What does success look like to you?
Is it having most of what you want, projecting an image other people will admire and want for themselves?
How can we have or project that image when, in fact, we are weak and powerless and poor? How can we project that image when all we are comes as a gift from someone else, by His benevolent grace and not through any achievement on our own?
As 2 Corinthians chapter three ends, Paul writes that our lives, whatever they have been, are being transformed into lives that will being Christ glory. That’s not going to happen if our own glory keeps getting in the way.
So as chapter four begins, Paul says he has renounced the ways of this world, the ways of “self,” and focused solely on Jesus and what He can accomplish. Though it may look like he is a failure to people of the world, great things are being accomplished by God in his life and with his life. That couldn’t happen if Paul kept getting in the way. Weakness in us gives God a chance to work.
Keep that in mind the next time you are going through a particularly rough patch. This is an opportunity to be transformed by God, and to allow Him to work in your life.