Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Mike Whitmer, and I titled Our Reading, When Weakness is Strength.

Drew had been in prison for two years because he served Jesus.

He'd read stories of missionaries who felt constant joy throughout their incarceration.

But he confessed, this was not his experience.

He told his wife that God had picked the wrong man to suffer for him.

She replied,

No, I think maybe he picked the right man.

This was not an accident.

Drew could likely relate to the prophet Jeremiah, who had faithfully served God by warning Judah that God would punish them for their sins.

But God's judgment hadn't fallen yet, and Judah's leaders beat Jeremiah

and put him in stocks. Jeremiah blamed God, saying,

You deceived me, Lord. The prophet believed God had failed to deliver. His word had only

brought him insult and reproach all day long. Cursed be the day I was born, Jeremiah said.

Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?

Eventually, Drew was released, but through his ordeal he began to understand that perhaps God chose him, much like he chose Jeremiah,

because he was weak. If he and Jeremiah had been naturally strong, they might have received

some of the praise for their success. But if they were naturally weak, all the glory for their

perseverance would go to God.

His frailty made him the perfect person for Jesus to use.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Jeremiah chapter 20, verses 7 through 13.

You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived. You overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day

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