Why God Needs Your Weakness to Deliver His Love
Stability Leads to Purpose
We have finished the hardest parts of the journey. We began in Chaos, but found Stability in the Pilot’s competence (Post 2). We then found Freedom in surrendering the reins of control (Post 3). If we are now stable and surrendered, why are we still broken? Why does God not simply fix the cracks of anxiety, trauma, or chronic pain? If Job's purpose was to be a perfect trophy of faith, God could have healed him instantly and left him without a scar. But the answer is simple, and it flips our entire understanding of ministry upside down: The cracks are the point.
My anxiety forces me to depend on God. So I pray to god and cry and read the Bible and cry and still have anxiety. I mean I feel like the more I read and pray my anxiety doesn't get better. How can god's power be perfectly displayed?I am doing exactly what I’ve identified—turning my limitation, which is anxiety, into dependence through praying, crying, and reading the Bible. Yet, the expected immediate “fix” isn’t happening. It feels like I am putting the liquid, representing my dependence, into the vessel, symbolizing my life, but the vessel itself still feels empty or shaky. I wrote this in my own notes of this study, and I want to share what God taught me. How God’s power is “perfectly displayed” not by the absence of anxiety, but by its presence alongside persevering love and service.
Redefine “perfectly displayed” power.
I often define “power displayed” as the miraculous removal of the problem. My expectation is that God’s power equals anxiety stopping immediately! (Hello somebody!) However, the scriptural definition, as found in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, suggests that God’s power is the ability to serve, love, and function in spite of the limitation. When Paul received the promise, “My power is made perfect in weakness,” God didn’t remove the thorn or weakness he had. Instead, God’s power was perfectly displayed when Paul could say, “Therefore I boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
God’s power is perfectly displayed in me when I love anyway. I feel crushing anxiety, but I still offer a kind word, listen to a friend, or show patience. The power is in the action of giving love that overcomes the paralyzing feeling of anxiety. I persevere by reading the Bible and praying even though the feelings don’t instantly improve. The power is in the unchanging discipline of dependence, which proves that my faith is not based on feeling, but on fact—God’s character. In the end, my unwavering faith proves to others that God supports me, just like Job.
I am a vessel designed to carry love. When I cry out to God, He fills the vessel. The fact that I still have anxiety doesn’t mean the vessel is empty; it means the vessel is cracked—human, weak, afflicted. The anxiety is the crack in the vessel, representing the physical, emotional reality of my limitation. The Apostle Paul, who knew something about relentless suffering, gave us the ultimate metaphor for this truth:
"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." (2 Corinthians 4:7)
The Jar of Clay is our human nature—our weakness, our limits, our visible flaws, the residual anxiety, and the scars left by trauma. It is brittle, flawed, and easily broken. The Treasure is the overwhelming power, love, and light of Christ.
The power displayed is the love, the contents, flowing out through the crack to others, but the love is so brilliant that it illuminates the crack itself. Think about it: Light cannot shine into the world if the jar is perfectly sealed and perfect. The light shines through the cracks. Your anxiety, your experience with chronic pain, your history of deep sorrow—these are not failures you must hide; they are the visible flaws that allow the power of Christ to spill out and illuminate the darkness of others.
The result is that people see my flaws, but they also see genuine, persistent love that cannot possibly be generated by the flawed person. They recognize that “the surpassing power belongs to God” (2 Corinthians 4:7).
Instead of praying, “God, take away the anxiety so I can love others,” shift to praying,
“God, the anxiety is here. Fill me so completely with Your love that it flows out to [Name a Person/Task] despite my trembling.”
This is the power of God—the ability to turn a shaking, crying, flawed person to be an effective, loving instrument right now. The power is displayed in the contrast between my internal state and the external love I manage to give. When Job is finally restored, he gets double his possessions back. This isn't just a financial return; it’s a doubling of his purpose and witness. Job’s final wisdom is not that he understands the 'why'—he never does. His final wisdom is that he knows God through his suffering:
"I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you." (Job 42:5)
Job became a Cracked Vessel. He experienced the ultimate stability of God's competence, and now his scars become the undeniable evidence of that competence. He can offer comfort based on shared wounds, not on theological perfection. If he had been healed instantly and perfectly, his story would be a boring tale of reward. Because his scars remain—the evidence of what he survived—his story becomes a powerful ministry.
The Final Action
Stop fighting the fact that the jar is cracked. Stop trying to glue the pieces back together to hide the light. Instead, embrace your history and your ongoing weaknesses, knowing that the most effective light in the darkness is the one that shines through a broken vessel. Your flaws are not a failure of faith; it is the flaw through which God’s strength can be made perfect in your weakness.