Strength In Weakness

Here's a quote from the book The Rest of The Gospel: When the partial Gospel has worn you out by Dan Stone and David Gregory. It has really meant a lot to me. I thought it may help some of you as well:

"People can relate to you through your warts and blemishes. They can't relate to your holiness. You're too slick there, too greasy. You've got it too together. They can relate to your warts though. We come to a place where we say, 'Lord, even though that thing is still in my humanity, I'm going to praise You for it'. You know what I discovered? The minute I started praising God for my impatience, I didn't see it anymore. I don't mean it disappeared, but I didn't have a fixation on it. I wasn't anxious about it any longer. That's the way God moves on in us, when we accept ourselves as He does. I'm not advocating sin, by any means. I am saying that when we shift our focus from ourselves - some neutral aspect of our personality that we don't like, or, yes, even some flesh pattern that keeps on recurring - and instead focus on Christ in us, God does His work in us. We are transformed into His image as we behold Him, not as we behold ourselves (2 Corinthians 3:18).
God takes those things that are fixations in us when we're flesh-oriented and turns them into blessings when we're spirit-oriented. What I despised became a blessing in somebody else's life. Those things become the years the locusts ate that God restores, the dung that God makes into a compost pile. He lets it sit there until it's work is done in us. Then we can take our humanity back and say, 'It's perfect to God right now. If He wants to do any altering of it, He is at work in me to will and do of His good pleasure. If He wants to change it, He who began a good work in me will bring it to pass. He can finish what He started'."

Grace,

Tim