Let's turn together to a passage in the word of God. Reading at 2 Corinthians chapter 12, and verses 7b, the second part of verse 7, to verse 10. I'll ask Pastor Joe to read it in Chinese to save time. Now this passage is a very important passage in the word of God. Please take careful note of every verse.
You can see, if you look carefully, that this is a passage of the greatest importance without exaggeration. When have you ever felt that your weakness is something to boast about? When have you ever thought that problems, difficulties, hardships, persecution, these are things to rejoice about? We live in an age of Christianity which thinks that God is blessing you only when there are no difficulties, when everything is going smoothly. Paul speaks of difficulties and his hardships, and every kind of shame that might be poured upon him as something to rejoice about, to boast about.
This kind of Christianity, as I said, is hard to find. The kind of message that we hear in North America these days, and elsewhere too, is that if you have hardships and difficulties, that's not of God. That's not God's will. If you are poor, that's also not God's will. If you have any sickness, that's also not God's will. Every sickness has to be healed. Every poverty must be taken away. If you are poor, it's because you don't have faith. If you had faith, you could ask for a Cadillac, and you would get a Cadillac, but you don't have faith. Here you don't speak of Cadillacs, you speak of Mercedes. In Hong Kong, you don't speak of Cadillac. This is the kind of Christianity that is spread about in the world today. You wonder whether we are reading still the same Bible or not. I wonder whether the apostle Paul listening to this will wonder if anybody has understood anything that he has written.
I am today wanting to deal with something very important, the very essence and nature of Christianity and what it is. What is a victorious Christian life? Are you living it? What is the secret of power? Do you have spiritual power in your life? What is true spirituality? Do you know what spirituality is if I ask you to define it? Those are important questions. Without spiritual power, we cannot live the Christian life.
I would like to draw your attention particularly to verse 10. Whenever I am weak, then am I strong. Now every one of these words, notice carefully. The first two words, you must be careful. I am strong. There are two parts of it obviously to the sentence, you can see. The last part is, I am strong. Are you strong? Do you feel strong? What about the past week? Did you find you had the power to cope with all the problems you faced?
When we look at the sentence and these two parts, we really want to emphasize the second part, don't we? I am strong. That's the part that appeals to us. Parallel passages that Paul speaks of, for example, in Philippians chapter 4 and verse 13. It's a well-known verse. I can do all things through Christ. That's a wonderful Christian life. I can do anything. And of course, we see in Paul's life the capacity to endure every hardship. He's the kind of Christian you seem to be able to throw anything at him and he's still going on strong.
But what about you and me? We hit a little problem and we go down. The problem is life is always full of problems. So you find that most of the time you're going down. When do you come up? Maybe you come to church. So six days of the seven days you go down. So the seventh day you collect a little bit of going up. But you can imagine if you go down six days and come up only on one day, then you're going to go into endless deficit. And I fear that the next time I come back here to preach, I don't know when that will be, I'm not going to see you here anymore. Because the deficit has resulted in bankruptcy. Spiritual bankruptcy.
But Paul's capacity to endure is amazing. Just read that long list in chapter 11, the previous chapter of 2 Corinthians. And see what other things he thinks are worth boasting about. Look at verses 24 to 28 in there. He pauses for a few moments and let Pastor Joe read it to us. Or we'll go to the first chapter of 2 Corinthians. He says, I have been in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have been in the deep. In journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren. In weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
Oh, this is a mighty man. You look at that list and I ask you which of these you could endure. He experienced shipwreck several times. Have you ever experienced that? You say that's okay, maybe Paul was a good swimmer. Maybe he was a swimming expert, no problem for him. I don't know how to swim, so the Lord won't test me that way. Being thrown into the freezing waters of the Mediterranean.
If you were a Christian, and you not only were a Christian, but you were a missionary, a full-time worker, when you go out to preach, you go out to serve the Lord, of course the Lord will prepare a smooth path for you. What does he do? He allows your boat to go down. You say, Lord, excuse me, but this is not a way to treat your servant. The point is not whether I'm a good swimmer or not. But to dunk your servant into the water unceremoniously is not a way to treat a servant of the Lord. And Lord, if you did this once to me, I will excuse you. But twice? This is unacceptable. I had trouble the first time, but the second time I can't take this. Not to mention that my Bible got all wet and soaked and ruined. And all my preaching notes disappeared. I can't read what I was going to preach.
