Quit focusing on the handicap and begin appreciating the gift. 2 Corinthians 12:9 (MSG)
Appreciating the Gift – The Stay Soft Series – Part 7
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
When I was twelve years old, a visiting preacher at our tiny little church “prophesied/prayed” over me and said: “Keep yourself.” It puzzled me for years, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. But over time, I’ve realized that the Divine was telling me to keep my heart soft. Stay tender. Be real and true.
It’s so easy to harden our hearts in life, yeah? Pride and pain do a pretty good job of making our hearts stiff and stubborn and walled in. Not to mention the unspoken social and cultural taboos of being seen as soft. Often, the last place we think we’ll find strength and fulfillment is within tenderness. But that’s exactly where strength comes into its own in our lives.
Paul wrote to his friends and told them that God had said to him:
“My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.”
He went to say:
“Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.” (2 Cor 12:9-10 MSG.)
Softness, tenderness, compassion, feeling, sensitivity, humility… This is how we strengthen our lives. Surrender to the soft places. Embrace them. The grace God gives us doesn’t ‘make up’ for them. Grace isn’t there to cover up our weaknesses so that they’re not a problem anymore; so that no one can see them. Grace is given so we can let go of the social and cultural constructs of what we think ‘strength’ should look like, and embrace the beautiful, tender, gift that our life is – the good, the bad, the mediocre – all of it.
The kind of strength we think resides in hard heartedness is really just plain old arrogance. Which, in the end, will make you brittle and stubborn. It turns out that the way to strength is through tenderness. It’s through continually having the stoney hardness in our lives massaged out by love and spiritual transformation. It’s through appreciating the gift, but humble enough to say thank you, and having the discipline to ‘keep yourself’ from being overrun by pride and pain, which happens as you go through them, not as you avoid them. It's no weak feat.
“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination.” Maya Angelou.
PRACTICE:
Stay soft. Keep yourself. “Quit focusing on the handicap and begin appreciating the gift.” (Paul, 2 Cor 12:9 MSG).
Written by Lizzy Milani
[vcex_image_grid columns=”3″ pagination=”false” thumbnail_link=”custom_link” link_title_tag=”true” custom_links_target=”_blank” overlay_style=”title-category-visible” columns_gap=”5″ img_hover_style=”fade-out” image_ids=”20934,20935,20937″ custom_links=”https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1239768002?pt=118656308&ct=blog%20footer&mt=8,https://www.pktfuel.com/dailyemail,https://www.pktfuel.com/support” img_height=”350″]