From weakness strength

My present church assignment is to work in the Addiction Recovery Program as a group leader. The Addiction Recovery Program, and its companion the Family Support Group (not yet available everywhere), are there to assist those struggling with addiction and also to assist their loved ones. They are twelve-step approaches to help one -- either an addict or a loved one -- learn to enter recovery.

I’m not new to twelve step programs; I actively participated in another 12-step program before working with ARP (and I still participate there). One of the things we do in a 12-step program is to acknowledge our own powerlessness over addiction and over the lives of others. In accepting our own powerlessness, we also admit our own weakness.

We spend a lot of time in addiction recovery talking about weakness, and one of the steps of recovery is to prepare to have God to remove our character weaknesses; the next is to ask God to remove our shortcomings.

What I’ve wondered about over the last while is the difference between our weakness and our weaknesses.

Often when people (including me, like here) paraphrase the weakness scriptures (2 Nephi 33:4, Jacob 4:7, Ether 12:27, to note a few) they say God will make our weaknesses into strength. But Ether 12:27 reads:

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

This verse talks about weakness, not weaknesses. In fact, all of the verses in the topical guide on this subject use the collective noun weakness, not the plural noun weaknesses.

It makes me wonder just what that weakness is. I think about what King Benjamin taught:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father (Mosiah 3:19).

I wonder if our weakness is our natural-ness –- the fact that by our nature we are not submissive; by our nature we do not yield to the enticings of the spirit. Any individual weaknesses I have stem from this overarching weakness, namely that I am natural.

In both Ether and Mosiah we read the remedy: we must come unto Christ. We must humble ourselves. We must yield to the enticings of the Spirit. We must accept the blessings of the atonement in our lives. We must have faith. We must submit.

In those acts of submission, those acts of humility before God, those moments of faith we become strong. We receive the power of the atonement in our lives and become prepared to yield to the enticings of the spirit.

As we, through the grace of Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice, conquer our weakness as humans, God will help us conquer our weaknesses through the blessings of the atonement.

Turning Weakness Into Strength

Ten days ago I wrote about personal inventories, and a week ago, I wrote about sharing those inventories.

An inventory will likely include at least three things: some strengths (what we’re good at), some weaknesses (what we’re not so good at), and maybe some sins (what we’ve done wrong).

There is for me a key difference between weakness and sin. To me, a weakness is a lack of strength. It is an area where I may not have a natural talent, or where I may struggle with a particular temptation. A sin, on the other hand, is action taken by me to transgress God’s law. My sin may grow out of weakness. But it may also grow out of strength if my pride (a weakness) leads me to overestimate my strength.

Scriptures teach us that the redemptive nature of the atonement can save us from sin if we repent, and it can help us turn our weakness to strength. If I identify physical weakness, I might engage in a program of exercise and physical training to overcome that weakness. I may be more successful if I engage the help of a guide who understands the science of exercise. My personal efforts may lead directly to my overcoming my weakness.

Heber J. Grant is famous for overcoming his weakness in baseball and handwriting. Persistence and exercise helped him.

When I struggled with my response to stress in my life, a professional therapist helped me work a series of exercises that allowed me to have better control over my response to that stress, contributing to an improvement in my relationship with my wife and children.

Our trials may reveal weaknesses. In Ether we read:

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them (Ether 12:27).

In addition to whatever we may do by ourselves, the power of the atonement can also help us to overcome our weaknesses. That change may not come on our timetable, and we may not be able to control the outcome of that change. But it can come.

In the twelve-step program, the next step after sharing our inventory is preparing to have God remove our weaknesses, and then asking him to do so. Those steps make me think of Lamoni’s father who was willing to give away all his sins to know God (Alma 22:18). I think of preparing ourselves to have God remove our weaknesses like a visit to a chiropractor: the chiropractor aligns the spine for optimal performance; we align ourselves to God’s will for our optimal performance.

In the case of sin, we can repent. In the case of weakness, it’s not really repentance we need, but grace. In the case of our strengths, it’s humility. All three come to us through the atonement.