I wonder if your Christian faith is strong enough to handle that. Not if you believe in the kind of Christianity in which God never allows one bad thing to happen to you if you are in the center of his will. Here I am his servant coming out today to preach the word to you. Surely the Lord will pave the way for me, right? And what happens? The lift gets stuck. I suffer the indignity of standing in the lift and the lift will not move. I keep pressing the button and nothing happens. And I get downstairs and I run and the bus is gone. Surely this is no way to treat a servant of the Lord.
What about you? You had a few problems and you said, Lord, why do you treat me like this? That's why I said you must understand the essence of Christianity, what it is. If you have been brought up in the kind of Christianity which tells you as long as you walk in the center of his will everything will be smooth, you may not have your road paved with roses, but at least not too many thorns.
You see Paul writes those things here in 2 Corinthians. What? To grumble about the Lord? Did you think he wrote these things here for what purpose? You know what he's writing that for? He says these things prove to you that I am a true servant of God. That's the connection between the first part and the second part of the passage we were reading just now in 2 Corinthians 11. Are they the servants of the Lord? I am more. What's the evidence? My boat sank. Isn't that amazing? Their boat didn't sink. They are not true servants of the Lord. Is that the reasoning? Am I joking? You read it and see. See if you can find another connection.
You know, in walking with the Lord, as I was saying, the amazing things. I do quite a lot of reading, almost every day without fail. And most of the books I read are of a theological nature, as you know. But even in what I read, it is amazing how the Lord leads me. I do not just grab a book and read it. I say, Lord, what do you want me to read next? And these are not devotional books, as I said. These are books of a theological nature. And they deal with the exegesis of the Bible. And I've been reading a book for the last two weeks. And by last night I was reaching the end of this book. And when I turned over the page, I could hardly believe my eyes. Because the heading of that section was exactly what I was going to preach about today. Which had to do with the qualifications, the evidence of an apostle. And refers exactly to the passage which I have here in my notes, which was written more than five weeks ago. Isn't that incredible?
And this scholar, a professor in one of the theological schools, was saying exactly the same thing what I am saying now. Paul mentions these hardships and problems, the beatings, the stonings, as evidence of the genuineness of his apostleship. That is the amazing thing. He does not in that passage refer to the evidence of him being a true apostle by even referring to his vision. The vision on the Damascus road. Writing to the Corinthians, he says, you know I am a true apostle, as claimed, in contrast to those people who say that they are true apostles. The reason you know is because of all that I have endured for the gospel. This is the truth.
And among those things are the beatings, the stoning, the shipwrecks. When he went out to preach, he did not expect that God would so soothe the hearts of the people that they would not beat him, that they would not stone him. No. Sometimes it's remarkable, I hear people say, or read in magazines or books, that the evidence of the Lord's goodness to them was that they went there and the hearts of the people were all prepared. They had a wonderful reception. And even there was a little bit of hostility in the beginning, as soon as they arrived, their hearts were changed. Poor apostle Paul. When he got there, he was stoned. Remember at one time, and left for dead. He was stoned so badly he must have been bleeding all over. He was knocked unconscious and they thought he was dead, in one heap on the ground.
If you had looked at the face of the apostle Paul with all that he had endured, you would have seen scars all over his face. And these scars he refers to as the marks of Jesus in my body. No, he did not have a warm reception. And how many times was he beaten? You know, each time he got a beating, it was with the lash, with the whip. 39 strokes on the back. Each time the whip comes down, it takes a bit of your skin. It has a cat-o'-nine-tails whip with many strips like that. When it comes down, four or five slashes come down at the same time. 39 strokes. You see there, it says 40 minus 1. That minus 1 was supposed to be an act of mercy. That was prescribed by Jewish law. Can you endure one such beating? Not to mention five. What must the apostle Paul's back look like?
Surely when the Holy Spirit works through an apostle, the power of his word will convict the hearers, and they will just fall on the ground. Well, when Stephen in Acts chapter 7 preached the word of God with power, he was stoned to death. Why didn't God protect this precious servant of his and let him be stoned to death? You dare to go out to preach the gospel? Don't think that God is going to pave the way for you. He will not. Not as a rule anyway. Maybe occasionally, but only rarely, as you can see from the scriptural experience. So unless you understand the nature of the Christian life, you will not survive.
But Paul not only doesn't complain about these things, the amazing thing is he says, I boast about it. I rejoice in my sufferings for you. He was mighty. He must be a spiritual superman to endure all this. He must be a spiritual superman.
