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King David was in the wilderness of Judah running for his life when he wrote the 63rd Psalm, the first two verses of which we just read. Verse 11 of this psalm refers to David as "king" so these verses were not written in the early years of David's life when Saul was trying to kill him. It was later in David's life after he had reigned over Israel for some time and this time, it was his own son, Absalom, who was trying to kill him. Despite many battles and victories, David once again found himself on the backside of the wilderness simply trying to survive.

For someone who was such a touted and famous warrior, David sure spent a lot of time being chased in the wilderness. David had been the young teenage star that had withstood the mighty giant Goliath and then chased down his brothers and killed them as well. It had been David who had taken his humble skills with a slingshot and developed his warrior ability until the young maidens had sang about him "Saul has slain his thousands but David his ten thousands!" It was David who had taken the rag-tag rejects of Saul's army and trained them into mighty warriors. It was David who had terrorized the Philistines and defeated army after army. Now this mighty warrior David is approaching the end of his life, age 63 by my count (David was anointed king of Hebron at age 31 and died at the age of 71. Absalom's rebellion and David's subsequent leaving of Jerusalem for a short time happened 9 years before his death in the 32nd year of his reign. 31+32 = 63), has a mighty army at his disposal that all of the world respects and fears, and yet circumstances have dictated that his only recourse is to run for his life in the wilderness like a coward afraid to fight.

And it is in this wilderness that this mighty warrior, famous for his fighting skills, cries out to God "I want to see your power and glory! "I want to see you move in my life just like you do in your sanctuary! "God, I cannot use my strength to help myself, I need your help!"

God creates everyone of us with talents and strengths. There is something in your life that you have developed; some ability that you consider your strength; something that you can always turn to when everything else you have tried has failed. God gives us these strengths even when we were a servant of sin. God does not make junk, but has a purpose for every characteristic and tempermant that He placed inside of you. Everyone in the world has something to give that is needed by others! Every one of you, no matter how low your self-esteem is, has a characteristic that God wants to use!

For David it was his ability to fight and prevail in war. For you it might be your ability to build confidence. It might be the ability to organize. It might be a musical or acting ability. It might be the ability to speak in front of people. It might be the strength of being able to love anyone. It might be the gift of kindness or patience. It might be passion and a sincere heart. Your strength might be like Isaac whom the only extraordinary thing that is ever recorded in scripture is that he could "meditate" upon the Lord, or had the ability to block out distractions and spend time with God. You may feel like dismal now, but in your youth, there was something that you felt like was your niche in life, your destiny. Whatever that strength was, it became the basis for your dreams and your reason for living.

Chances are if you have been seeking to grow closer to God, that you now are not quite so sure about that strength. What you though at one time was your strongest point is now a point of uncertainty in your life. Why does that happen to us? Why do we develop our strengths only to find that those areas are the most vulnerable? Why do the things that we trusted so much in in youth seem to lose their power with time? Why was David, the mighty warrior, running for his life at the age of 63 like a scared chicken!? Why can we see ourselves in that story?

The reason this happens in our lives, is because God is not glorified through OUR strengths! When you know that you have the ability within you to do something, and perform it, and know that you did it and did so well, there is no faith involved. And the scriptures state that "without faith it is impossible" to please God! So God works more on our strengths than on our weaknesses. That is, if we desire to see God's power working in our lives, then we must allow our strengths to be crushed and allow ourselves to be broken before God and learn what it is like to trust in Him completely! If we are relying even on a part of ourselves, then we will never know what it is like to HAVE to trust in Him for everything!

If we are depending on our own abilities, then we will never see the power of God in that particular area because we are not going to "need God's help" so when you begin to ask God to see more of his power, God begins to work on showing us that we are not as strong as we thought! David had learned a lesson that we need to apply in our lives, that when it seemed that his strengths had become his greatest weaknesses, God was wanting to reveal the Almighty Power of the Heavens in his life! David in the wilderness, did not cry out like he did in his youth "why Lord?" But instead cried out to God "Let me see thy power and glory!" God does not allow failures to come in our lives to kill us, but so He can reveal more of His power and glory to us! My strength is made perfect in weakness because then God's strength shines through! God was letting David see that even after decades of training and dedication to developing his strength, still the only way that it was perfect and able to help out in every situation is when David allowed it to become weak and trusted in God completely! We must realize, that despite our efforts and no matter how strong we are, we will never be able to rely on our own power! Our strengths are not really strengths until we surrender them to God's power!

