It's Monday morning, February 3rd, and we're getting ready to kick off the 2014 Conference for Pastors at the Minneapolis Convention Center this afternoon. And your prayers are greatly appreciated for the conference and for Pastor John and Sinclair Ferguson and Michael Horton and for all the pastors that will be in town.

And your questions keep coming in, so we keep going. Today's question is from Katie Elias, who listens in from Canada. She writes, "Pastor John, I recently read your blog post about embracing weakness as a means to show God's strength. How can I discern between a weakness that needs accepting and a besetting sin that needs eradicating?

How do I know if I'm making an excuse for a besetting sin by saying it's just a natural weakness?" Oh my, that is such a good, penetrating question. It calls for... The only way I know how to make those really difficult distinctions in our souls, our motivations, is the revealed Word of God.

And isn't it remarkable how Hebrews says that in relation to making distinctions? Because it says in Hebrews 4.12, "The Word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Isn't that exactly what she's asking about?

How can I discern my thoughts? How can I discern my intentions? And I would say the summary answer is, let's immerse ourselves in the Word. And let the Word permeate us like a bath of swords, penetrating and separating weakness from sin, so that we don't deceive ourselves and justify our behaviors or our attitudes that are sinful by calling them mere weaknesses.

But here, the reason I appreciate this question so much is it causes me to go a little deeper. Here's the painful reality. Our sins typically worm their way into our weaknesses. One of the reasons weaknesses are called weaknesses, I think, is that they're so vulnerable as places where sin can insinuate itself.

So people often say, for example, "Our greatest strengths are part of our greatest weaknesses." And when they say that, I think they're getting at the same thing. For example, you, let's just say John Piper, may be prone to see in every circumstance something that needs changing. You may be the kind of person who almost never sees anything that needs changing.

Those two opposite weaknesses, I would say, or you could say strengths, maybe. But both of those weaknesses are spring-loaded to be infected by sin at any second. The first one is almost certainly going to be infected with a critical spirit that is short on patience, lacking in mercy, lacking in tenderheartedness, all in the name of, "Well, there are things here that need to be changed," you know.

The second one is almost certain to be infected with carelessness and failure to take sin seriously and lack of boldness to confront people when there are changes that need to be made. And disentangling the sin from the weakness in these is a lifelong challenge and possible, I think, only by the work of the Holy Spirit using this amazing, sharp Word of God.

So how does God's Word about Christ being glorified in our weaknesses, 2 Corinthians 12, 9, how does that apply to these complex cases? And I would say not by saying with a false teacher in Romans 6, "Well, let's continue in sin that grace may abound," because if grace abounds in my weakness, then my weakness is vulnerable to this kind of sin, and God can even net glory from showing grace to my sin, well, let's just not worry about this and go on and let the sin be because God gets grace from overcoming or overlooking my sin.

Well, that would be exactly the opposite of what Paul said there. And if we believe that Christ will be magnified in overriding our sins, which I do, I must never ever exploit that mercy of God by saying, "Well, let's let some sin go because then he'll have more to override." No.

No, here's what we do. We pray earnestly for humility and discernment. We make war on the sinful entanglements of our weaknesses. We don't make excuses and turn God into a guilty party in our failure, and we repent. We turn away from every sinful failure, even if we have to do it every day, and we ask the Lord Jesus to purify our weaknesses and turn them for the glory of his name.

Yes, very good. Thank you, Pastor John. And speaking of the pastor's conference, which begins in a couple of hours for us, you can watch the conference live at desiringgod.org. Pastor John will kick off the plenary sessions tonight at 7 p.m. Central Time, 8 p.m. Eastern, with his message, "Glorifying God by Bearing Fruit in Union with Christ," John 15, 1 to 11.

Again, you can watch that live tonight, as well as all the plenary sessions tomorrow and Wednesday at desiringgod.org. Tomorrow we'll be back to talk about hobbies and how our hobbies can bring honor to God. Until then, I'm your host, Tony Ranke. See you tomorrow. Desiring God by Bearing Fruit in Union with Christ © The Blessed Life TV.

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