So you may say to me, okay, okay, I get your point. Don't rub it in. I get it. To be a Christian, you have to have this capacity to endure. I understand. As a Christian, I must have spiritual power. But the apostle Paul is a superman. I'm not a superman. I can't cope with this. So let the superman go ahead and endure all this. Well, do you want to be superman? Ah, superman, that sounds good. Something that captures the imagination. Paul was superman, no? We read that in Romans 8:37, he says this. That God always makes us to be more than conquerors. Oh, that is the picture of the Christian life we like. More than conquerors. As for us, we'll be satisfied just to conquer, never mind the more. I can't remember when I ever experienced the more. I have trouble experiencing the conquering.
Sometimes I like to watch boxing. I used to play around a bit with that when I was younger. It's funny when you get used to a sport, you still like to watch it even later on. Some people think it's very savage. The two people bashing each other, and this one is all bleeding here, and the other one is all swollen there. But what you should notice is at the end of the fight, how they still are very friendly to one another. In fact, there is real sportsmanship in it. To be able to beat each other up and still to be friends at the end, this is really good.
And sometimes you have two fighters, and they bash it out for 10 rounds, 12 rounds, whatever. And they are both blue and black. So the judges have a hard time deciding which one wins. So finally one wins on what is called on points. But there's another type. When the fight starts going, in the first round, the bell rings. The two muscular heroes rush out. And then, within a few moments, one of these Goliaths is lying flat on the canvas. And the other guy had hardly warmed up yet. He has not even worked up a sweat yet. That's called more than conqueror. The first one, he won just by points. But the second one, he won decisively.
So when Paul speaks of more than conquering, he doesn't mean you just manage to make it. But one who wins with a surplus of power still in hand. So Paul seems to be speaking of a kind of superman Christianity, does he not? But most Christians find that this is not their experience. And what happens when you don't experience that? You become discouraged. You may become even frustrated. And with that comes something very dangerous. You begin to have a sense of guilt. And then you begin to ask questions like, am I regenerated? I read in the Bible to be more than conqueror but I can't make it. Is that your experience?
And you see the importance of this message. And then you look around and think, what about the other brothers and sisters? Am I the only one that's taking a beating? And then you discover that they are no better off than you. At the next Bible study, at the next Sunday service, you see them also black and blue. Obviously they're also not superman. So you look around and you wonder, are there any super people around? I know where to look for superman. It's those leaders. Look at their spiritual muscles. Yes, they are the ones. But sometimes you notice they seem to have a few small slips here and there too. Superman makes mistakes? Can't be. Not possible. So you have questions. Maybe they are not superman either. Maybe in the boxing ring they are a little bit higher up in the scale but not yet superman.
And then you begin to have a problem. You begin to be disillusioned. You begin to even become a bit cynical, a bit unhappy about the situation. But something becomes even worse. There are Christians who then begin to feel a sense of hopelessness. The Christian life cannot be lived. Not even those heroes I looked up to, those leaders in the church. And then a sense of hopelessness begins to grab you. And then you find that your Christian life goes from weakness to weakness. I can't win. The others can't win. Even the leaders, I'm not sure they can win. We are fighting a losing war. And who wants to be in a losing army? Let's get out of here before we are beaten into full surrender. And that kind of thinking I see is quite common.
But what's the way out? I see so many Christians become more and more negative. Everything they feel, they look at, is not much hope. When you see Christians in that position, you know that they are on the edge of collapse. When you read the letters of the apostle Paul, can you ever imagine he ever thought like this? The reason he didn't think like this is because he doesn't think like us. This man is truly invincible. But he is not a superman. I'll explain what I mean by that last statement.
We must understand the nature of true spirituality. We must look at this very idea of superman. I've even heard church leaders speak about superman. Let me tell you, if you start with the idea of superman, you are going to go down the drain. For the very reason I told you. Because you hardly will find anything that you would call superman. Or superwoman for that matter. But more important than that, you have to look at where this idea of superman comes from.
This idea came from a German philosopher called Nietzsche. This man was an anti-Christian philosopher. Although his father was a pastor, notice that. He turned against everything that is Christian. It's not uncommon. People who come from Christian homes who turn bitterly against Christianity because of the kind of Christianity they saw at home. Nietzsche was a very clever man. But he got obsessed with the idea of fighting against God. He even wrote a book, he wrote many books, but he wrote one called The Antichrist, in which he himself claims to be the Antichrist. Because he opposed everything that was Christian.
But if you turn against God, as God was presented to him in some wrong way, having turned against God and the gospel, what is he left with? What's he going to live for? He has lost all meaning in life. To reject the gospel is to reject any basis of hope. There is nothing that is eternal anymore. Everything is transient. So Nietzsche developed the idea of superman. His idea was, yes, man right now is not much good. But man can develop into superman. At least some men can. So what is hope? Hope is the development of man to the highest possible level of achievement. Man can save himself by his self-development. Man can develop into a super race, or at least some can.
