I Will Make Weak Things Become Strong Unto Them

“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” (Ether 12:27). None of us like to be reminded of our weakness. None of us like to have to admit that we are incapable of handling the challenges we face all on our own. But as much as we would like to put false hope in our own strengths, the more completely and fully we come unto Christ, the more He will make painfully clear how truly weak and ineffective we truly are. God doesn’t do this to demean or belittle us. God shows us our weakness so that we can stop trying to do things on our own and let Him help us out. Life becomes so much easier when we learn to trust in our Heavenly Father and when we come to truly believe that His grace is sufficient to overcome our own painfully obvious weaknesses and when we go forth with faith and allow the Lord to work through us and make the weak things become strong. This promise to make weak things become strong often gets misunderstood. The closer we come to God, the more we will come to rely on His strength instead of our own. By increasing our faith and our diligence, we become more and more acutely aware of our own innate weakness, and we find it easier and easier to humble ourselves and allow Christ’s grace to be sufficient to overcome the challenges we face. We like to imagine that God’s promise to make weak things become strong means that He will make us stronger. We like to imagine that day by day we can rely less and less on God’s strength and more and more on our own strength as God makes weak things become strong. But we’ve got it all backwards. The closer we get to God, the more God opens our eyes to our own weakness, and so we seem to grow weaker and weaker as we understand more clearly our own nothingness when compared to the limitless universe we have to face. But the weaker we appear, the more and more we will rely on God’s strength. By losing our reliance on our own strength, by losing ourselves, we find the true, invincible strength offered freely to all who hold onto their humility. The point isn’t to hold out faithful until our own intrinsic weakness is replaced with our own intrinsic strength. The point is to hold out faithful even as we continue to be weak but nevertheless embrace our weakness with humility and plead earnestly and accept gratefully the Lord’s strength. As we come to rely on the strength of the Lord from moment to moment, then no matter how weak we continue to be, we will nevertheless conquer life’s challenges with a strength that makes us acting alone and unaided by the Lord seem like weak things indeed.