Episode 74: What If the Strongest Christian in the Room Needs Help?

Kristy: 00:07
Welcome to Unshaken, the podcast where unwavering faith meets real life. I’m Kristy, and together with my husband Tony, we dive into authentic conversations, offering biblical insights and sharing stories that inspire resilience, especially for families navigating the unique challenges of disabilities. Join us each week as we explore faith, family, and the journeys that keep us grounded in Christ. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Let’s stand firm together.

Tony: 00:40
Welcome to another episode of Unshaken. My name is Tony, and I am flying solo today. When you think of the word strength, what comes to mind? What words or images come to mind? Is it raw power? Is it the ability to carry a bunch of stuff without needing any help? Is it control? Is it independence? Is it composure? Is it being so self-sufficient that you don’t ever need anyone else? What if the strongest Christian in the room is not the person who needs the least? That’s not to say that weakness is automatically good. I’m not going to that extreme. But self-sufficiency is not the Christian definition of strength. This morning in uh 2 Corinthians, I was in the 12th chapter, and this is what made me think of this topic. Something caught my eye that really hadn’t hit me before the way it hit me today. So starting in verse 7, it says this. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But then 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 weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, and hardships, and persecutions, and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. And it got me just thinking about this idea of strength. I wanted to bring this to you guys and kind of walk through how this idea of strength has changed for me over the years. And you may have spent years trying to prove that you are strong by becoming less visible in whatever it is that you need. But Christ is not asking you to become invulnerable before his grace can meet you. I believe that we have inherited a very narrow picture of strength when we associate strength with those things that I mentioned earlier: speed, productivity, raw power. Some people associate strength with visible victories, whether that be over someone else or a visible victory over some kind of circumstance. These very narrow pictures and definitions of strength, I believe that people who need assistance from time to time can be treated as less than, whether that being less mature, less capable, and sometimes even less spiritually credible when it comes to the Christian life. Now, I want to be so very clear that I am not shaming things like competence or training or endurance or responsibility or growth. All of those things are great things, and we should strive for those things. The problem comes in when we use those things to measure either our own self-worth, and I’m guilty of this, or when we use it to measure someone else’s worth. And I know that being a kid, there was always different things that I associated with being a strong man. And you know, the very first image that I can think of is seeing the adult males in my family working on cars in the driveway on the weekends. When it comes to working on cars, I know how to change a tire, I know how to change oil, but that’s about it. And so if the only definition that I have of strength or being a capable adult is defined as my ability to work on cars, then I am severely lacking at this point. But that’s not what God’s definition of strength is. We’ll see how God defines strength in a minute. But I think it’s important first to look at dependence and what it is and what it isn’t. Some dependence is visible, all dependence is real. The person who can hide their need is not necessarily less dependent. They may simply have a form of dependence that the room knows how to ignore. And so we need to be very careful about how we view others who have a visible dependence that the room either chooses not to ignore or that the room can’t ignore. Whatever that dependence is, it doesn’t define or diminish their worth. Let’s go back to 1 Corinthians chapter one, and I want to go down to the very end of the chapter, starting in verse 26. It says, Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Everything that the world sees as wise, as good, as strong, God turns on its head and instead uses the things that the world would never choose to bring his name glory. Jesus said it this way, Mark chapter 10, starting in verse 42. He said, You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them, not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. We see Jesus here defining strength as service. Jesus does not redefine power as helplessness. Instead, he redirects that power towards obedience and service. It’s that self-sacrifice. And too often, strength is confused with control and platform and certainty, or being the person that never needs anything. And Jesus doesn’t ask us to pretend that we don’t need anything, he asks us to let him define what power is for, which is truth, love, service, obedience, and giving of yourself without needing to dominate the room. And how many times have we seen in this world where people are trying to grab the spotlight as much as they possibly can because they absolutely want to dominate the room? And so I want to go back to our very first passage in 2 Corinthians, because I think that there’s an important distinction here that matters when we have something that the world says is a limitation or a weakness, because the weakness that Paul had in 2 Corinthians that he talks about didn’t cancel his calling. Paul asked for whatever this weakness was, whatever this thorn in his side was to be removed three times. Scripture doesn’t scold Paul for asking, and