Of course, this is the idea that the Nazis took up. That is the idea of the super race. They did it a little bit faster though. They simply declared that the German people, or the Aryan people, are the super race. Well, just how super they were, was demonstrated by the end of the Second World War. And with the collapse of Nazism and the destruction of Germany, that was the end of the superman idea. But interestingly, it was taken up by some cartoonists. Very strange. Man still has to learn somehow to trust in himself.
Yesterday I heard on the news that there was a man in China who virtually worships Mao Zedong. He collects every kind of portrait of Mao Zedong. Whether it's on his little booklet or little badges or little statues or busts. Any kind of thing he collects. And he has collected, and his aim is to get to 25,000 of these. And there is in his room a great big portrait of Mao Zedong. Every day he burns incense in front of this portrait of Mao Zedong.
# Power in Weakness (Part 2)
You think of this. Why does he do that? Because he must trust in something. And Mao Zedong symbolizes the superman for him. Anyone who has looked at the results of this cultural revolution will wonder how super is the superman. But you know the picture of the cartoonist. If no living man fits the picture of superman, well, we can still imagine one. Even if he doesn't exist, it's alright to think about one. And so you know the cartoon of superman. There's this handsome fellow, this nice wavy hair going down, D-shaped body, all these muscles bulging around. And he has this tight-fitting blue gown with something around his back, he draped down another piece of cloth. And marvelous, he can just fly in the air. The kind of stuff we do only in our dreams.
Have you flown in your dreams? Many of you have surely been flying in your dreams. I've certainly tried to fly in my dreams. I'm so much of a swimmer myself that in my dreams I can actually swim in the air. It's amazing. I fly through the air with my strokes. I'm so excited. Oh, I think it's so wonderful. I'm there in the sky. And when I wake up, I find myself in the bed. Really anti-climax. Just when I thought I was reaching the stage of superman, I have to wake up in this rude awakening. So you see, this is the dream that some people have to keep before them.
Now you understand why we cannot use the idea of superman in the Christian life. Because it is the glorification of man. It is the glorification of human power. That completely leaves God out of it. So when the rockets are shot up, you see Superman flies up there, he just turns the rocket around. What does that mean? That means man can solve his own problems. He doesn't need God. All we need to do is let man develop to a higher level and he can solve everything.
This idea is found already in the Bible. Nothing new about this. Way back in Genesis, we see that already. We see certain mighty beings called sons of God who can do amazing things. But we read also about man's achievement. The building of the tower of Babel, for example. Man is going to build his way into heaven. He's going to take his seat on the throne of God. Man's achievements are very considerable. He does indeed fire rockets, even if he can't go up and hold them back with his hand. And these rockets are great achievements. He can shoot them up into heaven, out into the universe. Great achievement. Except that with the advancement of science, man has become a little more humble. Because he's discovered how vast the universe is.
I was looking at a report about the new telescope they've set up in Hawaii. Much bigger than the one in California at Mount Palomar. It can look much further into the universe. Great achievement. But also because of that they know how small is man's achievement in the sense of rockets going anywhere. In the vastness of the universe, no rocket will reach to heaven. In fact, it won't go very far in terms of the vastness of the universe. So this whole notion of human achievement and the glorification of human achievement is what superman is about. That is why for Christians to use this idea as an example of the spiritual life is completely to miss the point.
This kind of thinking still persists in the church, even in our churches. We still see this idea of self-improvement with the intention of achieving this spiritual superman status. Because we have been indoctrinated by the present educational system to believe in the idea of continuing self-improvement. That's how every one of us thinks. We're going to go up and up from one level of schooling to another. From one degree to another. Self-improvement is what it's about. We learn to improve our memory. We improve our concentration. And when all of this needs help, we can even get a bottle of pills with a fascinating label on top. Which I saw in Singapore and also in some places in North America. Called brain power. Oh, wonderful. You just take more of these pills and your brain power improves. Of course, most of it is B vitamins inside. And your concentration has improved. And your memory has improved. And your exam results go up. You are really improving.
But when we come into the church, what do we do? Don't we do the same thing? Why do you study your Bible? It's all to know the will of God. Wonderful. But what's the real reason? Knowing the will of God is some small part of it. The real idea is to improve your grasp of the scriptures. People look at you with admiring glance. His understanding of scripture is marvelous. Of course we wouldn't say it's to impress people. It's to know the will of God. But since you know the will of God so well, why can't you live victoriously? That's another problem.
