nothing, so that He can become everything.

Is God out for our demise? No, but He is wanting us to surrender self-reliance.

The purpose of denying ourselves and not giving way to our carnal desires is so that our humanity can bow to the divine nature that God puts in us. When we rely on ourselves, we automatically block the work of the Spirit of God and prevent ourselves from living in the level that God wants us to live. God longs to share His nature with us.

Becoming nothing so that God can become everything, is exactly what our generation needs in order to reach a world that thinks it has everything. The reality is, it truly has nothing apart from God. Another way of looking at this is by seeing how the Bible talks about us putting of the old man and putting on the new one.

Oftentimes, when God is growing us and we start to feel the pain of the process, we raise a flag against God and sound the alarm that something is wrong. That is a trap the adversary wants us to fall into. The pain is a part of the process of us releasing our humanity to embrace God’s divinity. It’s the avenue by which we surrender our weakness to embrace His strength.

You see. We even try to disqualify ourselves at times and talk about how God is so sovereign and powerful, He can do it without us. But what we’re really talking about is how inadequate we are. When the real revelation lies in the fact that because God is so sovereign, He can do things throughour inadequacies.

If you find yourself feeling worthless and like you’ve got to catch up or you don’t match up, God’s grace empowers you to go beyond your own ability. Because of Jesus, we take part in Paul’s words, “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

Hector Robles is your friendly neighborhood South Florida native. On a weekly basis, he writes for HectorMRobles.com and is the host for Sparrow.podcast, a podcast that discusses subjects related to faith, the Scriptures, and ministry. He’s glad to inform you that you likely don’t know of anyone else that writes their “5’s” from the bottom.

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