Scripture doesn’t shame Paul for his desire for this weakness, this thorn in his side to be taken away, or for his desire for relief. So we can ask for these things to be taken away. We can always pray for these weaknesses or these limitations to be taken away. Christ doesn’t tell Paul the weakness is imaginary or all in his head, or that wanting it gone proves that he is a weak person or weak in his faith. Instead, grace becomes sufficient inside of the limitation that isn’t removed. And Paul continues in his missionary journey, he continues to do the work that God is calling him to do. Now, this is not meant to be a direct explanation for every disability or every illness or every form of suffering. That’s not what this is about. The point that I want us to make sure that we get in this is that if there is something that’s going on, it does not disqualify you from following the calling that God has on your life. You guys know if you guys have been with us for any amount of time, I have cerebral palsy, and it is a physical limitation on my body. I can’t count the number of times that I laid in bed as a kid, looking up at the ceiling, pleading, begging, crying for God to please remove the cerebral palsy, trying to make a deal, trying to bargain, trying to do anything that I could to have God answer that and to just take away my cerebral palsy. And he never did. If you haven’t heard my story, go to episode six. What I realized over the years is that while the world sees my cerebral palsy as a disability, I now see it as part of my God-given calling, and I call it now my God-given ability, not a disability, but my God-given ability to be able to impact his kingdom, not for my glory, but for God’s glory. Does having the cerebral palsy make things harder? Yeah, it does. It absolutely does. I’m not gonna sit here and say everything is fine and everything is good. No, there are some very hard days, but I now would use my cerebral palsy to be able to talk with families and individuals that I would not be able to talk to without my cerebral palsy. So it is a limitation, it is a thorn in my side, so to speak. But like Paul, I will boast in Christ, I will delight in weakness and insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. And that’s because God chose not to remove the cerebral palsy from my life. That journey of understanding how God was going to use my cerebral palsy and my need for help from time to time, because there are a lot of people in my life that help me. Kristy is chief of that. Kristy helps me countless times every single day. But I understood that all of those things, as I really got to the end of high school and into my early adult years, that’s when I started to understand that needing help and living with a limitation or a disability did not erase calling or dignity or competence or the ways that I could contribute to not only society, but to God’s kingdom. And we have to understand that an unanswered prayer is not proof that God has abandoned you or me. An unremoved limitation, an unremoved thorn in our side is not proof that our calling has been revoked. If that were true, then Paul would not have been able to do all the things that he did with his life. And we wouldn’t be talking about Paul today if that were true. But what is true is that grace can be sufficient without pretending that the need is small, because there may be a great need. The limitation may be very difficult to overcome, but God says, My grace is sufficient for you. We have to realize that every person depends on God and other people. We may not always see it, but it’s because there are some forms of dependence that are easier to hide than others. When I am depending on Kristy, most of the time the help that she’s giving me is very visible because of the limitations that Cerebral Palsy places on my body. What I’ve come to realize is that there are certain forms of help that I have come to accept more easily than others. And what I realize is the forms of help that I’m more stubborn about, it’s because of how I believe that I will be perceived by getting that help. How is the world going to see me when they see that I’m being helped in this way? That’s something that I’ve had to work through in my own life. You know, it says in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, starting in verse 7, it says this. But we have treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. So the ability to do the things that God is calling us to do is not because of our own strength, but rather it’s because of the power that God gives us. It’s his power. Look how Paul illustrates this in the next few verses. We are hard-pressed on every side, but we’re not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. The point that Paul is trying to make is that we’re able to endure these things because of God’s power, not our own. I go back to what Jesus said to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. I think it’s important for us to remember that Jesus is not distant from the human condition and the things that we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. The author of Hebrews reminds us of this at the end of chapter four, starting in verse 14, it says this. