So, of course, I came to work the following Monday feeling invincible! My classes were going so smoothly, I was all caught up on grading, I’d had lots of enjoyable interactions with students the previous week, and everything just felt great. I’ve been doing this for 18 years after all; maybe I had finally figured out a thing or two. 😉 But wouldn’t you know it, it only took until 9:30 a.m. on Monday morning for me to get completely humbled. I rarely have discipline problems, but by the end of my third hour journalism class, I’d sent one kid to the office and separated two other students by reassigning them to new classroom seats for the foreseeable future. When the bell rang and that class left the room, I was extremely frustrated, discouraged, annoyed and upset. …humbled. I’d been put back in my place by the teenagers, which is something they’re so great at doing from time to time!

As I regrouped and tried to figure out what had just happened, my mind wandered to a book I was reading at the time called, “A Praying Life,” by Paul Miller. One of the chapters is titled, “Learning to be Helpless.” In it, Miller talks about how becoming more like Jesus is to feel increasingly unable to do life on your own. He says that mature Christians feel less mature on the inside. They are keenly aware of their insufficiency on their own. 

Apart from me you can do nothing. -John 15:5

In Miller’s book, which focuses on prayer, he relates this idea specifically to prayer, of course. “If we think we can do life on our own, we will not take prayer seriously. … That is why suffering is so important to the process of learning how to pray. It’s God’s gift to show us what life is really like,” he says. Suffering and struggle are key to my intimacy with Jesus. When I don’t struggle, I might start believing the false assumption that I’m doing pretty good on my own, which is simply not true. My struggles remind me of my human condition and how desperately I need God.

In thinking about this idea in light of my recent humbling experience in the classroom, I’m reminded of how valuable feelings of inadequacy are to me spiritually. When I remember that ultimately, I’m not in control, then I remember who IS in control—God. No matter how hard I try, how well I plan, or how carefully I strategize, I am not sovereign. Even if I have the best intentions for a specific class period at school, I am not sovereign over each student in the room and what he/she may be thinking or feeling. God is; I am not. 

So no matter how hard I try, at the end of the day, God is in charge. I am fully dependent on Him for everything. And honestly, that’s a good thing! …because I’m not smart enough or strong enough to be in charge on my own—even of my own little life. I might think I am, but my limited understanding, foresight and wisdom suggest otherwise. Because of this truth, I wonder if I should actually be thankful for those humbling life moments as they come up (like my third hour journalism class on that Monday in May). 

The Bible suggests that we should actually be grateful for our weaknesses and even delight in them. Check this out: 

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. -1 Corinthians 12:9-10 

Aside from delighting in your human insufficiency, you can also turn to God when those moments of weakness come up in your life. You better believe that the day after my journalism disaster, I was praying like mad on my way to school, asking God to be present in that same class period that day. I prayed specifically for the students who’d caused trouble the previous day, and I asked Him to send His Holy Spirit to fill the room. Please, God, I prayed, help me see what I need to see and say what I need to say to steer my classroom in the right direction. When Moses was in a state of realizing his own inadequacy to accomplish a task on his own, he expressed his feelings to God, and God responded with a promise. 

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” -Exodus 3:11-12

When you turn to God in your moments of weakness, He will hear you. He will not abandon you! These are perfect moments for God to show Himself strong on your behalf. When you know that you are at the end of your own strength and power, then you also know that it is God who will provide the wisdom, direction, strength and endurance you need. It can be beautiful to find yourself in a place of undeniable helplessness. It’s there, at the end of your human strength, that God can step in and show His.

So the next time you find yourself in a moment of desperation and weakness, say THANK YOU! Yep, you heard me. Thank God for the reminder that you need Him! Thank Him for being strong when you are weak. Thank Him for being dependable! Thank Him that frustrating circumstances don’t have to be hopeless; they can be helpful pivots to getting back into a position of dependence on God.