There is a simple phrase which always comes to mind whenever I feel weak, or exhausted, in pain, and I feel like I just can't go on -- it's a phrase from an old poem I read when I was in the hospital, and it goes, "God ruthlessly perfects whom he royally elects." I don't know what it is about God and his ways, but the people God chooses to use -- I mean really put to work in the kingdom -- the ones he's got his eye on, the ones he delights to work on and work through, these are the people with whom he is absolutely ruthless, sometimes almost brutal. I'm not kidding. God's heaven-bent on molding them and making them into the people he wants them to be. It seemed God bends over backward to get rid of sin in their lives, and he does this mainly through afflicting pain and hardship.
Is that you? Well, hey, if you find yourself in this camp, take heart: because look at the people in the Bible that God ruthlessly perfected. Look how he used them. Look at Jacob! He was a habitual liar, a conniver, a fraud, and a fake. But God had his eye on Jacob -- he had a purpose for him, he wanted to use him. And so God wrestles with Jacob. And the result? A very painful dislocated hip; a physical disability that would stay with Jacob for the rest of his life, reminding him in his own weakness that, yes, God ruthlessly perfects whom he royally elects. A writer, Judith Abrams, says that "Jacob's flawed moral state was finally made manifest in his physical state; and through that, he was somehow released from his sinfulness of deceit.... and Jacob could no longer feign moral strength as he limped through life with this new physical disability."
Now I tell you that encourages me. First, my physical weakness reminds me of my spiritual weakness. I'm a walking (no, I take that back) I am a wheeling audiovisual aid that I am morally weak on the inside; and should I ever forget it, I've got a physical weakness on the outside to remind me!
But oh, what a blessing! Just like Jacob's disability... it was accompanied by a blessing. When God met Jacob and left him wounded, it was a physical wound which was intended to remind him of his spiritual wound. And look at everybody else in the Bible. Those heroes of faith like Abraham and Moses, they were far from perfect -- most of them were stumbling, weak, wounded, and broken people. And like Jacob, their weakness was a physical reminder of their spiritual brokenness, a reminder of their need and their desperate dependence on God. So, friend, if you are feeling the crunch of your weakness and your wounds today, it's a lesson for you. God ruthlessly is perfecting you, you whom he has royally elected. But remember, your wound is intended to remind you of your spiritual need of God -- and that is the biggest blessing.
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
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