Shaped Through Our Weakness (Derik Fuller) | Shaped by Jesus

Can I ask you to turn your Bibles to Luke Chapter 9?

Luke 9 · chapter mention

Luke Chapter 9? We're going to be reading verses

Luke 9 · chapter mention

27 to 43 this morning. Luke Chapter 9, verse 27 to 43.

Luke 9:27–43

Sorry, 37 to 43. I gave you guys 10 extra verses.

You're going to be like we were covering that last week,

starting verse 37. The next day, when they came

down from the mountain, a large crowd met him.

Just then a man from the crowd cried out.

Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, because he's my only child.

A spirit seizes him. Suddenly he shrieks and it

throws him into convulsions until he foams at the mouth,

severely bruising them, and it's scarcely ever leaves him.

I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they couldn't.

Jesus replied. You unbelieving and perverse

generation, how long will I be with you and put up with you?

Bring your son here. And as the boy was still

approaching, the demon knocked him down and threw him into

severe convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean

spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his Father, and they

were all astonished at the greatness of God.

You've probably heard these 3 words or read them on AT shirt

or a hoodie somewhere. You are enough.

It's a phrase that grew in popularity really beginning in

the early to mid 2000s with the self help guru Brené Brown.

And then as we got into the 20 tens, gained a lot of traction

through social media influencers on Instagram and TikTok.

And so today you can buy a whole bunch of you are enough merch.

You can buy hoodies, buy key chains, you can buy T-shirts.

You can even buy the item that I'm about to have put up behind

me if you would like a crocheted rose in a pot holding a little

sign with the first saying saying you are enough.

Actually, it's not. This is not very Dutch of me.

That's not a rose, that's a Tulip.

That's a Tulip. And I understand the sentiment

behind those 3 words. It's, it's something that

resonates with a whole group of people and, and A and a culture

in a time where we feel exhausted from trying to measure

up to other people's definitions of what enough is.

We're just living in a time where we've always had

comparison going on, but we've never always had comparison in

our hand 24 hours a day looking into the lives of other people,

looking at standards that are set for us in the area of, of

beauty, of strength, of success, of accomplishment, and just

being like, I can't do that. That's not me.

And lots of us, I think, just feel an overall sense underlying

a whole bunch of stuff of inadequacy.

We just don't measure up. We, we, we want to, we, we, we

crave somebody to tell us that we are enough because we think

that being enough is what would give us value.

The question, though, isn't whether we understand why the

statement is out there. The question is, is that

statement true? Are you and I really enough?

And I can just say for me, man, there's a whole bunch of areas

in my life, things that I have come to discover over the course

of my life, sometimes the really hard way where I'm just not

enough. If you're looking for somebody

to pick a suit and a tie and match those things together, I

am not enough. You did not want the color blind

guy picking that. In fact, you don't even want the

color blind guy to be the guy who's telling you if there's a

stop sign coming up, right, Amanda?

She just shook her head no, Just so you know, or trying to

explain a movie character to your kids because you told them

that was the blue guy and they're like that, that guy's

purple, right? I just, I'm not enough in the

area of color. I'm not enough.

If you're the guy, if you want a guy who's going to fix your car

and check your oil, I'm not him. That's not me.

If you want a person to organize your paperwork, you can talk to

Jolene. She will tell you I'm not the

person. I am not enough, as I found out

over and over again, to fix somebody's marriage or to fix

your kid or to fix your finances.

And I can't even fix myself. Every Sunday I stand up here or

stand in Brant or Kitchener at our Arabic site and I preach

and, and I know this reality. I'm not enough.

The things that God has asked me to bring before you and to

communicate, I am not capable of getting through to you.

I'm not enough, and neither are you.

And no matter how many times you repeat that phrase to yourself,

it doesn't change the reality that you and I are not enough.

That was the problem in the passage today.

For almost all the characters in this story, they weren't enough.

There was a Father who wasn't enough.

There were a group of disciples who weren't enough.