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses. But we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. It’s never a sense of Jesus can’t relate to the things that we struggle with or the things that we need. Rather, we are not only encouraged, but we are invited to approach Jesus for mercy and grace in need, not after we’ve outgrown whatever the need is. The church, the body of Christ, is not built on everyone pretending that they can carry everything themselves, and everything is perfect, and no one has any needs. That’s not reality and and it’s not the truth. And we need to stop pretending that it is. Something that we also need to face is that there are things that should not be disguised as weakness, but instead should be dealt with directly. When there are things that can be treated or healed or strengthened, then we should do those things. We don’t sit passive and just let things happen when we have the ability to correct things. And this is certainly the case when it comes to sin. Sin needs to be confessed. We need to practice spiritual discipline. When things happen that we know should not happen, we need to challenge those things. And we need to make changes when we have the ability to make changes. We don’t make excuses when it comes to things like abuse or neglect or irresponsibility or things that can be harmful that are preventable at the same time. That’s just turning a blind eye to something that should not be excused ever. We need to make sure that we address those things directly. We need to be willing to ask hard questions. This is not an episode about trying to be as passive as possible. The thing that comes to mind for me is Jesus in the temple. Jesus was strong and powerful in the temple because of what was happening. He turns over the tables and he clears out the temple of everything bad that was going on. You don’t do that by being passive. You do that from a holy strength, a righteous strength that is rooted in the right things. This is something that we have to be honest with ourselves and really ask the question: what in my life requires my acceptance and dependence on others and God versus what is in my life that requires me to repent, me to treat, either for my health, for me to practice to get better, for me to have courage to make the necessary changes in my life so that my life can be better. Where we can improve, we should improve. When there are things that are wrong that either we see in our own lives, or that others that love us and know us well enough, and that we have given permission for them to speak into our lives, and they see something that is concerning, we need to address those things and not just be passive about something that is potentially dangerous or harmful to ourselves or others. When it comes to the grace that God gives to us, we need to remember that grace will never require us to call harm holy, whether it’s self-inflicted or if we see harm happening to others. That’s not holy. We can tell the truth, we can set a boundary, and we can continue to grow in our skills and our competence and confront the things that need to be dealt with. None of that is in contradiction with grace. Grace provides for those things to happen. And because of that, we also need to let grace define what strength actually is. And strength may look like asking for help before a complete collapse. Strength looks like telling the truth. Strength looks like resting, persevering, apologizing, receiving care, advocating for ourselves or for others, or serving within limits. Because serving to the point of burnout is not strength. And that’s something that a lot of us do. We will think that we have to serve until we are the ones collapsing, and that’s not strength. We need to seek Christ inside of the truth of grace and also the truth that his word gives us each and every day. Grace is sufficient, but that doesn’t mean that things are going to be easy or that ease and comfort are guaranteed because they’re not. When we try to be so self-sufficient that we are not depending on God and the body of Christ that is surrounding us, we’re not acting from a position of strength at that point. Christian strength is based on the grace and the power that comes from God, not us. What I have to ask myself is, what would faithful strength look like in my life right now if I stopped measuring it by how much I can carry alone or how self-sufficient I am in this moment? What would it look like if I truly went to God and said, God, I’m going to stop trying to do everything on my own. And instead, I’m going to come to you not kicking and screaming, but rather I’m going to come to you willingly, excited, to be able to boast about you in my weakness and receive the grace from you that is sufficient for me. The strongest step available for you and for me may not be carrying more. It may be telling the truth about what we can’t carry and trusting Christ in those moments to receive the grace that He has for us. So we need to make sure that we don’t seek suffering to excuse sin or refuse to grow. And we need to stop treating visible needs and visible dependence as spiritual failure because it’s not. I would challenge you today to take some time to think about a need that you have that you’ve been hiding from people because you were afraid of how you would be seen if you named that need, and if you also received the appropriate help to deal with that need. Think about one place where power is being used to control rather than to serve. Strength. The way that God defines it is not proving that you need no one. It is depending on Christ and remaining faithful to what he has called you to do. Let’s pray. Father, I come before you today. On behalf of the unshaken family, I ask that you would continue to give us grace and that you would reveal to each one of us the areas that we need to be honest about where we need help. And not only do we need to come to you and come to your throne to receive the grace that you want to give us, but then we also should seek the help that we’ve been trying to hide so that we can boast in your strength and not in our own. Forgive us for all the ways that we fall short. And we thank you that you do have mercy on us and you do give us grace because we need it. And we ask these things in your son’s precious name. Amen. I hope you guys have a great day and a great rest of your week, and we’ll see you next time.