Isaiah 33:23 NASB
Your tackle hangs slack; It cannot hold the base of its mast firmly, Nor spread out the sail. Then the prey of an abundant spoil will be divided; The lame will take the plunder.
Galatians 4:27 NASB
For it is written, “Rejoice, BARREN WOMAN WHO DOES NOT BEAR; BREAK FORTH AND SHOUT, YOU WHO ARE NOT IN LABOR; FOR MORE NUMEROUS ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE DESOLATE THAN OF THE ONE WHO HAS A HUSBAND.”
2 Corinthians 4:7 NASB
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;
40 years ago when I first discovered what it means to be in Christ my heart was full of rejoicing in what I was seeing concerning my union with Christ. There was one source of discouragement though that was still holding me back into the adventure of experiencing the fullness of life that Jesus lives, and that source was that I was convinced that my brokenness disqualified me from Jesus Christ being able to express himself through me fully. I believed that I had to get my act together, and get all healed up so that Jesus would have a vessel that was qualified for Him to live through. I was very sincere, and was very ashamed of the fact that I had so many weaknesses in my life, which disqualified me for victory. It was at this time in my life, where I was filled with such hope, yet at the same time hopelessness, because of my brokenness, that I discovered the second most important thing that I had ever learned as a believer and that was that my weaknesses not only did not disqualify me from being someone that Christ could manifest his life through, they actually positioned me to be someone through whom Christ could fully manifest his adequacy. I discovered that it is “the lame who take the plunder.”
When we first see the apostle Paul mentioned in Scripture he goes by the name of Saul. Saul was the benjamite king of great physical stature and physical prowess who was the first king of Israel and Paul was named after him. After his conversion he changed his name from Saul to Paul. The name Paul literally means “small or little.” It’s as if before he met Jesus Paul was trying to be a big man for God, but having encountered Christ the lion of Judah cut him down to size, and freed him to simply be “real,” and instead of trying to be big and adequate for God he could just live by the “bigness of God.” All of us who were born into this fallen world are born with brokenness and we spend much of our lives trying to keep our brokenness hidden as we try to find our identity and adequacy in our outer man. Sadly, so many believers still live this way, trying to keep their brokenness hidden by covering it up with religious activity and religious language. Christians burnout all the time because they’re trying to be big for God, while hiding their smallness. The good news is we don’t have to be ashamed of our smallness, because Jesus is able to fill our smallness with his greatness, and in our weakness his strength is made perfect. The reason the lame take the plunder, and that the barren woman is the fruitful one, is because the lame and the barren have to live by faith, totally depending on the one who is prepared to live through them in his sovereign adequacy. He chooses fragile clay pots to manifest his life through so that the power demonstrated through clay pots can only be explained in terms of who God is, not who man is.
No matter how many years you have walked with the Lord there will also be seasons that seem to magnify our “lameness,” in some way or another. Whether it’s spiritual warfare, circumstances, or relationships, there are those times when our neediness and weakness seems to be exposed, and it is so important to remember that in fresh seasons of exposed “lameness” we are given fresh opportunities to plunge deeper into the immeasurable sustaining grace of God. The wilderness simply teaches us to lean on our beloved more than we ever have before, which of course always results in even fuller manifestation of his victorious life through us than ever before.