There's religious leaders in Matthew's record of this story

who were also present there. And Jesus makes it very clear to

them they're not enough. So let's let's start by looking

at some of these characters who just put to bed the lie that

we're enough. Let's start with the dad.

This, this guy, he is dealing with one of the hardest things

that any parent ever has to deal with.

He is dealing and coming face to face with this reality that he's

not enough, that he can't fix his kid.

I, I can't imagine what this guy is going through.

Can't imagine the pain and the anguish and the frustration that

he has encountered seeing his only son ravaged by this evil

demonic power. This power that that Luke tells

us is causing him to foam at the mouth and throw him into

convulsions that is bruising his body.

Matthew 17 gives us some additional information about

what has happened to this young man.

The the Father told Jesus in this in Matthew's recording that

he often falls into the fire and he often falls into the water or

into pools of water where he's a danger of drowning.

If someone doesn't yank him out, he's being burned and he's being

drowned. Mark tells us in his account

that this man had had been made unable to speak, couldn't

communicate. And Mark says it's been going on

since childhood. So we talk about this.

This boy, he's not a boy. He's a young man.

And there's been an extended period.

We don't know how long that this has been going on in his life.

And the father has had to watch it and he's been powerless to

fix it. And I'm just going to tell you,

maybe you're a new parent. When you're a parent for any

period of time, you come to a realization, usually when your

kids start to get into later double digits, that there's just

things that you can't protect your kids from that you can't

fix in your kids. It's the scariest thing.

I, I, I remember really clearly going to Maya's kindergarten

orientation and, and be in there and watch and she's going to be

put into this class. It was it was either late May or

early June. And and while she's there, I'm

kind of, we're just supposed to be in there observing.

Maya probably doesn't remember this.

There were two little girls who started to treat her cruelly.

And while the teacher wasn't looking, I sobbed up to those

two little girls. And I said, if I ever find out

that you have been mean to my child, there is no place you

will be able to hide. No, I probably shouldn't have

done that. And if those girls happen to

hear this along the way, I'm sorry for that.

But there's something in us as parents that we just fiercely

want to be able to protect and and put bubble wrap around our

kids, right? And yet eventually, the cruelty

and the evil in this world ends up affecting all of our kids.

See, mom and Dad, you're not enough.

You won't be able to fix everything that your kids come

up against. You won't be able to protect

them from everything in this world.

This is contrast, right? This is intentional contrast by

Luke of last week and this week. Last week.

We are up on the mountain in glory and nobody wants to leave.

This week we're down in the valley and we are confronted

with the reality of the brokenness and evil of this

world. And I'm just going to tell you

because some of you still think in your head, you can protect

your kids. You can bubble wrap if you just

get them out far enough. It's OK if you just build that

bubble big enough. Guess what?

The problem is sin doesn't just live outside the bubble, it

lives in the bubble. See, sin isn't an out there

problem for us, it's an in here problem for us.

I assume nobody here taught their child how to bite and hit

Like you didn't start practicing that with your kids, right?

First we're going to practice please and thank yous, and next

week we're going to work on bitings and hits.

Nobody does that. You didn't have to teach your

kid how to to lie and and deceive you.

You didn't have to teach them. Nobody has ever had to teach a 1

1/2, a 2 1/2, a three and a half, a 20 and a half, a 30 and

a half, a 50 1/2 year old. How to be selfish comes

naturally to us, see, on our own, we're not enough to fix

what's broken. The disciples, they're in this

story. And guess what?

They're very clearly not enough. It's this very humbling moment,

an incredibly humbling moment in this passage, especially if you

remember where we started in Luke 9, as we started into this.

Remember Luke 91? We get this, this picture.

Jesus is bringing all the disciples and they've been

walking with him. They've been learning from him.

Now Jesus is going to send them out.

And so in Luke 9/1, he summons the 12 and it says he gave them

power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases.

And yet here they are with this demonic evil power and they are

powerless. They had come to a point where

they thought that they could do it on their own.