What about prayer? Surely that's very spiritual. Well, maybe or maybe not. What do you mean not? Well, we can pray in such a way that it is a bit like transcendental meditation. It can concentrate our thoughts, improve our mind. It focuses our whole mental capacity. Very good. So you have ten minutes of just quiet concentration. Very good for the mind as well as the soul. So we are sold on the idea of self-improvement, and even to improve ourselves spiritually.
Surely it's a spiritual idea. But if the reason that you want to do Bible study and praying is self-improvement in a subtle way, you still miss the point. And you will not succeed in the spiritual life.
Yes, more training. That's what it's about. I need more training. This church is ideal if you want to become superman. I have to congratulate you each one. You came to the right church. Why? Think of it. You come in and you get CT. Right away into training. You got all that knowledge. And when that's finished, there comes the next one. Then comes the basic training. Another good stretch of Bible study. Solid stuff. It's really moving you towards superman. True spirituality is not far away now. And by the time you get to IT, you're really almost arriving. Intermediate training. We're halfway there. Halfway where? Halfway to being superman perhaps. Of course, by the time you go to full time, you understand the old superman. They are already. Maybe at the end of the training, not at the beginning.
This is the church to come to. Isn't it wonderful? A very good church. You name to me any church you know in Hong Kong or anywhere in the world that can put you through three trainings equivalent to one year of full-time training in a theological school. Who can offer three different training, and together it's almost a year? By the time in fact you have gone through IT, your training level may be higher than some of the pastors in Hong Kong. Actually it is. And of course, by that time, you realize you still have to be a little bit humble. I mean, once you're halfway to becoming superman, it's not very easy to be humble. But you have to try. So we have a lot of good people in the church, they're really struggling trying to understand, how do I be humble. The whole energy that we have is expended in this struggle to remain humble.
When you're at BT, you look up to these IT people and you think I've got still some distance to go. But when you have finished IT, do you find you are living victoriously? Did you find suddenly some kind of superman achievement in your life? You just ask the IT people. Of course, you expect they will be very humble as we noticed. They say, no, no, no. I'm not superman. Not superwoman either. You see, I'm only halfway. No problem.
So you ask those in full time. Surely these are the ones. For them it's quite awkward. Are they superman or not? Never mind. Those in training, those who already finished, surely they are the ones. But of course they will never admit to that. They will be very modest. So how to handle this problem?
Never mind about those in full time. You say, I am not living victoriously and I don't know how to live. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life in training. If the only way to succeed is to go on from one training to another, and maybe even full time, you have to go on to more trainings. I don't know when I'm ever going to get there. This Christian life is impossible to live. And if we in this church with so much training have difficulty, what about those brothers and sisters in those churches who have no training at all?
Let me say this to you. If we go into all these trainings with the intention of becoming spiritually mature or superman in that sense, we have mistaken the whole thing. Even worse, those trainings will become harmful to you. They are actually dangerous if you come with the wrong motive. This is the thing I share with you very frankly. It worries me a lot. Yet the trainings are valuable. Yet every valuable thing can be misused. That's where the danger is.
So then, how do we go on from here? We have to understand now, as we conclude, the nature of what Paul is telling us. Unless we grasp that, we can never live victoriously. We must go back and think carefully in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 10. When I am weak, then am I strong.
Paul never claimed to be superman. In fact, he never was superman. The astonishing statement he goes on in chapter 13 to say is that Jesus is no superman either. Jesus in the New Testament is never presented as a superman in the way that Nietzsche spoke of it. Through the whole of John's Gospel we see that Jesus never functioned in his own power. And when you don't function in your own power, that means you yourself are nothing. Only God is something in your life. Unless you understand this, you don't understand the Christian life at all.
We must absolutely not imagine that there comes a phase in your Christian life, a level you can reach, where you can function in the power of a superman. You don't need God anymore. But as long as you always utterly depend on God, that means you are always weak. You see the danger of the idea? You must grasp it clearly. You must not even aim to reach a stage where you have so much power that you can function as it were on your own.
You must never think of your Christian life as a battery which is being charged up by one training after another, by prayer, by Bible study, by reading. And the level of charge goes up and up and up. So that after your time of prayer, or when you reach that level, you can go out and run for a long time on that battery charge. And finally when it comes a bit lower, then you come back to God for another recharge. It doesn't work like this at all. There is no time at which we do not need, moment by moment, to be living in our weakness and drawing our strength from him.
