One of the reasons that biblical Christianity has to be so drastically distorted in order to be sold to mass markets is because the markets want power to escape from weakness in leisure and biblical Christianity offers power to endure weakness in love.

Verse 9 doesn't sell.

Jesus said in response to Paul's prayer, My grace is sufficient for you.

My power is made perfect in weakness. Notice in weakness. What the market wants is power from weakness, out of weakness, away from weakness.

And what Christianity offers is power in weakness.

And therefore to sell it you change it. But we lose two important things.

When you distort the message in order to sell it, you lose

number one, the truth of the message. And more tragically, really it's all the same.

Number two, you lose the capacity to meet the real need that you and I have in adversity.

The really deep need is not for immediate escape. That's not the real need you brought into this room this morning.

You feel that must be

the end of our time this morning you will know of a far deeper need

in adversity, weakness that must be met or all the escape from weakness in the world won't satisfy your heart in the end.

So what I want to do this morning is for God's truth sake and for your and my need's sake, try my best to unfold this text with as little distortion as possible. It's in front of you on the page.

If you have a Bible, you judge my exposition. I have three questions. I want to try to answer.

Number one, what are the weaknesses being spoken of here? When Paul says,

the power of Christ is made perfect in my weakness. What is the weakness?

Number two, what's the source of weaknesses?

Where do they come from?

Are they from Satan?

Are they from God?

Are they from both? Some interplay? Number three, what's the purpose? Is there a goal for my weaknesses? If Satan causes him, what's his goal? If God causes him, what's his goal? If they are somehow intertwined, what's their goal?

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