You are not up to the job. You do not have what it takes. You are not pulling your weight. You are the lesser child. While your resume looks impressive, we have moved on to another candidate. Others exist who are smarter, stronger, better skilled, more experienced, have better degrees and credentials, have a better pedigree, look more pleasing, are more sociable, etc., etc., etc. You are a weak candidate. You are useless as is. And yet God says I am the perfect one for his purpose.
Though the world rejects us for these very reasons, we are exactly the type of people God is looking for; we have faith in him. It was not for no reason that Jesus told many, “Your faith has done this.” Since God’s power is made perfect in weakness (9), he chooses the lesser things by worldly standards to shame the greater things. Paul told the Corinthian congregation this in his first letter. (1 Corinthians 1:27).
Moses was rejected by Israel before God sent him to be the one who brought them out of Egypt. Ruth was a cursed Moabite and a widow when God called her to be King David’s grandmother. Esther was a slave girl when God made her the queen of the most powerful nation in the world. David was the least of his family, the least of the Israelites, when God made him the greatest Israelite warrior and king. The twelve apostles were backwater fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot, and uneducated nobodies when Jesus appointed them to be his messengers to the ends of the earth.
All of these people and more were weak. God made them strong. Paul personally learned this. So he delighted in weakness. He bragged about insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. He was weak. God took a weak vessel and made it strong. Is God weak? Is anything impossible for God? Jesus taught, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 1:37, 18:27) All that is required is faith as small as a mustard seed. (Matthew 17:20)
