Finding Strength in Weakness

About the host: 

Steve Gray is the founding and senior pastor of Revive Church  KC. He has been in the full time ministry for over 40 years and  was launched into national and international recognition in the late 1990’s as the leader of the historic Smithton Outpouring, and again in 2009 when he lead the Kansas City Revival which was televised nationally on the Daystar television network. Steve is also a veteran musician, songwriter, recording artist and published author. His books include When The Kingdom Comes, Follow The Fire, and My Absurd Religion.

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Transcript:

[0:00:00]  Steve Gray: Have you ever thought to yourself, I don’t want to be me anymore? Oh, I did. And I got the most powerful transformation that I could ever dream of. We’re going to talk about that and more on this episode of More Faith, More Life. You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life Podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life.

[0:00:30]  Steve Gray: I’ve spent many years as a worship, artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold, truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse. When I was in my early forty s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish.

[0:01:01]  Steve Gray: That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life. So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to more faith, more Life, and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week, it’s time to be and experience more. Hello everyone. I’m so glad we could be together today. And I’m looking for people that want to get more out of life and how to get there.

[0:01:33]  Steve Gray: I know people have disappointments you have. Maybe you feel regret, but it doesn’t have to stay there. It doesn’t have to be there. And here’s the problem I think a lot of us have is we’re thinking of ourselves too small. You want to do big things, but have you ever felt that way? Like I’m just an ant. I’m a small ant among giants. And I’m going to tell you a story in a minute how that happened to me and how I got out of it and how it changed my life forever. But I know this is a big, big world and I want you to keep listening because I want to give you success in who you are.

[0:02:04]  Steve Gray: What we want to be listen, what we want to be is successful people, right? We want to have success in job and success in getting ahead and getting successful. Here, look, I have a nice car. I’m successful. But we want to be successful in what we become. And what we become then produces everything else, especially in the kingdom of God, which is where I want to live. I want to be part of the kingdom of God. And I want to help you get there too. By more faith.

[0:02:32]  Steve Gray: You get more faith in this world of God, this kingdom, God that we have. Then you can also apply that and you’ll get more life out of it. So a lot of people, they want to be successful but they back down. They feel I’m just too weak, I’m not strong enough, I’m not smart enough. And they think, well, I’ve got to overcome my weaknesses before I can be successful. So we start thinking, I’m going to go to the seminar. I’m going to go to this church that helps build me up or whatever, and how to and the how to and how to be a better dad, how to be a better in sales or whatever. And I’m going to get rid of my weaknesses and I’m going to succeed. I know I am. But in order to succeed I have to become a giant. I got to become bigger and I got to know more.

[0:03:21]  Steve Gray: I got to be able to think on my feet all these things because I have too many weaknesses. So I’m going to go after my weaknesses or I just give up totally. I’ve just got too many weaknesses. I’m not as sharp as everybody else, I’m not as good, I’m just not as capable. And so we begin to feel weak and small and sort of helpless in that I don’t know what to do with myself because I want to do more but I don’t think I can do more. And all my circumstances are saying I can’t do more. And so this feeling small can though get this feeling small can be to your advantage and that’s what I want to help you get through. We want to turn weakness into success.

[0:04:05]  Steve Gray: Weakness can be turned into success. Let me help you understand that. So I’ve spoken a lot around the world and helped other people become speakers and preachers and teachers and things like that. And so many times I’ll ask a student or a young person to preach or teach or do something, and they know I’m going to be there, and so they get really nervous. Well, you’re going to be there. I don’t know. They come to me later and says, I don’t know what to speak, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to preach. And especially if you’re there because I look out at the people and it seems like they’ve heard everything.

[0:04:42]  Steve Gray: They’ve heard everything. I can’t think of any subject that today, especially with the internet and all the teachings, everybody’s heard everything, right? And so he said, I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of anything to say. And I said, wait a minute, you’re getting confused here of what we want. Now listen carefully, here’s what we want. We know that you are not going to be able to try to make up some great revelation.

[0:05:06]  Steve Gray: You’re not going to come out there and hit a home run in revelation and we’re going to go, oh wow, I’ve never thought of that before. This guy is really, this gal is really no. Got it. No. See, here’s the deal and what you miss in the world. Yes, we have heard a lot of things. In fact, we may have heard everything. We may have gone to church our whole life and like, no, nothing’s new. But you know what the difference is?

