Bible Studies

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“Hopeful Frailty” - God the Hero
(Studies subsequent on “Confident Weakness” by Belinda Dunn)

I once was acquainted with a vacuum-cleaner salesman who used bizarre methods to motivate himself. For example, while traversing a neighborhood he might reach into his trouser pocket, pull out house keys and lob them out the car window. He knew that this would force him to screech to a stop, scramble out, and go track down his keys. His strategy was that having overcome initial inertia, he would then be more likely to make a house call.

This morning I had to ask myself if I had engaged similarly when I put in writing my goal to share a bible study with my friends here at Faithwriters. “What was I thinking? I can’t do this!” were some of my thoughts. In response, a recognizable small voice seemed only to add to my woes:

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first, and counts the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This [wo]man began to build, and was not able to finish.” (Matt. 14:28-30.)

But just in the nick of time I remembered the title and subject matter of the study and knew I had permission there for haggling, “Lord, You are my sufficiency… and You always have enough to finish what You begin! Amen.”

There are few things our present-day culture admires less than weakness. Funneled to us from many and various sources, the impulse to despise weakness and reward ability is all-pervasive, unfortunately even bleeding over into church life and attitudes of Christians. Though scripture supports the concept of weak humans desperate for a strong Savior, we Christians often go around trying to convince one another, ourselves as well, that we can “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!”

What is really awry is that we have permitted society around us - and our own bent for pride - to influence us more than the Lord of Life and His eternal words. We have taken other gods to our bosoms and in so doing cheated ourselves of the rich rewards that come from leaning on the everlasting arms. It is He, our true strength, our Hero who calls us out, and to Himself. “. . . come out from among them. . . ,” means so much more than mere coming out in terms of moral behavior. We are to come out from her way of thinking, or rationalizing, in which self-sufficiency and autonomy are set forth as the worthiest of goals.

Throughout both Old and New Testament scriptures God counsels us in the central truth that it is by quite other means than boot straps we come out. That only by the goodness and prowess of the living God can anything excellent and lasting occur on this earth, and in the humans He placed here. With this truth God so desires to bless us (indeed we cannot get along without it), and to that end He sometimes uses drastic means to redirect our attention away from self and onto Him. And so for the first real increment of study in the article following this one, we will examine His intentions in disturbing the lives of a few of His chosen strugglers.

With a prayer penned by Sir Francis Drake I close, imploring you to meditate on it and how it was that this intrepid man, whose life was anything but undisturbed or unruffled, came to pray as he did:

"Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves
When our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord when with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst for the waters of life.
Having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly
To venture on wilder seas where storms will show Your majesty;
Where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes
And to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ." **


**Prayer written by Sir Frances Drake in 1577, on a voyage around the earth [excerpted from “Confident Weakness Bible Study” by Belinda Dunn, week 1]

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