They thought that the power didn't just rest in them, it

came from them. They had enough when they were

out and casting out demons and going out from town to town,

they had enough. Until they didn't.

Because it didn't work this time.

What does the dad say? The father says, hey, I I knew I

couldn't do it, so I came and I begged your disciples to drive

it out. And guess what?

They couldn't. So many times in the Christian

life, man, I have gotten to a place where I thought, you know,

I've been doing this long enough, I've been at this long

enough, I've got enough experience.

I got this, I got this. And that's almost immediately

when I fall flat on my face, when I go into a situation and

I'm relying on my experience, on my gifting, on my ability, on my

force of will, when my thought process just starts going, you

know, if I could just if I could just talk to that person, we

could just sit down. I could convince them I could

fix this. And time and time again, I find

out when I get into that spot, I'm not enough.

What about the religious leaders?

Mark 9 talks about some religious leaders being there.

Mark 9/14, it says when they came to the disciples, when they

came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, they saw a

large crowd around them and the scribes were disputing with

them, that is the other disciples who were left behind.

And so there's this dispute and debate going on between the

religious leaders, the scribes and the disciples.

And, and in the context of what's going on here and what is

happening in the broader story of the Gospels, what's happening

is that they are sitting there and they're shaking their finger

at the disciples. They're saying, see, these guys

are a fraud because they follow a fraud Messiah.

They, they can't do this. And so they're seizing on this

moment, looking at Jesus followers who are failing to

discredit the one they're following.

Still happens today, right? Because their issue was they

were looking for a very different Messiah.

They didn't like this Messiah. They wanted a Messiah who was

going to come to praise them as the holy, religious, righteous

leaders. They they were waiting for a

Messiah. And they believe the Messiah

would come when they had been righteous enough to force his

hand, when they had made the nation righteous enough.

Then then Jesus would come and owe them, and he would do all

that needed to be done to rescue them from the Romans.

They wanted a Messiah who came and recognized that they were

enough, that they deserved his salvation.

And Jesus responds and says, you unbelieving and perverse

generation, all their striving, all their efforts, all their

religiosity wasn't enough to impress Jesus.

We want to believe that we're enough.

I want to believe I'm enough. We want to believe that on our

own we are sufficient to measure up.

We want to believe that we can validate ourselves, that we can

justify ourselves, to use a religious, a Christian term.

But it's a lie. It's a comforting lie, but it's

still a lie. And it's a lie that we know deep

down as a lie. And So what do we do?

What do we do? Where does that leave us?

Is it just our then the lot to know that we can't measure up,

that sooner or later we come up against our stuff that that just

we're going to fall flat on our face on, but we just keep on

pushing and striving and trying and trying harder and trying

harder anyhow? Or do we come to a point where

we resign ourselves that this is all a failure, just throw our

hands up in the air and kind of give up?

If we're not enough, then what are we supposed to do?

The answer is we go to the same person that this Father goes to.

When we're not enough, we go to the one who is not only enough,

he's more than enough. Jesus is more than enough.

You know, he said that the Father says, teacher, I beg you,

would you come look at my son? And then in verse 42, we see

that as the boy was still approaching, the demon knocked

him down and threw him into severe convulsions.

But where? Where the disciples had not been

enough and where the Father was not enough to protect and to fix

what was broken in this child, Jesus rebuked the unclean

spirit, healed the boy, gave him back to the Father.

He did it all. Jesus fixes the problem that

everybody else was powerless to solve.

And and I would argue to you that actually the very thing

that kept the disciples from being able to do what they

should have been able to do was thinking that it was them who

could do it. Mark 928 and 29 says this.

After he had gone into the house, his disciples asked him

privately, why couldn't we drive it out?

He told them, this type can come out by nothing but prayer.

See, the power that they needed to accomplish this came by

prayer. It came from God.

The power that they had been using before had been granted to

them by Jesus, but somewhere along the line they had started

to think that the power belonged to them and they they could kind

of just do it on their own. Maybe that was enough.