[0:05:29]  Steve Gray: We may have heard it before, but we never heard you say it. You see, that’s what makes the kingdom of God. It’s not coming up with huge revelations and all these big things. And so people, they get off, maybe they are trying to be such giants that they don’t think, well, I can be who I am. What I am is what God wants. And so I tell them, I said, listen, I don’t care what you preach. You need to do your homework, you need to do due diligence and study and pray and all those kinds of things.

[0:06:04]  Steve Gray: But when you get up there, remember, most people are not going to remember everything you said. What they’re going to remember is you. And what’s missing in so many of the churches today and in religion today is the you part. Because we have people that are just trying to thrill us and go, OOH and all this, what we say and no, just be you. Take what you have and be you. Now, there may be some you that needs some touching up there’s, some you. I know when I finally got this revelation, that doesn’t mean I was my person.

[0:06:41]  Steve Gray: You me was ready for everything. But I realized what God wants to do is develop me, that I can be myself. And so once I started being myself, everything changed. Of course, it took kind of a revelation and a touch from God to get there, but that’s another story. But once I’d realized what I need to be is myself and get out there, if I can get the people to relate to me, to like me, to enjoy and say, I like this guy, I like this guy, then I found out you can almost say anything.

[0:07:18]  Steve Gray: You can almost say anything. I learned that a long time ago. And you watch late night TV and some of the hosts of that. For years I’ve been around watching I don’t watch it, but knowing about it, all these stars. And so one time I got on there, I won’t say which one I listened to, but I just wanted to listen. And I listened to the late night host, what they were saying. And they basically say anything they want.

[0:07:43]  Steve Gray: They can be experts, they can make fun of people, they can jab at this and all the things. And I thought, how do they do that? And then I realized, you know why they can say about anything they want? Because people like them. They watch the show because they like the person. They’re not caring so much what they say. They enjoy hearing that person say those things. So listen. That’s the thing that’s missing in this world. If you’re thinking I’m too weak, I’m just an ant in the land of giants.

[0:08:12]  Steve Gray: Add you to it. You may not think you’re much, but you’re you. And what we’re missing is not some revelation from the Bible. We’re missing you. So add you to it, and that begins to turn this thing around. Now, speaking about feeling like an ant among giants, you know the story a little bit about me. I came from out of nowhere. They even wrote articles about me, the preacher from nowhere, the man. And when I went to Japan, they tried to translate revival in the middle of nowhere because that’s where we had God. I was living out in the country, and when this thing hit the first time, this powerful, powerful touch from God.

[0:08:55]  Steve Gray: But the Japanese, they didn’t quite know how to translate it. So they made posters all over Tokyo and they said, The Man from Nowhere. It was supposed to be the revival that’s in the middle of nowhere. But anyway, I was the man from nowhere. And so I started out feeling like an ant among giants because all of a sudden I was thrust into, can we say the spotlight from Nowhere, nobody. And all of a sudden, I’m on all the TV shows and I’m being interviewed and I’m in the magazines and big magazines and newspaper front page stuff.

[0:09:27]  Steve Gray: And you go from that. You go from zero to Newsweek magazine in a year. That changes your whole life. So I started getting invited to all these big things, big meetings. And so I remember one time I was in this coliseum or some big place. I don’t know, a couple of thousand people or maybe more were there. And it was an all day thing. And then in the evening and all day thing and evening, and I was the evening speaker.

[0:09:53]  Steve Gray: And they put all the other speakers on the stage. Even during when they’re singing and worshipping and all that, they had this lineup. It’s like you had to honor everybody. So everybody was going to speak in any time during this seminar. Thing was on the stage, all right? And so you’re sitting there and during the day, they have maybe three or four different preachers. Three or four. They have an early morning and then a second one, then lunch, then another one, then another one. And then I’m supposed to be the evening speaker, which is the headline and all that stuff.

[0:10:26]  Steve Gray: So I got to sit through four other guys happen to be guys, four other guys to preach, okay? And I’m sitting there and I’m eager. I just want to hear what they got to say. And it was so funny because one got up, the first one got up, and I could tell. I feel like I don’t know how you’re relating, but I kind of feel like you’re preaching the best sermon that you have, whether it relates to the theme of the conference or not.

