God delights in our weakness

God delights in using the weak to shame the strong and the proud. The weaker we are, the more we need to depend on God for He is able and will deliver us.

¹⁷Christ did not send me to baptize people, but he sent me to tell the good news. I must not tell it with the clever words of this world. That would not show what the death of Christ on a cross truly means.

¹⁸When people who are turning away from God hear about the cross, they say, `That is foolish!' But for us who are being saved, the cross is the power God uses to save us.

¹⁹God says in the holy writings, `I will fool the wise people. I will bring to nothing the understanding of the clever people.'

²⁰Where are your wise people, the men who know books, the men who like to talk about the things of this world? God has shown that the clever things of this world are nothing.

²¹God is wise. But the people of the world were not wise enough to know God. So he chose to save people who believe the good news that we tell them, even though the good news may seem to be foolish.

²²The Jews say, `We must see a sign.' Those who are not Jews say, `We want something we can understand.'

²³But we tell people about Christ who died on a cross. The leaders of the Jews do not like this, and those who are not Jews laugh at it.

²⁴But some have been called by God. They are chosen, both Jews and other people. Christ is God's power to save them. This shows how wise he is.

²⁵When God seems foolish, he is more wise than men. When God seems weak, he is stronger than men.

²⁶My brothers, remember what you were when God chose you. Not many of you were wise by the way people look at it. Not many of you had power. Not many of you came from a family with a big name.

²⁷But God chose things that look foolish to the people of the world. He has used those foolish things to put the wise people to shame. God chose the weak things to put to shame the strong people.

²⁸And God chose the small things, things that people despise. Yes, he chose even the things which seem to be nothing. He did this to destroy the big things.

²⁹He did this so that people would not be proud before God.

³⁰You are God's children through Christ Jesus. Christ came from God and made us wise. He put us right with God. He made us holy. He set us free from our wrong ways.

³¹Just as the holy writings say, `No one should be proud of anything but of the Lord.'

1 Cor 1:17-31

“God does not need your strength: he has more than enough of power of his own. He asks your weakness: he has none of that himself, and he is longing, therefore, to take your weakness, and use it as the instrument in his own mighty hand. Will you not yield your weakness to him, and receive his strength?” – C.H. Spurgeon

“The farmer does not sift his wheat because he dislikes it, but just the opposite; he sifts it because it is precious. And thou, child of God, thy trials and changes, and constant catastrophes, and afflictions, are no proofs of want of affection on the part of the Most High, but the very contrary.” – C.H. Spurgeon