“Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him; Nor can the number of His years be discovered.” Job 36

The weakness of process

The problem lies in the time that it takes between our immaturity, brokenness, and weakness that marks the beginning of our journey and the power of God made perfect in our weakness as we persevere. Many believers long for (depending on their spiritual culture) that one “altar call” to be the moment in which God breaks into their lives dramatically and delivers them from all of their weakness. For others, it could be that one great counseling session, or that one great book that suddenly transforms their lives. This moment will never come. Christianity is not, and has never been, a glorified self-help program. Though the appeal for some is the invitation to go from weakness to strength, or messy to capable, gifted, awesome, and confident, Christianity is a far different invitation to the lost and broken.

The invitation of the gospel is a foolish one (1 Cor. 1:18): to gain everything later, one must lose everything now. We have the opportunity to go from broken, sinful weakness to voluntary weakness through the cross. We journey from insecurity and frustration with our faults and flaws to joy, peace, stability, and confidence not because we are healed of our flaws and made into an “uber-human” who no longer fails or stumbles in thought, word, and deed. We grow in confidence and joy when the reality of God’s great love and enjoyment of us in our weakness strikes our heart. We become emotionally stable, tender in heart, alive on the inside and filled with peace when we learn that we are loved and a lover of God from the first moment we said “yes” to His invitation to follow Him. If we do nothing else in life but rest in that knowledge, we have won.

Yet the invitation to become a true disciple involves taking that biblical insight and allowing it to empower confidence to follow Him all the days of our lives. The revelation of the tender love of Christ, the “love of God and the patience of Christ” (2 Thess. 3:5), gives us courage to pray always and not lose heart (Lk. 18:1) when we stumble in the journey. We can sign up for the weakness of the process of transformation on the inside that works its way to our outward man if we believe that He is tender and patient with us as we grope towards Him as young, new, weak disciples. In our weakness, we don’t draw strength from being a little more capable than the brother next to us. We draw strength from His fiery, committed, covenantal love that is willing to see the process through to the end, faithful to complete the good work that was begun within the very moment we said “yes” to Him.

Broken weakness to voluntary weakness

Once we embark on the journey of true discipleship, we give ourselves to a journey from initial immaturity, weakness, brokenness, foolishness, carnal thinking, darkened understanding, areas of habitual compromise, and unrestrained emotion (and emoting) to later maturity and temperance, or restraint in all things. In other words, we go from an ungoverned and unrestrained lifestyle (tempered by laws and social norms) to a self-governed and voluntarily restrained lifestyle (tempered by authentic love).

It is, of course, a very long process of training, learning, failing, and repenting. It is a process that takes our whole life (and more) to fully grasp and walk out. Jesus expressed this perfectly. True discipleship is the desire to do the same. Weak discipleship is the reality of our inability to do the same, or even grasp why we should at times. After all, who really signs up for “Christianity” under the banner of leaving, denying, forsaking, restraining, and fighting a war against the sinful passions of the heart every moment of every day of our lives until we see Him face to face? Who desires to say no to the things of this world that feed our brokenness, weakness, and carnality to walk out a lifestyle of voluntary weakness that includes praying (saying things to God that He tells us to tell Him), fasting (not eating, getting physically weak, tired, and grumpy), serving (doing things for others that you would rather they do for you), giving (possibly making a ton of money that you never spend on your pleasures, but rather give away like mad), and forgiving (laying down your personal rights when mistreated and actually hoping, at times, justice isn’t done to right a wrong done to you).

It takes great strength to choose weakness. It is one of the most difficult journeys anyone could choose to begin. It is one of the costliest decisions one could make. It is the way of the Master, the brilliance of His leadership - He made the bar high and the cost great to sift and sort through the many reasons and hidden ambitions of those who would say “yes” to an invitation to authentic, weak discipleship. Saying “yes” was meant to be hard to do. Staying in that continual “yes” was meant to be harder still. Yet, what options do we have? Saying “no” is ultimately much more difficult a journey to take, and the cost of refusal even greater. For in the grace of God, His commandments are not burdensome, but they are life to the soul and blessing to the faithful.