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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Corinthians 12:9

The glorious church is weak when measuring the skills, competencies, abilities, talents, and intelligence of those who make it up. People are frail, broken, crushed, incompetent, foolish, stupid, and they make terrible decisions. They go in the wrong direction. They cannot perceive what God’s will is for them. And they do the opposite of what God instructed them to do. People are weak. People are wrongly motivated. And people misunderstand.

But the glorious church is also victorious, wise, gifted, amazing in capacity, generous, even rich, and incredible in vision and in accomplishment. But these qualities come only through Jesus Christ and they are gifts of his grace to the weakest of people. These qualities of victory and wisdom, wealth and success, do not rest in men, they are not from men, and they don’t come naturally to men. They are God’s.

Paul declared his frailty, his weakness. He said that when he was weak, then God was most strong in him. The opposite is also true:  When we think we are strong, or wise, or smart, or that we know what we are doing, then we are the most incompetent, wasteful, foolish, and ridiculously ineffective.

The glorious church is strongest when it knows how weak we as people are. We don’t depend on human capability or the blessing of human wisdom, knowledge, or intelligence. That is a certain formula for utter catastrophe. A church that brags about what they have accomplished or how they have  prospered, is doomed. Everything done in the flesh will be destroyed. None of what was done by the insights of human wisdom will be allowed to stand. God hates it. Be on guard for those who are strong, competent, and smart. They are standing against the principle that only in weakness can we conquer.

The glorious church only succeeds when it is utterly weak. We should only do incredible things, attempt amazing conquests, when we are certain of our weakness and are assured of the power of God in us who believe. We decry and declare our weaknesses, and we renounce them so that we may be strong in God’s power and can rejoice in our weaknesses.

When Christ is our wisdom and our strength, then we are strong. When Christ is our victory and our conquering power; when he alone is our Guide to the will of God, then we will always, always, be successful. And only then is God praised and glorified. He is only pleased with what is done by faith in him, and in nothing else we have or offer.

The church is only competent when it acknowledges its utter and categorical weaknesses. And then, by grace, the power of God, the competency of God, the will of God, the wisdom of God, is ours. In our weakness are we strong. Then we can boast even in our weakness so we may learn to rest upon the power of God.