I love Jesus sometimes. I mean obviously I’m aiming for the
whole time but I suppose genuinely loving him on occasions is a good start –
and, you will be glad to learn, I hope, that this is one of those occasions.
So, have some background. I’ve been asking Jesus to humble
me for what must be nearly a year now. I know it sounds weird that I’m asking
Jesus to change what I’m like rather than just doing it, but if you’ve ever
tried you’ll know that something like pride is surprisingly tricky to change
just by trying, so I ask Jesus to humble me, and I try to humble myself, and I
hope that he’ll manage it with some help from me. Background over.
At the weekend I was feeling pretty exhausted. I’ve been
pretty busy as you might have guessed, and even the ‘holiday’ weekend was quite
effortful, and I haven’t had a proper Sabbath day off for ages, and I haven’t
managed to spend enough time just chillin’ with Jesus. (Apologies to those with
a more sophisticated taste in language, but I think chillin’ just about sums up
what I’m missin’.) And the tiredness was starting to do that thing where it
spills over from physical into mental and emotional and you just feel a bit
like curling up for a long time, and it feels a bit silly when you remember
that God promised that ‘those who hope in the LORD will ... soar on wings like
eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint’. But
then I got an email from my brother where he mentioned 2 Corinthians 12 verse
9. And I couldn’t remember what it was so I looked it up, and it just hit me
like a really good hot shower. Paul writes this:
“To keep me from
becoming conceited... there was given me a thorn in the flesh... Three times I
pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is
sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will
boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest
on me. 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.”
I honestly - no religious kid exaggeration - felt such joy
from reading those words. “My power is made perfect in weakness”. It just hit
me that it was OK for me to be weak, to be struggling, even to fail – it’s OK.
It’s even a good thing, because when I realise that I’m not ‘good enough’ all
by myself, I get to see just how good Jesus is. You never know how much your
dad loves you until you really, really need a hug.
And then this morning I had a double English lesson to start
the day – that’s half seven until twenty to nine. But last night it rained (which
is good, the crops needed it) but this meant (the causal link is yet to be
fully explained to me) that the students were incredibly late. At 7:30 there
was one person waiting for Standard 6 – my class. We started at quarter to
eight with about 10 kids, and they were still arriving at 8:30. My lesson
failed miserably, and I felt miserable. And I had half an hour before my next
one. And I came back to the hut, and I got on my knees and I prayed. And I
found myself thanking Jesus that he had actually humbled me – that I had
realised that I am actually not very good at this. I am not very good at making
myself easy to understand, I am not very good at remembering their names, or
planning lessons that work at their level, or resisting the temptation to use
more and longer words when they are struggling to grasp the few short ones I
started with. And I prayed that his power would be made perfect in my weakness.
That my struggles and failures would somehow help to reveal how beautiful he
is. And then I went out to my next set of lessons.
And, because Jesus is cool like this, they were absolutely
brilliant. Not perfect obviously – those problems haven’t just evaporated – but
they were much more fun, they felt pretty successful, and as I was doing them I
just got happier and happier and happier.
I hope this hasn’t been sickeningly cheesy for all of you –
and thanks for reading how I’m doing! If there are things I’m failing to
mention that anyone would like to know, please do ask!
Auf wiedersehen,
Mike
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