So what Paul is saying here: when I am weak, notice, when I am weak, only then am I strong. He says when I am weak. But if I am weak, at that time I am strong. That means in order to be strong at any time, at that very time, you have to be weak. That is something vital for you to understand. The two parts of this sentence can never be separated. If you feel weak, that is the time to thank God. Paul says, that is what I boast about.
Do you feel pain in your body, as I often do? Paul speaks about a thorn in his flesh. Take a thorn and push it into your flesh and see what it feels like. It's a picture of a very sharp pain in the flesh. And Christian scholars have been trying to figure out what that thorn is. Nobody can say for sure. Now if you keep complaining and say, why does God treat me like that, I have this pain in the body, you don't understand the secret of the Christian life. It is precisely in that weakness that God's power is going to be manifested to you.
And Paul says in that very passage, therefore I boast in this very thing. What? Boast in the pain. As I told you, this is a completely different kind of Christianity. When you have need, that is God's opportunity to display his power, both to you and through you to others.
You all know the story of Joni. This athletic, attractive girl. She broke her neck. Paralyzed from the neck down. She's a young person. The whole of her life is going to be spent in a wheelchair. Why does God allow such a thing to happen? And yet through her life, as you know, countless people have been blessed. Why? Precisely because God's power is manifested in her pitiful weakness.
And yet you have some problem that you feel is so terrible. I often feel there's a pain in my back, very weakening. My body always feels very weak. Notice the word weakening. Because every illness or every pain is weakening in its effect on us. And God in order to make Paul more powerful had to weaken him first. The pain of a thorn pressed into the flesh. Do you understand this principle?
Maybe you are not yet at the level where God can put a thorn in your flesh. You have not reached that level yet. You can hardly cope with the small problems you face every day. The quality of your Christian life will be seen in proportion to the problems you face.
There's another sister. Imagine you have to live in the dark, day in and day out. You're always living in the night. Yet again through her weakness, God's power was manifested. And again millions of people were blessed through her life. Your weakness is God's opportunity to show how extraordinary is his power in your life. This is the glory of Christianity, not that there are no problems. But precisely in the power to overcome every problem, even a broken neck and paralysis.
Where else is God's power going to be manifested in our lives? Do you think God's glory is manifested in me because I can drive a Mercedes around? I don't need to be a Christian to drive a Mercedes. But I need to be a Christian to glorify God, to let his power be manifested in me with a thorn in the flesh. I don't need God's power for me to live in a great big beautiful house. But I do need God's power when for the sake of the gospel I have nowhere to live at all.
You remember that I have shared in my early Christian experience. Precisely the glory of God manifested in a brother called Yang Ziye. He had the secret of the apostle Paul in his life. For him, poverty, which he accepted having given up his job to preach the gospel, was something that he gloried in, he rejoiced in. As I have shared before, we lived together for several months. You think I learned most from him about how to read the Bible? Actually, where I learned about the glory of God was the way he handled difficulties and problems. That's the place. And both of us had no money. Sometimes we could manage one small fish between us. No money even to buy vegetables. A little bit of rice. And his thanksgiving and praise to God for that tiny little fish, I still remember. He was constantly being pursued by the police. This was in Shanghai, of course. But this joy in the Lord, in the face of every problem, that is where I saw the glory of the Lord.
Do you understand this secret? Paul says that I am crucified with Christ. Not I was, I am. I am. To be crucified is to be regarded as a criminal. It also means suffering and death. Crucifixion is the symbol of absolute weakness. And it is precisely this that Paul sees as the center of his life. Because precisely there, he is in fellowship with Christ.
Have you read the Beatitudes? Look at the Beatitudes, and every one of them have to do with weakness. Blessed are the poor. The poor are weak. Those are the weak ones. Blessed are those persecuted. Again, they have no defense. They are being persecuted. They are the weak ones. That's how the Lord opened his teaching, trying to impress on our slow minds that the whole secret of the Christian life is that God is the God of the weak. His power is there manifested.
David was called a man after God's own heart. Was it because he was a superman? Exactly the opposite. He was the one who deeply appreciated the fact that God loves and lives with the poor, the weak, the humble. In Psalm 34 verse 18, David writes this. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.
I have experienced in my own life, time and again, the wonder of the Lord. In my testimony, for example, I keep on experiencing so many expressions of God's power. And what worries me is that I seldom have the chance to hear anybody else sharing much about that. I wonder why you don't experience the wonder of God's working. And somebody asked me, why is it that you all the time experience one wonderful thing, one miracle after another? I wonder why. Because I am superman? He said, that can't be right. You just said no. Exactly. You are right. I am no superman. I am nothing. That's exactly why God works. Because it was in my weakness, in my need, that is why God keeps manifesting himself.
