If there is anything that we love to hate more than the arrogance of others, it would have to be an awareness of our own weakness. We detest it so much that we invent ways to cover our personal inadequacy.

Even the apostle Paul needed to be reminded of his own frailty. He was jabbed time and again by a “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7). He didn’t name his thorn, but J. Oswald Sanders reminds us that whatever it was, “it hurt, humiliated, and restricted Paul.” Three times he begged the Lord to take it away, but his request was not granted. Instead, he used his thorn to tap into God’s all-sufficient grace. The Lord promised, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (v.9).

Courageously, Paul began to “own” his weakness and put the Lord’s grace to the test, a pathway that Sanders calls “a gradual educative process” in the apostle’s life. Sanders notes that eventually Paul no longer regarded his thorn as a “limiting handicap” but as a “heavenly advantage.” And his advantage was this: When he was weak in himself, he was strong in the Lord.

As we accept our weaknesses, in Christ we can be strong weak people.