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This principle is found throughout the scripture over and over again. God worked a miracle for Moses, a Hebrew boy, to be raised in the Egyptian palace as a son of Pharaoh and a possible future heir to the throne. In Egypt, Pharaoh was considered to be a god and Moses was trained for the possibility to one day "be god" of all the land! Because of this, Moses was raised in the finest schools of Egypt. He had the best teachers and the finest books and learning devices. The smartest people in the land were his companions and knowledge was constantly available to him. Keep in mind that Moses spent the first 40 years of his life in the palaces of Egypt. One of the responsibilities of an adult prince was to establish treaties with foreign rulers and speak on Pharaoh's behalf. Moses was trained to speak eloquently and powerfully in front of kings and ambassadors by the finest teachers in the world. Moses was not raised meek, but was raised with utmost power and to have confidence in his own ability. God allowed Moses to be trained by the finest leaders so that he could one day lead God's people and Moses knew this purpose for his life and knew that God was going to use him to free the people of God.

When he was forty years old, a day arose that Moses witnessed an Egyptian master beating a Hebrew slave. Something clicked in Moses' mind. "If I was ever ready to lead God's people out of Egypt it is now!" With great authority and not a timid bone in his body, Moses grabbed the Egyptian and killed him, hiding his body in the sand. Everything in his life had been to prepare him to be a leader of leaders, and now -- he thought -- was his finest hour.

Only things did not quite turn out like Moses expected. The Hebrews did not embrace his leadership and Moses found himself running for his life out in the desert never to return to live in the palace. The only place that Moses could find to live was with a lowly shepherd in the middle of nowhere. After marrying the man's daughter, Moses settled into the lonely life of a shepherd tending sheep in the desert. I bet Moses asked himself often, "what good is all of that education and training doing me now?" "What good is it that I can speak eloquently when all there is to talk to is hundreds of smelly sheep?" Moses for 40 years stayed in the desert away from civilization, prestige, and palaces.

I am preaching to people today who when you first came to God, you realized that God's promises were for you. Like Moses you realized that God had brought you to the kingdom and allowed you to experience every thing that you had for a purpose. You had dreams of God doing great things and using you to reach your family and friends. You realized that if God could change your life, then surely other people would believe that He could change theirs as well. But when you moved out upon your strength, things did not quite turn out like you expected. First, they did not happen as fast as you were expecting, and second, you got hurt by the very people that you were trying to reach. Now it seems that what you once thought was a strength, your passion for God, your testimony, and your experience, have become useless at your present spiritual location. You have even wondered why God allowed you to feel so confident at first because you do not feel any of that confidence now!

Why did God allow Moses to have to flee for his life and marry a shepherd's daughter? Why did God allow Moses to spend 40 years in the wilderness tending sheep? God was taking Moses' strongest strengths and breaking them to make Moses completely dependent upon Him! By the time God was ready for Moses to be used as the deliverer, Moses was so unsure of his ability to speak and negotiate that he asked if his brother who had never had the finest education, could speak for him:

There had been an humbling process in his life! Now when God worked through Moses, God was going to get the glory! Now when God delivered Israel from Egypt, God would be praised! Moses' strengths were only made perfect through weakness! For Moses to be used of God, he had to allow God to break the strongest point in his life and make it completely dependent upon God's power!

If you feel like you are going through a breaking process or wilderness time in your life, be encouraged; for when he died, we find that Moses had no problem speaking or confronting problems with great leadership ability. The first 33 chapters of the book of Deuteronomy is Moses' farewell speech and instruction to the children of Israel before he died. Moses did not stay short of speech forever! But at the end of his life, Moses' speech glorified God and spoke forth the wisdom of God and not the wisdom of Egypt!

God was is not being cruel or harsh when He allows a breaking process to happen in your life, He is trying to get you to a place where His power can work through you! Had Moses never allowed God to break his strengths, then he would have never seen the powerful hand of God in his life! The parting of the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments, the manna from heaven, the water flowing out of the rock, and the promised land all came as a result of God perfecting Moses' strength by turning them into weaknesses!

What a beautiful paradox! The greatest leader of Israel was also the meekest and the most humble! What a powerful principle to learn! God can only reveal the supernatural through someone who has allowed their strengths to be broken so that God's power can be revealed! If God were to allow the supernatural to flow through someone who had not been humbled, then they would fall through pride! My strength is made perfect through weakness! How many Christians lose heart in the breaking process and so never ever see the supernatural in their lives!? If you feel like life is getting harder and harder and wonder if you can be successful at anything, then be encouraged for God is preparing you to handle the supernatural, Almighty Power of Heaven!