The problem is that you are much more superman than me. It's true. You don't have the needs that I have. That's why you don't experience the Lord. That's why I am sorry for you. As I said in Penang. You are just too well-to-do. Not to say that you are rich. But you are so well-to-do, enough to live on, that you never have to experience God's provision. So you will not experience God's grace.
As I shared about Shanghai. I have nothing to eat. And God creates a wonder for me. He is not going to let me starve. If He is going to let me starve, then I accept that too. But He will not let me starve. That's why I had that amazing miracle where He multiplies the food for me. You will remember I have shared that in my testimony.
I have run into every kind of problem you can imagine. I had so many problems with passport when I was in England studying. I was one of the very few people at that time who came out on a Chinese passport. You can imagine that in those days with a Chinese passport, everybody looks at you with very strange eyes. Every time I had to pass through from one country to another, I was always kept at the border for a long time. Because at that time, nobody had seen a Chinese passport. So the result was that the passport was passed around from one immigration officer to another. They were all studying this as some very unusual object. And the result was that I had great difficulty getting visas.
I also had a lot of trouble staying in England. Even when I was at the Bible institute in Scotland, and then my visa ran out. The British Home Office for some reason didn't extend my visa. And I went so far that I had to leave. I had to go the cheapest way to go to London. I was to get on the bus. And some fellow students went to see me off at the bus station. And I got onto the bus and said goodbye to everybody. And I thought, well, the Lord allowed me to come here to study for a few terms, and now it's over. Never mind. I'm not here for a diploma or a paper. But there is always the state, nowhere to go. And then as I said goodbye to everybody, there in the distance I see somebody running, panting, running along. The bus was about to close the door, and this one was shouting, wait, wait, wait. The bus driver thought that this guy was late to catch the bus to London. And when he came up, he told me to come off the bus. We've just had a cable from London to say you can stay. I thought, that timing is really something. One minute later the bus would have gone. They wouldn't be able to find me again. God's timing is remarkable.
And all these things I experienced God's doings. I went on to finish my studies in spite of visa problems, in spite of having no money. No money. Imagine going through year after year of study. So many times I would face a new term without having any idea how I would pay the fees for that term. Even when I went into university was the same problem. The first year, the new term was when I was just starting. I couldn't even pay the first term fees. Again, I left it with the Lord. To me, it doesn't matter whether one has a degree or not. Do you think God cares about such things? So, it doesn't matter. I went through the whole of my program never knowing if I would ever finish or not.
The day before I had to pay my fees in that first term, I received a letter. I opened the letter. There was nothing inside except a check. And that was just enough to pay my fees. To this day, I don't know where it came from. And I never received another one like it. Every term, God had another way to provide. So, when I graduated, I realized it was not my accomplishment.
My mother was very anti-Christian. And very hardened because of her bad experiences of Christianity. We had lost everything in China. She was in very bad health. She didn't even have money to pay her medical fees. One of the great things she felt so bad about was that she had to let her parents pay for her expensive medical fees. So, she had no way to help me when I was studying in England. My father, too. As I said, we had lost everything in China.
My mother used to ask me, how are you getting on with your studies? She meant financially, how do you pay for all this? Three years of Bible school and theological school. Three years of university. Another several years of university. And so it went on like this. In fact, the university alone went through some five years. And so, my mother said, how is this possible? I used to say, God, my Father, provides everything. She said, I don't understand. So, when I tried to talk to her about the gospel, she doesn't want to listen. But to her, the constant mystery is how is it possible to live in a country like England, where things are very expensive? And so, when I graduated, she could only be convinced if she saw my degree, my diploma. When she looked at it, not because she was impressed with the diploma. But she said, your God is real. She was amazed. You see, this is the kind of thing that in my weakness, in my poverty, she knew I'm absolutely poor, I have nothing. And yet, I was able to complete all the studies. It was one miracle after another. That's why I said at the beginning, you're unfortunate because you are too well-to-do.
# Power in Weakness (Part 3)
To prevent God having to help you in your life. Also, you are too healthy. You have too good a passport and citizenship. God doesn't have to help you out. Look at your life and ask yourself, where is my need? Now you know the blessed are the poor. Why did the Lord say that? Blessed are they. They are weak and God will intervene. If your only need is psychological, if that's all you need, you can glue your eyes to the TV and forget your problems. These are psychological problems. You look for psychological solutions. You simply do not know whether God is real or not. You don't know.