And how often do we do that, right?

If you're a follower of Jesus, to start as a follower of Jesus

is to come to this point of recognition of total dependency.

To to recognize it is literally the cry that sets us free and

gets us to the point where we can receive Christ as Savior is

the cry of saying I'm not enough, Jesus, I'm not enough.

If we have to come to that point of dependency to recognize my

righteous religious activities, my goodness, my morality is

simply not enough. But Jesus, you are enough.

Your death on the cross was enough and more than enough to

cover over all my sins. It is only by believing in the

power of Jesus to save on the cross and through his

resurrection that we can be saved.

Romans 10/8 and 9:00. We're going to put it up on the

screen for you. Paul says this is the message of

faith that we proclaim. If you confess, if you believe,

if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that that

Jesus is the Messiah, he's the God, He's the only one who can

save and rescue you, and you believe in your heart that God

was the one who raised him up from the dead, then you will be

saved. Nothing about you doing anything

in that other than just receiving and recognizing what

Jesus did. It's crying out, Jesus, I'm not

enough, but you're more than enough.

And so the whole whack load of us in this room have come to

that point, watching online, you're there, you've believed

that you started into this life of following Jesus saying I'm

not enough. And then Jesus gives us the

Spirit, just like he gave power to the disciples, He gives the

Spirit, the Holy Spirit to all of us as his disciples to

empower us and to guide us and to gift us and to make us new.

And after a while of doing this, sooner or later, most of us come

to a point where we start to live, act and believe as if we

are doing the work. And the Spirit is maybe given a

little nudge and help here and there.

I'm going to throw a picture up on the screen.

Some of you will be familiar with this little contraption.

It's called a trailer bike. And and it's something you put

on the back of your bike as you've got a kid who's starting

to learn how to ride a bike and doesn't go in kind of those

little tent trailers on the back anymore.

And you get a kid and they they get to kind of pedal along on

the back. They get to participate in the

ride. But guess what?

If the adult who's on the front stops pedaling that bike, there

is not enough power in the rear to keep the bike going.

If the adult stops pedaling, the power is gone.

In the Christian life, if the Spirit isn't doing the work, the

power is gone. You might deceive yourself into

thinking you're doing the work and you're doing the pedaling.

You don't do SWAT. You're just like the kid on the

back of the bike. You get to participate.

It's glorious, it's awesome. You get to go along for the ride

and you should keep those feet pedaling, but you're not doing

the work. The number one indicator that

you've fallen into the trap of forgetting that it's Jesus who's

doing the work. It's the Holy Spirit who's doing

the work. You know what the number one

indicator is? Our lives begin to be marked

more by doing than by praying. Soon as your life begins to be

marked more by doing things for God, then by crying out to God

to help Him do the things you can't do, you're in trouble.

See, when we understand that God is doing the work and inviting

us into it, and that nothing ultimately gets done without Him

doing the work that needs to get done, prayer moves from our last

resort in life to our first response in situations.

So let me ask you a few questions in your life right

now. Are you spending more time

trying to fix your friends, fix your kids, fix your spouse?

Then you are praying for them is your solution to the to the sin

that you're struggling with it is your solution more about

trying harder or inviting the Holy Spirit in more in those

moments of temptation? Are you trying to overcome the

struggle that we all come up with it sometimes?

This struggle that we started talking about, about this

struggle with self doubt and self worth.

By looking inside yourself or looking to others to validate

your value and your worth, or by looking to God's word and seeing

men, you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

The God of the universe loves you so much He sent his Son to

die for you. I just need you to know we start

off by saying you are not enough.

That does not mean that you are not incredibly, incredibly

valuable. You have unbelievable value, but

you just are not going to recognize that value by

validating yourself or seeking validation from others.

Now here's some good news. The good news in all this is

when we believe that we are not enough, but that Jesus is

enough. It's enough.

It's enough. The solution to the problems

that we all face in in making our way through this fallen and

broken world is not to believe harder in ourselves.