God is saying "I want to exalt you; I want to lift you up to spiritual heights that you have only dream about, but I cannot lift you up until you develop meekness, and you will never develop meekness by relying on your own strengths. God said "MY strength is made perfect in weakness." And so begins the breaking process in our lives. A spiritual pruning starts. We need to change our way of thinking from the ways of Egypt to God's ways! In the world, we resented authority correcting any part of our lives, but in God's system, supernatural power only comes when we accept correction.

When we come to God, we become "sons of God." That means that God writes us in His will to receive the inheritance of eternal life that He has prepared for us! But to exalt us to this position, God has to "chasten us" or use ministers, the Word, and His Spirit to correct things in our lives. The Lord "loveth" whom he corrects! The reason that we have to go through broken times and trials that reveal to us our many flaws, is because God is trying to exalt us and bless us without measure as "sons of God." But He cannot exalt someone who is not dependent upon Him! We need to change the way that we look at correction and humbling experiences: they are signs that God loves us, considers us His sons and daughters, and that we have an inheritance waiting for us! People who do not allow God to correct their actions and habits, are spiritual "bastards," or fatherless and therefore "inheritance-less!" We should rejoice when we are being broken and feel weak, because God is about to show us His power!

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I have experienced this principle time and time in my own life. I went to college with fairly developed musical ability. Piano playing had become my strength in life and so my dreams revolved around that strength. When everything else went wrong, I had the attitude "well, at least I can play the piano better than most people." To say that I stepped onto that college campus with a "big head" is a gross understatement.

But God began turning my strength into a weakness. One of my first experiences at college was to be introduced to another piano player. When I bragged of my skill, he immediately suggested that we "exchange tricks," or, in other words, show each other our stuff. It was an humbling experience when I discovered that everything I knew he already knew and that he was far beyond my level of comprehension.

In three years of college, I never played for a choir song, or on the yearly recording that we made. To make it worse, my teachers seemed to be overly critical of my playing than others. The people that did get the opportunity to play would sometimes come to me and ask me to teach them how to play the songs, and yet I never got an opportunity to play myself. There were many prayer meetings that I asked God "why? why?" God never answered at the time, but now I know what He was doing, He was allowing my strengths to become weaknesses so that I would trust Him and give all of the glory and praise!

Since then I have had the wonderful experience of playing and singing in front of thousands of people. I have heard the compliments of many people, but now I smile when someone praises me and immediately give the glory to God! God has trusted me with His power and anointing now, only because I allowed my strength to be perfected in weakness! To God be all the glory! I have actually prayed "God, thank you for allowing me to go through those years of college without playing anything!" The lessons learned by having to trust God in what I thought was my strongest areas have forever changed my life!

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In our other text, we read the words of the Apostle Paul. In these verses we find the reason for Paul's success. Paul was discussing the wonderful spiritual experiences that God had given him and how he had seen the mighty hand of God working through his ministry. I have been studying Paul's life in detail for our Thursday night Bible study and this truth has really been upon my mind this week:

I want to remind you that Paul was raised a Pharisee before coming to Christ. He was the smartest young Pharisee and would have one day, no doubt held the office of chief teacher among them. I would like you to notice two things about the Pharisees' religion. They falsely taught that any physical handicap was a sign of sin in a person's life. We know that is false teaching, but in those days, they condemned the handicapped and the crippled. If you had any physical deformity or noticeable weakness, then you were not allowed to be a Pharisee or in the work of the temple in any way. The Pharisees also thought that they were superior to such handicapped people. Jesus, of course, healed handicapped people and blew away the Pharisees' doctrine.

The second thing about the Pharisees' teaching was that they believed that they were in an "illuminated way," and were better than everybody else. They taught that the only proper way to "see spiritually" was to view things the way that they saw them. Any other teaching was "blind" and they were the only ones with pure "sight." That's why when Jesus told them that they were the "blind leading the blind," it enraged them!

God has a purpose for the Pharisee Paul, but God had to bring about some changes in His life. It was no accident that on the road to Damascus, when Jesus met Paul face to face, that a light shown from heaven and that Paul was struck temporarily blind. God was showing at least this one Pharisee, that Jesus was the true light, and that Paul was the one truly blind. What a humiliating experience to take pride in your physical wholeness and teach your whole life that blindness was a sign of sin to suddenly be struck blind yourself and have to be led around for three days until a simple Christian man who had no great education or genealogy and did not know the scriptures as well as you did came and prayed for you to receive your sight! God wanted to use Paul, so He took what Paul considered his greatest strengths and showed him that only with God's hand and Spirit were they strengths at all! Paul's strengths had to become weaknesses so that God's strength could be made perfect!

