The opportunity of weakness

Life has slightly got the better of me lately, to the neglect of this blog (and I started this on Saturday then just left it as a draft, thus the old date when today is Tuesday). But I have been reading The Life of Prayer by Edith Schaeffer again lately. One thing I find really encouraging about the works of Edith and Francis Schaeffer is the way their Christianity works into every fibre of their being and every moment of their daily lives. I could write out whole chapters but this is just one section that has been helpful to me of late, when I needed to do something that I found it really difficult to do, because God would have me do it:

Our prayer ... is to be one of thanksgiving that Christ suffered all this and so much more for us. Then we are to turn and ask for help, His strength in our miserable weakness to endure what we need to be enduring with patience (not ours but His) and to be, as well as to do, what no one else could be. Of course we are allowed to ask for deliverance from this "round of battle", but so often we are wasting an opportunity to do and be that which we could not do or be in any other set of circumstances. There is an opportunity for learning more reality, not only the reality of Christ’s suffering, but the reality of His strength in this particular set of weaknesses, His comfort in this particular sorrow of separation or pain, which could be missed! ... I so often pray, and have so often prayed through the years, Lord, don’t let me waste this opportunity to learn what You want me to learn, to be what You want me to be, to prove to Satan that I really love you, as Job did, not just the good things you give ... Overcome the temptation to waste the discovery of what God’s strength in our weakness time after time is in a wide variety of weaknesses; to waste the circumstances during which we can find out that His grace is really sufficient, not just for other people we read about in the Bible, not just as a theological concept, not just as something to read at morning prayer and appreciate during a period of comfort, but to call for in the very midst of troubles ... It is in such times that we know we are not doing things because we are terribly efficient, or very clever, or physically in great condition, but because the answer to our prayer for help has been, not a changed circumstance with everything going well, not a removal of pain and suffering, but it has been instead an outpouring of His strength, to do what He would have us to do or to simply have a patience (not our own) or a surge of increased trust of Him whereby we may whisper, Lord, I don’t understand this, but I love You and trust You.