[0:10:53]  Steve Gray: They get up and they got their best sermon, and they tell their best stories, they tell their best experiences. Well, then the second guy gets up, and all of sudden a wait a minute, it’s like he’s got to top the other one. He’s going to show all his best and all his stories and all the things. And then the lunch comes. We go to the afternoon, same thing with the third one. Next thing, by the third one, he’s got all the blinder open and everybody’s delivered from all their demons. And the fourth one gets up, and he’s got to tell us now he’s going to raise the dead. Say, I was there, I was in another country, and I prayed for them, and they were dead, but they were raised from the dead. So we went all the way from some simple ministry. And the first speaker, by the time we’re the fourth speaker, we’re all like, we’re raising the dead.

[0:11:36]  Steve Gray: I thought, well, I got to speak tonight. And they’ve covered just about everything. And I thought, what am I going to do? I go back to the hotel. I’m getting ready and preparing. Well, I don’t know what to do here. Like, am I going to go out? And now I got to be the bigger giant among giants. All these are going to be sitting up there. And I said, that’s not going to do. I said, I thought to myself, I can’t get up there and just try to be a bigger giant and think of all the things and try to top their stories, but what am I going to do? How am I going to make this work? Because, I mean, it was like story after story and everybody’s going, OOH, and wow.

[0:12:09]  Steve Gray: I said, well, what am I going to do? How am I going to wow them? And I don’t want to even try to do that. And so I had to figure out, how can I? Because I’m feeling like an ant, okay? That’s my whole point. You feel like an ant among giants. These guys, they’ve been in the ministry for years. They had huge ministries. I’m just like getting thrown into this and somehow became the headline speaker. And so all these giants are sitting on stage, and now it’s my turn to get up there. What am I going to do? How am I going to be effective as an ant feeling like an ant?

[0:12:42]  Steve Gray: Whether they saw me that way or not, I felt like one among all these giants. So the evening comes and I’m getting ready to go, and what am I going to say? And I’m getting ready and I’m praying, and I think, you know what? I got to do something with myself here. I can’t go out feeling like this, and I got to do something. So I thought, you know what? If they’re all going to be giants. And I don’t want to be try to be the bigger giant because I’m the evening speaker. Then I’m going to go another way. And suddenly I remembered what John the Baptist said.

[0:13:13]  Steve Gray: John the Baptist said, you know what? I must decrease and he must increase. And all of a sudden, I began to understand that the ant maybe has an advantage. If you can decrease, you can decrease in yourself. The way to get more of Jesus in my sermon and in my talk was to be to me to get smaller, not to try to get bigger, because I just have to try to top everybody else. And I wanted to speak to their hearts. I wanted them to respond to God, not respond to me, not respond to my stories, respond to the Holy Spirit. And so I began to realize that I must decrease.

[0:13:57]  Steve Gray: And all of a sudden I realized I don’t have to be a giant. I got everything in me that I need if I can decrease in it. So I thought, I’m going the wrong way. And I think most people go the wrong way. So I spent time in the decrease rather than the increase, and I began to just stop trying to be a giant. And I began to pray and think about how God is, how big God is, and how I don’t have to have more of me. And I thought, the crowd doesn’t want to have more of me. They don’t want to have me.

[0:14:28]  Steve Gray: They might have enjoyed other speakers, and they enjoy the stories, but I don’t want to go out there and give them a bigger me. I want to give them a smaller me and a bigger God. Now you think about it, thinking, well, okay, yeah, everybody but that’s a big revelation to somebody who’s speaking all the time and everybody else is being giants, and you feel that you’re an ant. So I thought, you know, I’m going to win this. I’m going to go out there with less of me, no big stories to try to top their stories. I told some stories, but I wasn’t trying to top theirs.

[0:15:01]  Steve Gray: I told stories that were going to affect them. I thought they could relate to rather than I did all these miracles and how can you relate to that? So I began to decrease and let him increase. And it was an amazing night. And what happened was I began to speak, and I began to talk, and I was just a person, and I began to talk how I was a nobody. I said I was a nobody. And I got thrown into this, and I said, you know, I got up and when God did this to me and touched me with this powerful, powerful touch, instead of feeling great, I really felt kind of bad about it. I thought, like, who am I?

[0:15:37]  Steve Gray: Who am I to get? Who am I? And so the more I talked like that, they began to relate to it and see, like, God can use simple people. Not everybody has to be a giant. And God can do great things through us just as we are. Just as we are. We just let him be bigger and we can decrease. We can decrease. We don’t have to impress, we don’t have to show off. We don’t have to top anybody else. Just be who we are in God and let him increase and get ourselves out of the way and more out of the way and more out of the way and get more of Him.

