What If Your Weaknesses Were Actually God’s Greatest Tools?

Mike Query

All right. Well, we as a team had some conversations, talked with some folks and Russ, the series that you put together that you got us going on, you kicked it off with self-awareness. So we thought it might be helpful for us and our learning and for those listening to, we pulled some questions together to ask you a little bit about what went on when you were writing it and what we can learn from it, how we can go about really learning, processing, and then applying it to our lives. So let’s get into it. First question is about self-awareness. The idea of being self-aware is scary to me. How do I overcome my desire to avoid self-awareness because of my fear of the negative feelings that might initially come with it?

Russ Ewell 

Well, first thing you gotta do is you gotta find the right music. That’s the key. That’s the key to life. You gotta find the right music. One of my favorite new guys is Ben Rector. I really enjoy Ben Rector. I recommend that, but… Yeah, I think this idea of it’ll be scary. First, let’s help everybody understand the Best Life series. I would describe my role as creator, creating it. And everybody needs to know the team has worked on the content, and we’re even expanding it to invite some additional contributors to contribute stories. And so what you should be aware of is that we’re going to do things a little differently than we even thought we were going to do them starting out, which is we’re going to put a little bit more time in between each skill, each sort of chapter if you would, so that people are able to digest it. I think one of the, we did a survey some time ago where a lot of you gave us the input that when they come out too quickly, you don’t have time to process it. You don’t have time to really go to work on it. And so we’re going to try to do that more. And so if you go on the site, it says that each Monday you’ll get a new study. That may remain true, but we’ll keep you up to date on these because we want to help everybody grow. But more importantly, we want to grow ourselves. This has been a real growth opportunity for me.

So the issue of scary, maybe the best way to look at it is to watch an old episode or maybe a current episode of American Idol.

One of the things that I always found interesting about American Idol is that these young singers, more often than not, younger than me anyway, would come in and they’d be judged by people. And back in the days when Simon Cowell, I think his name’s Cowell, when Simon was there, it could get a little rough, because Simon would just tell somebody they weren’t any good at singing, you know? But I felt like what it was was sort of a real experiment to me, social experiment, in how do people deal with what other people think of them, if it does not match what they think of themselves. So this happened to me in my life a lot. I often thought, well, I’m a really cool guy. That girl will like me. Didn’t happen. I’m a really great athlete. My coach is going to put me in the starting lineup. Didn’t happen, you know what I’m saying? I had a lot of things in my head that I thought about myself. I was on Twitter or X yesterday and I was watching, or I was looking at my feed and one of them came up and it said the difference between men and women, it had a man looking in a mirror and a woman looking in a mirror.

The woman looking in the mirror was totally fine. She was just, you know, she looked great. She was fine. It’s a cartoon. But when she looked in the mirror, she saw somebody who didn’t look fine, who looked terrible. And so you see an image in the mirror of this woman who’s very normal looking in a positive way. And she looks in the mirror and she sees a woman who’s not normal looking. It looks like disheveled, overweight, hair is messed up. But the woman is totally fine. And so that’s it. Then you look at the man. And the man is disheveled, he’s not in good shape, and he looks in the mirror and he sees a guy with washboard abs. Looks awesome. That is…

Mike Query 

You’re right, right, right. That’s my morning routine. That’s my morning routine.