It's to ask God to help us believe more in Him.

Again, let me take you to Mark's account of this story.

It's one of my absolute favorite prayers in all of scripture that

comes out of this story. See Mark records it this way.

The Father came to Jesus and he said, listen, if you can do

anything, if you could just do anything, have compassion on us

and help us. Jesus said to him, if you can,

everything is possible for the one who believes.

Let me unpack that First. Let me unpack Jesus statement

saying if you would really believe in me, if you would

really know me, you would trust me to be enough and trust that I

am always enough. Because belief in Jesus is

always enough to fix anything and everything.

And here's what I mean by that. Why is that?

Because if you believe in Jesus, one day you will be with Jesus

when he fixes everything and anything.

See that is the absolute promise.

Jesus is going to fix it all. Romans 10/9 says if you confess

with your mouth, Jesus is the Lord, believe in your heart, God

raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And we think of that as some disembodied salvation taken up

into into clouds and woo woo playing harps and stuff.

That's not it. Jesus came to rescue and redeem

everything, a new heaven, a new earth, all creation to set right

all that was broken and wrong. He didn't like design physical

matter by accident. It was the point for you to be a

physical embodied being. And His plan is to renew and

restore all things to the way it was meant to be.

And so that means someday, fully, completely forever, you

will be healed. I don't know whether it's going

to happen this side of glory or the next, but I have zero

question that it will happen. You will be set free of of

temptation and sin. You may struggle your entire

life, but I'm telling you, there's a day coming where

you're not going to struggle anymore.

You will enjoy the fullness of the world without evil, without

injustice, without pain, without heartache, without loss, just as

God made it to be. If you believe Jesus, that's all

it requires. But this is where it gets really

good. We all have moments where we

struggle to believe what we believe, right?

Probably today you'll have a moment where, like the thing

that you say you believe up here is not somehow reaching here.

It's not being lived out in the way that you live.

What do we do in those moments where I believe, but I'm not

sure that I believe. We ask God to help be enough for

us, even in our unbelief. Immediately upon Jesus saying

what he said to this man, if I can do anything, you just just

believe. Immediately the father of the

boy cried out. I do believe.

Help me in my unbelief. What a prayer, man.

That is a prayer that so many of us need to pray so often.

I believe. Help me in my unbelief.

Help me in those areas, Lord. Where?

Where? Yeah.

If I was given the test and the exam, I know the right thing to

say. I know the right answer to give.

But I'm not sure I want to believe it, but I'm not sure

that I really believe that you can fix what's broken in this

situation. I just want to tell you, your

family is not beyond Jesus's ability to save.

Your situation is not so far gone that Jesus can't do

anything about it. It's beyond his ability.

If you believe in Jesus, one day all that is broken and all that

breaks our hearts. And I don't know how this all

works. I just believe Jesus is going to

make it right. Evil is defeated, sin is

destroyed, the power of darkness and death is forever expelled.

That's the way the story ends with Jesus the Father didn't

come with perfect faith. He came with desperate faith.

And he prayed the really the most feeble prayer that anybody

could pray. I believe but I don't really

believe helped me in my own belief that's it feels so feeble

and yet cried out to God with true humility and true

desperation. It is more powerful than

anything that you can do in your own strength and flesh.

Only when we we we get to the point where we're fully honest

about our weakness are we ready to actually see Jesus working

strength. Theo Moody said this.

He said God sends no one away empty except those who are full

of themselves. See, some of you think what

disqualifies you from coming to Jesus is your weakness.

But weakness is exactly what qualifies you to come.

The only people that Jesus can't help are the people who think

they don't need Jesus's help. So stop trying to be enough and

start trusting that Jesus is enough for you.

Just as we come to a close here and begin to wrap this up, I

want to give you some time this morning.

Just reflect on what God is saying to you through this

message, through this story, through this encounter.

What is the Holy Spirit been pushing on you?

1st I just say if you've never cried out that cry of desperate

prayer for salvation to Jesus did to say Jesus, I know deep

down I am not enough. I'm not sufficient.