[0:16:11]  Steve Gray: I tell people sometimes they want more of God, but I said, you know, your claw is so filled of junk you need to go clean the closet out. Make room for him. Make room for him. There’s so much of you, big time, you trying to justify you and impress and all that stuff. Get rid of that. Make room for God. So anyway, it also happened I was thinking about Paul and in Corinthians where Paul talks about his own life and I think in the 11th chapter of Two Corinthians I think it is that he begins to talk about his own life and he talks about everywhere I go is persecution. And they beat me up and they stone me and they run me out of town and I’ve been shipwrecked and all this stuff that he’s gone through.

[0:16:53]  Steve Gray: And then he calls it later. Then the next chapter, he says, so he felt like he had a thorn in his flesh. And so he said, I came to God and I said, God, take it away. Take this away. A lot of people have tried to say what the thorn in the flesh was. And I don’t know, they go crazy on it, I guess, like I said, trying to get a revelation. I’ve had people say, well, his thorn in the flesh was he was hard of seeing. He was almost blind and historian in the flesh. Was he had some secret sin that he didn’t want anybody to know about?

[0:17:22]  Steve Gray: I don’t think so at all. I just read from one verse to the next, one chapter to the next and seemed like his storm in the flesh that he’d like to have taken away is all those people beating him up. He’d like to go to town and not have to be beat up or chased out or thrown into prison or chained or whatever. He said, Do I have to keep going through this? And so he went to God and he asked God three times to take it away.

[0:17:45]  Steve Gray: And if you know the story, what happened? God didn’t take it away. And he says an amazing thing. He said, My grace is sufficient for you. Yes. And we kind of get that. I hear that preach sometimes, the sufficient grace. But he said this. He said, you’re missing the point here. My power is made perfect in your weakness, right? Not your strength, power. My power is made perfect in weakness. And so Paul says, well, if that’s the case, once he got the revelation, if that’s the case, then I’ll glory in my weaknesses, because that’ll mean more power.

[0:18:23]  Steve Gray: So you understand how we’re going the wrong way trying to be a giant, when really, if you feel like an ant, okay, god could get more out of you because you’ll reach people. You’ll be you. You’ll be believable. It won’t be putting on a show. It’s just who you are is who you are. And so when we realize this, that this is what was happening to Paul, we can begin to say, well, what really was going on?

[0:18:48]  Steve Gray: Why did God say, my grace is sufficient for you when you have these things going on? Well, whatever his thorn in the flesh was, to me, it was getting too big, too big for him. It was holding power over him or influence over him or something. So the only thing he could think to ask for was take it away. And many times that’s how we are, just take it away. Take it away. I can’t do it anymore. Take it away. And God said, I don’t have to take it away.

[0:19:13]  Steve Gray: What I need you to do is apply yourself to this, because you’re letting something get too big. You’re letting something get too big in your life, and now it’s trying to speak to you and control you and affect you. And so if get this now, if I take it away, it’ll go away, but you will remain the same. You won’t change. Circumstances will change, but you will still be the person that you are. But I want to make you grow into this. So I’m going to show you how power comes through weakness.

[0:19:45]  Steve Gray: I don’t need to take it away. You can overcome it by the grace of God, the favor of God, you can overcome it and find that it’s okay as an ant among giants. You can overcome that and make that your advantage by letting the power of God come through. And so all of us can apply that. How many things have we made too big in our lives? Too big, and so they only make us feel smaller, and now we want to just quit? Or God, you got to take this away. You got to change this. You got to give me a new job. I need to make more money. And God says, no, I want you to be you right now.

[0:20:23]  Steve Gray: I want to show you me and all I can do through the faith in God and getting more life out of you. I want to show you how it’s okay to feel like an ant among giants, because I use ants. Ants are going to be able to relate to all the other people, and my power is made perfect in your weakness. Not everything has to be taken away. Some things we overcome by his great power, and we just say, you are the big one. I just need to decrease, and you need to increase. So I hope that helps you today. If you’re feeling like an ant, all right, let’s go for it. Be who you are and let the power of God come through this ant feeling yeah. Through this weakness.

[0:21:05]  Steve Gray: Well, I hope you’ll join me and put Jesus in the center of your life. That’s what I do. I do every day try to make Jesus, Lord of everything and talk to Him about everything. And when I do that, then I’m going to be a follower of Jesus. I’m going to follow Jesus, right. And I’m going to listen to him. I’m going to read his word. And guess what? I’ve decided to follow Jesus. So I’m never going to back down, and I’m never going to change my mind. Till next time. Bye.