After three days, Paul was healed of his blindness, but for the rest of his life, he kept a constant reminder of that touch by God. In our text, Paul mentions that God had given him a "thorn in the flesh" so that he would not become to prideful through the abundance of revelations that God had given him. Most theologians and Jewish history teach that Paul's "thorn in the flesh" were problems with his eyes. He probably had a wondering eye that blurred his vision from time and time and gave him headaches. God allowed an everyday reminder of the lesson taught at the road to Damascus.

Paul asked God three times for God to heal him and take this problem away!

And when God answered, He said "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness." In other words, "Paul, I'm not going to heal you because to take it away completely would cause me to not be able to trust you with the full power that I want to give you!" And Paul said, "I accept it." "I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake for when I am weak, then am I strong." "I willingly accept the brokenness so that "the power of Christ may rest upon me!"

"God, help us to realize that when you place a trial or a wilderness of brokenness in our lives, that you are trying to give us more power, more anointing, and more ability through you!" Through our weaknesses, God's strength is made perfect!

Most people have heard of the story of Jacob the deceiver. He was the one who had stolen the inheritance from his brother. He had swindled his father-in-law out of sheep and cows. Jacob had been aggressive all of his life. But God had plans for this swindler! God intended to use Jacob to form a nation called Israel. God intended to take this deceitful sinner and reveal to him the promise of the Messiah. God wanted to use his family to bring forth all of the prophets! God had great plans for Jacob. So God allowed a tough situation in Jacob's life. His brother and his deceitful past was coming to meet Jacob. In his anxiety, Jacob found himself alone in a dark time of his life. God came and began to wrestle with Jacob.

Finally, through the struggle, Jacob got desperate for God to touch him! And before God blessed him, the scripture says that God touched the upper part of Jacob's thigh and a sinew shrank, causing Jacob to limp for the rest of his life. The upper sinew of the thigh is the toughest muscle and tendon to tear in the entire human body! God was breaking Jacob's strongest point, and making it weak so that His glory and purpose could be fulfilled! He was telling Jacob, "if you want me to change you and bless you mightily, then you must first allow me to take your strength and make it a reminder that you need me!

As Christians, we often wrestle with the will of God asking God "how come you are not blessing me?" and "How come I am not seeing your promises?" But God is saying, "if you want to bless me then you must not wrestle with my efforts to break you and change you!"

Under Moses, God ordained that the upper joint of the right hind leg of a sacrifice would always be given to the ministry of God! God then said "this law will never change!" This was the same part of Jacob's leg that was touched by God that night! How do we offer this sacrifice today? By allowing to break us and tear down the stubborn and hard parts of our life! God said, "I want the hardest and toughest parts given to me as a sacrifice!"

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I close with this. Of the twelve disciples, Jesus chose three to be the leaders within the leaders. Peter, James, and John. All three were expert fishermen and fishing was their strength and where they had the most confidence in their ability. Realizing this, is it any coincidence that some of the greatest lessons that Jesus ever taught the disciples involved fish and the sea? Notice:

Jesus twice allowed them to fish and get no results until they obeyed his simple commands. When they followed the instruction of Jesus, they were given "great draughts of fishes."

Luke 5:4-7 was the first draught of fishes at the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

John 21:6 was the second draught of fishes at the ending of Jesus' ministry.

Jesus twice sent the disciples into a horrible storm where they feared for their life.

Matthew 8:24-26 was when Jesus was asleep on the boat during a terrific storm and the expert fishermen woke Him up afraid that they were going to die only to have Jesus calm the sea.

Matthew 14:25-31 was when Jesus sent the disciple by themselves into the lake in a bad storm and then came walking upon the water to them before calming the storm.

Jesus twice fed great multitudes by multiplying a few fish into many.

Matthew 14:15-21 was when Jesus fed over 5,000 men plus their families with only 5 pieces of bread and two fish.

Matthew 15:32-39 was when Jesus fed over 4,000 men plus their families with only 7 pieces of bread and a "few little fishes."

When Peter's mouth got him in trouble with the tax collectors, Jesus told him to "go fishing" and when Peter caught a fish, he found a gold coin in it's mouth that was exactly the right amount to pay the debt! (see Matthew 17:27)

Jesus was just reminding His disciples, "my strength is made perfect in weakness." "If you are to see the power and glory that I have for you, then you must allow me to work on the strengths and hard parts!" If you feel like that you are going through a trial, do not question God and give up. Instead get the attitude of the 63-year-old David in the wilderness: "God, I want to see you power and glory!" Learn the lesson of Jacob and Moses: we will only receive the blessing of God when we stop wrestling with the humbling work that He is trying to do in our life! Get the attitude of Paul when he realized that God had a purpose for his infirmity: "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." Hear the voice of God today: "my strength is made perfect in weakness!" "So trust me!"