I can't do this. I haven't earned your love and

your salvation. You just cry out to him and you

say but you, you died because you love me.

You forgive my sins. I want to follow you then let

today be that day and know that it is true.

The words of Romans 10/9 and 10 right?

If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe

in our heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be

saved. But then for those of you who

who Yeah, you're there. You know that salvation reality

to be true. Are there areas where you have

been trying and instead this morning, maybe you need to try

praying, Maybe it's in that area of trying to fix your marriage.

I, I truly, honestly, I tell couples that I meet with all the

time. I believe that one of the

reasons that Amanda and I are together today, that I love that

woman more than I loved her the day we first met or the day we

said I do on on the stage in the church where we got married.

I believe it's because my wife is way smarter than me and she

was the one who came to recognition about a little while

into our marriage, but longer than I wish it would have taken,

where she realized that we were never going to change one

another. No amount of nagging, no amount

of complaining, no amount of fighting, bickering, arguing,

passive aggressive behavior, no amount of self help books,

marriage books was going to ultimately change the other

person. What was going to change the

other person was believing that Jesus could change the other

person and go in and, and, and taking the thing that was

bothering us or the thing that was a struggle in our marriage

and coming to them and putting it before them.

But then putting it before the Lord and saying if this is me,

change me. And if this is them, change

them. And Lord, if you don't change

anybody, then give me the patience to be able to live with

this until you do. Or can you trust not just your

marriage, but your kids to a God who loves them more than even

you love them? Maybe your prayer today needs to

be Lord, I believe that you love them more than me.

Help me in my unbelief. I know how hard it is to believe

that somebody could love your kids more than you.

God loves your kids more than you love your kids, and He can

do for them what you can't. Maybe today, maybe you need to

just ask God to give you the faith to believe the prayers

that you've been offering before him, that quite honestly, you've

started to struggle to believe God.

Maybe your prayer is just this God, I have believed in you for

blank. But if I'm honest, I haven't

really. I know there's a disconnect

here. Help me in my unbelief.

Help me really, truly believe that you could do something

about this there. There might not be anybody in

all of church history who got used in a greater way for

greater purposes to build this church than the Apostle Paul.

In 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul talks about a a, a gift that God

had given to him that felt like anything but a gift was the gift

of weakness. The he said he had this thorn in

the flesh. We're never told what it was,

whether it was spiritual or physical.

He had this thing that he said was from Satan.

It was just it he kept on bashing his head against it was

it was keeping him from being enough and he was crying out for

it to be removed. He cried out fervently, and

ultimately the Lord says this to him.

He says My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made

perfect in your weakness. And this was Paul's response.

Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my

weakness so that Christ's power can reside in me.

So I take pleasure in my weakness, insults, hardships,

persecution, and in difficulties for the sake of Christ.

For when I am weak, that's when I'm strong.

Paul thanked God for the constant reminder that he was

not enough, because it was a constant reminder and a constant

call to the One who is enough. Without it, he even says

himself, he would have grown arrogant.

He would have grown boastful. He would have believed that he

was doing this all in his own strength, that he was pedaling

that bike forward. But because he knew his weakness

and he knew how desperate his need was, he grew to know how

big his God was. Would that be true for all of

us? Let me pray over you.

God, we would love if we got to be known and shaped by our

power. We would love to be those who

are seen as glorious and strong. Thank you for this reminder.

It's just not true. Every single one of us.

We're weak. None of us in this room are

enough. We're not enough in the

struggles we face. We're not enough in the sins we

combat. We're not enough in the

relationships we're in. We're not enough to fix

ourselves. So how would we ever fix

somebody else? But Jesus, you're more than

enough, Holy Spirit. You are more than enough in US

and through us to do what we could never do on our own.

And God, I know that in this place, even in my own heart,

there are areas where I believe, but I struggle to believe.

I struggle to believe that you're enough.

Help me in my own belief, be enough.

In Jesus name, Amen.