Weak

“I now understand more of our calling. The weakest instruments are chosen to do the greatest work so that the glory might go to God.” ~Paul Washer.

Perhaps this quote is commentary on 2 Cor. 12:10. I found this very comforting. By trials, hardships and suffering for Christ’s sake, God makes us to know and feel our weakness even more. This is His loving sanctifying Grace in our lives! In our utter weakness, He then makes us useful vessels of His power and His strength for His glory. And we are content with this, delighting in our trials with joy as we experience Christ’s strength in us.

Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, I am strong. 2Cor12:10

Quotes of Encouragement

God wants to encourage us. Often, He uses His children to encourage one another. We can see from these quotes, that comfort given by God the Holy Spirit through His saints is based on His Word. This encouragement simply restates what Truth God has given us in His Word. Here is some comfort sent from God, through His servants, to you.

Be encouraged, child of God. He loves you even in the midst of your pain. He loves you even when you don’t love Him. He loves you when you feel utterly alone. He loves you with an everlasting love. Your suffering can take many things away from you–your health, your happiness, your prosperity, your popularity, your friends, your career, even your family. But there’s one thing suffering can’t take away: it can’t take away the love of God. –Ray Pritchard

When you suffer and lose, that does not mean you are being disobedient to God. In fact, it might mean you’re right in the center of His will. The path of obedience is often marked by times of suffering and loss.–Charles R. Swindoll

It is true that He does sometimes require of us things that to others seem hard. But when the will is once surrendered, the revolutionized life plans become just the plans that are most pleasant, and the things that to others seem hard, are just the things that are easiest and most delightful. Do not let Satan deceive you into being afraid of God’s plans for your life.–R. A. Torrey

This is the purpose of pain for the redeemed: it is one of your Father’s ways of speaking to you; it is the evidence of His limitless love, by which He would draw you farther from evil and closer to Him, the divine remedy which can cure you of pride and help you lean more trustingly on the Lord.–Walter A. Maier

God makes all chosen souls pass through a fearful time of poverty, misery, and nothingness. He desires to destroy in them gradually all the help and confidence they derive from themselves so that He may be their sole source of support, their confidence, their hope, their only resource.–Jean-Pierre de Caussade


When all else is gone, God is left, and nothing changes Him.–Hannah Whitall Smith

What can harm thee, when all must first touch God, within whom thou hast enclosed thyself?–Robert Leighton


Pressing on in painful circumstances is the discipline of keeping our faith when everything not only goes wrong but becomes worse. It means holding onto the Lord during deep trials and asking Him to hold onto us when we feel weak in faith and hope. –Sheila Cragg

Our personal afflictions involve the living God; the only way in which Satan can persecute or afflict God is through attacking the people of God. The only way we can have personal victory in the midst of these flying arrows raining down on us is to call upon the Lord for help. It is His strength, supplied to us in our weakness, that makes victory after victory possible. –Edith Schaeffer

Should we feel at times disheartened and discouraged, a simple movement of heart toward God will renew our powers. Whatever he may demand of us, he will give us at the moment the strength and courage that we need
.–Francois de Fenelon

The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man’s business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is that we shall lose if we flinch or rebel. –Maltbie D. Babcock


God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty. –Peter Marshall

God is doing a greater work in us, and that can only come as we learn to trust him no matter how dark the days and sleepless the nights. And it is only as we have been through the darkness with him that what we know with our heads slides down into our hearts, and our hearts no longer demand answers. The Why? becomes unimportant when we believe that God can and will redeem the pain for our good and his glory. . . . When I put the sovereignty of God beside his unfailing love, my heart can rest.–Verdell Davis

Rejoice in knowing that you belong to God and that He is conforming you to the image of His Son. See every event of this day as part of that process. Yield to the Spirit’s prompting, and take heart that God will accomplish His will. –John MacArthur

The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, smelted, polished, and glorified through the furnace of tribulation. –E. H. Chapin

God has frequently to knock the bottom board out of your experience if you are a saint in order to get you into contact with Himself. God wants you to understand this is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings. . . . “Though He slay me yet will I trust Him” — this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible. –Oswald Chambers

The greater our present trials, the louder will our future songs be, and the more intense our joyful gratitude.
–Charles Spurgeon

Everything that God brings into our life is directed to one purpose: that we might be conformed to the image of Christ. –Erwin W. Lutzer

By affliction He teaches us many precious lessons, which without it we should never learn. By affliction He shows us our emptiness and weakness, draws us to the throne of grace, purifies our affections, weans us from the world, makes us long for heaven. – J.C.Ryle.


Christ’s Power is Made Perfect in Weakness

Weakness! Insults, distress, pain, hardships, persecution, difficulties! Sometimes a messenger of Satan, but always allowed by God, weakness keeps us from exalting ourselves. Satan the destroyer would have us either despair at what we can’t do, or be prideful in what we can do. But God is working His plan in us to eliminate pride and produce faith & humility. Christ will be exalted, as we in our weakness, find our strength only in Him. This message so ministered to me. Let it encourage you today.

And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me–to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Cor. 12:7-10.

Audio: Christ’s Power is Made Perfect in Weakness, by John Piper