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. 2 Corinthians 12:9

There are times I’ll cling to this verse.

I can so often feel so very weak.

Weak physically, weak emotionally, weak in temperament, weak in ability, weak even in faith.

I confess there are times in the night I find myself crying out to God:

“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Mark 9:24b

The world shakes me.

Life shakes me.

The world comes in with reason and logic and sounds so, well, reasonable as they argue away my faith and belief system.

Does that shock you? That such logic can throw me at times?

In those moments I can spiral and spin in my faith. Doubt tries to claim my mind and my heart. And I fight for the things I know.

Because I KNOW God. I’ve seen His evidence in my life. I’ve felt His whispers, known His grace, seen His hand at work in me.

Yet I’m still aware that according to the world my faith is, quite simply, unreasonable.

In the eyes of this worlds logic my faith is little more than a fairy tale that can be explained away be ignorant prehistoric people grasping for threads of understanding.

And the only way I can find my way through this crisis moment is to do what would probably seem the most unreasonable thing of all to man.

Throw myself at my Lord as hard as I can, throw my heart and mind into His Word as hard as I can.

Logic says I need distance and reason to see truth. But what I really need is Him.

And in that moment I don’t mind being called foolish.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”  Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 1 Corinthians 1:18-20

I don’t mind being weak, when I realize He uses my weakness. I don’t mind being foolish, when I realize He can use that too.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 1 Corinthians 1:27

It can be hard to remember sometimes. Not because He isn’t near, but because I drift away. I drift into the cares of every day life and away from my foundation. And it is in that moment, where I am so busy trying to solve things with my own mind, my own intelligence, that is when the doubts strike.

Oh how foolish I am!

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 1 Corinthians 1:22-25

Let me throw myself again and again into this foolishness: the foolishness of God.

If there is any reason that one needs to be grounded in His Words it is this. Because voices are speaking into our minds all the time, and whatever we listen to the most will gain a foothold.

Fill your mind with Christ. It is only with His mind that we can discern these things.

This is written plainly:

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the MIND OF CHRIST. 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 (emphasis mine)

So today, I encourage both myself, and you, to run after the Mind of Christ. Bury yourself in His Word. Find and drink in good teaching.

And always remember, it is ok to be weak, it is ok to be foolish.

Joy Aletheia Stevens