And when I tell you about what I experienced, you say, ah, well, maybe he's a bit exhausted. And you might even go so far to say maybe he's exaggerating. Or you might think, it's just too big. Because it's hard to believe these things, isn't it? When you didn't experience it yourself. In fact, if anything, I tend to underplay the story. When you're actually in it, it's much more exciting than when you're retelling the story. Can you imagine the feeling when you look into a pot where you think that the food is gone only to see that the food level is still there? You see, this kind of thing doesn't come out in the telling. You just say, oh, God provided the food. Well, so. It's amazing when you experience it yourself.
All the time when I was so weak physically, in my preaching tours in Eastern Canada. I couldn't even stand up on my feet. I was so exhausted. Literally couldn't get up. I tried several times. I found I couldn't. It was amazing even to me. And several of the people that were there watched me. It was pitiful. I was struggling to get up out of the bed and I couldn't get up. My legs were like rubber. And I was to preach that same night. It was publicized everywhere. I'm going to preach there at the university at the Christian fellowship.
And then in the morning they came to see me and I said, I can't get up. They were so worried. Where are we going to find the speaker? We're going to ask people to come see you. And anyway, we could find another speaker, but they don't want to listen to that one because it's already been advertised. So I looked at all these worried leaders and I said, relax. By night time, when it's time to go, God will give me the strength to go. There is one verse that time and again comes back to me when I'm very, very tired. As your days, so shall your strength be. God will give you the strength. That was the reason for my confidence. God will not let me down.
They looked at me. In this condition, in the morning you are like this. What are you going to be in the evening? Surely you will be worse in the evening. Evening came. And I got up. I didn't even need to be carried. I walked there. And even up the stairs. And I preached the word of God with such vigor that when I looked down at the leaders sitting down there, their mouths were open in astonishment. This guy who couldn't get up in the morning is preaching with such energy. And even after that, I carried on with the counseling. It's because of my weakness that I have the opportunity to experience the power of God. Oh, this is wonderful to be weak. In my weakness. When I am weak, then am I strong. That's why I all the time now want to be weak, so that I can continue to experience his power.
When I served the Lord in England, I preached for five years in the ministry in Liverpool. Pastoring the church there. I never accepted one cent of pay for my ministry. I never had a salary. And most church members didn't know that. What's the matter with me? Am I so rich? You know why? I wanted to be poor so that I could experience God's provision for me. The Lord said, sell that you have and follow me. You say, this is crazy. But you know what? God then provides for the needs of the people. If you follow a Jesus who can feed 5,000 people in the desert, do you have to worry? Unless you don't believe it, of course. I believe. I have to believe. Because I've experienced it again and again.
After five years in Liverpool, when I left the church to go to Canada for the first time, the church realized that I for five years had not received a salary. May I tell you something very funny in closing? Since I was going to Canada as an immigrant to take up the pastorate there, I had to declare how much money I was bringing into Canada. And I thought to myself, if I say $10, I don't know how the Canadian customs and immigration will look at this. But then I said, what about $100? I might not have $100. Surely you've served the Lord for all these years, you've been a professional by the world's standard. And a pastor in England is very highly regarded. Somebody told me that some pastors in North America, they get $60,000 or more per year. So if I declare that I have only $100, they might be wondering, have you been pastoring somewhere or not? And how do you support a wife and a child as well?
So I thought to myself, no, this will not be very good. Maybe I will just put a higher figure. So I wrote $1,000 Canadian dollars. I don't have anywhere near $1,000. As I said, I thought I might have trouble even getting $100 together. And so we went on the plane and we said goodbye to all the dear people in Liverpool. And of course, when we got on the plane, many people were crying and expressing their grief at our departure. After all, we've been together five years already in Liverpool. And of course, many gave us cards and things as we went onto the plane.
So when we got on the plane, we opened the envelopes to see the cards. And various ones had some money inside. So finally, we arrived in Canada. And to my surprise, the immigration officer, I thought he wouldn't ask. He said, you have written here $1,000. I thought that was just a formality. He said, would you show me the $1,000? I thought, oh dear. So I said to Helen, there was some money in those envelopes. We had to count them. So out of my pocket, out of the bag, we put everything together to count it. I think the immigration officer never saw something so ridiculous. He thought I would just flash, yes, $1,000. Instead, there's all these torn envelopes and bits of dollars coming out.
Let me tell you the amazing thing. By now you have guessed it. Exactly. Added together was $1,000. Notice, it came from all different sources. There was no way for me to calculate $1,000. Without exaggeration, exactly $1,000. Is God real? Our God is true. Blessed are the poor. God will reveal himself. Let us be quiet before God.