Turning The Bad Into Good

"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." 2 Corinthians 12;10

All these things listed here, the hardships and weaknesses, are usually things we fear, things we hate to see come along in our lives. But we need to remember, it's these things that make us stronger, and I need to remember this. I need to remember this because, at least in my mind, we are in between rough patches. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that I need to remember the bad, I need to remember that it wasn't all that long ago that we were struggling big time. That we were feeling like doormats, and like there was no place to go. I need to remember the bad times, because we need to remember where we've come from. It's those struggles, those times of change that make us stronger, and if we don't learn from those hard times, eventually we'll just find ourselves repeating them over and over.

Something that's interesting to think about with this verse is that last line, "for when I am weak, then I am strong". What are you weak at? What am I weak at? What don't I do so well? Well, I don't speak out, for one. I tend to stay quiet and keep to myself, and to me, in my mind anyways, that's a weakness at times. It's a weakness because I'd like to be a little bolder for Christ. I'd like to have the courage to stop someone from talking and suggest we pray about that instead of continuing to speculate. I have been challenged at this a few times as of late, and of course, I'm still failing every single time. But one of these times...one of these days I am going to overcome that fear and step out in boldness and pray for someone and I will have conquered that fear. I will be instantly stronger because I have overcome, and the time after that, it will be easier. I'm really struggling with this one, but I'm thanking God constantly for that, because I know that it's helping me to grow. Each time I feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit to pray for someone, it gets easier for me to understand what I'm hearing, so I'm learning. It's only a matter of time before the Spirit fills me to the brim with boldness and I am able to act as He wishes.

My weakness is making me so much stronger- and I even see it as it is happening. Now imagine what God is doing with those weaknesses I don't see.