Russ Ewell 

That’s the perfect illustration of self-awareness, but it’s also why self-awareness is scary. And James 1 talks about the fact that the Bible is like a mirror. The beauty of a mirror is you’re able to look at it and see what you look like before you leave the house. And so what I recommend to people who are scary is something that I mentioned Sam Lang, you know, again, he passed away some time ago and not some time ago recently, a really inspiring man of God, a really inspiring friend. And he taught me something when I was in the process of getting married. I sat down with him and I said, you know, I’m really insecure I just, you know, I get these insecure feelings and I describe my insecure feelings as a leader, my insecure feelings because I was feeling like I’m always sinful, I’m always bad, you know, that kind of thing. And I’m anxious a lot that, you know, something’s going to come up or someone’s going to bring something up to me or someone’s going to say something to me. And he said, well, Russ, one of the things I think that has helped me with that is in my relationship with God, I’m always completely honest with God about everything. When I read my Bible, I let God show me whatever he needs to show me. I don’t run away from it. I try to dive into it. And so what I began to do is get my Bible out and say, I want to know the truth. I want to know the positive truths, but I want to know the not so positive truths. I want to know the areas where I’m strong, but I also want to know the areas where I’m weak. And when I did that, and I listened to his instruction, what happened is that I got to a place where I was way less insecure because I wasn’t going to be surprised by anything. Now why wasn’t I surprised? Sam told me, whenever you’re transparent with God and you’re honest with God, no one will ever surprise you with something they say to you or something they bring up to you or a critique of you. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, you know, going back to American Idol. When I watched American Idol, there would be people who would walk in there who did not think they were great singers. And the reason they didn’t think they were great singers is they had mentors who gave them an idea of how good they were. And so they had other people coaching them up or giving them some honest input. And so when they walked in, they were pleasantly surprised to hear positive feedback. But there were other people who said, oh, everybody told me I’m great. But those people clearly hadn’t told them the truth. And so those people were crushed. Well, what do we learn from that? One, God can help us be aware of where we are and whether we have strengths or weaknesses. Our weaknesses are good. 2 Corinthians 12 says that God’s power is perfected in weakness. So our weaknesses are useful because God can be glorified through the way he helps us overcome those weaknesses and conquer them and our strengths can be a benefit, but God can use those in a powerful way. So whether your strengths and weaknesses shouldn’t lead to us being negative or positive about ourselves, it should lead to us being aware of ourselves. And so me, because of the things I said, I want to control outcomes, I want to be driven, I want structure. My wife is great because she doesn’t feel the need for, she can relax. And so we’re a perfect complement. She’s motivated, she’s driven, but she’s not neurotic.She can go ahead and do those things. And it complements me. So sometimes the way our weaknesses are strengthened is by being honest with other people who can complement those weaknesses. They may bring their strengths to the table to compensate for our weakness and our strengths may compensate for their weaknesses. So when it comes to being scary, I think what we have to start with is, get a relationship with God where you can be confident when you tell God your strengths, your weaknesses, your hopes, your dreams, your sad moments and your losses whatever they may be, you’re aware of them, you already know from your relationship with God about them, so if it comes up, or if you’re in a situation, like I’m afraid of heights, I mean like really afraid of heights. I was at Facebook doing a virtual reality kind of testing, it wasn’t a test, it was, I was trying out the virtual reality in their lab, and I did it, and I was, it was going through all these different things, it was awesome, and all of sudden it had me on like the Empire State Building and I started to sweat and get nervous. 

Mike Query 

no. Yeah. Those are intense. They feel real. messes with your brain.

Russ Ewell 

Yeah, and I was on solid ground, there was no risk. Yeah, and that’s how afraid I am of heights. Okay, that’s just the nature of who I am. The only way I’m going to be negative of myself on that is if I’m not aware of it and then I end up being afraid of heights and then I get embarrassed about it and feel terrible about it and the way not to get there is to have the awareness. I’m afraid of heights, it’s a weakness I have. Can I overcome it? Yeah, there’s different things I can do but at the end of the day I don’t need to hate myself for it and I don’t need to feel less than myself for it. I just need to make sure that I don’t go hang gliding with you and end up weeping and crying because I’m stuck in the air, you know what I’m saying? So I guess the scary part, those are some answers to how to deal with the scary part. And I could go into getting relationships of love, understanding God loves you, there’s a lot there, but that’s some of the stuff people can do.

Mike Query 

Well, yeah, that makes me think I’ve had that experience in band settings. I’ve had times where I got to sing a part and I go a little stray, a little too far. And I’ve had our friend John, I can’t remember if he’s been on this podcast or not, but you go, hey, bro, you don’t need to be doing that, man. You need to reel it back in a little. That’s not your place. That’s not your zone. I’m like, okay.

Russ Ewell 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s a difference between Bruce Springsteen and Celine Dion. There’s a difference between Bob Dylan and Luther Vandross. I mean, there’s a difference. And you know what? That’s okay.

Mike Query 

Right, right. And yeah. Well, and the other way, too, right, like I’ve had times where I’m a little more self-conscious playing a guitar part out of my is no good. Then, know, from Brandon, it be like, what are you doing, man? Play that louder. That’s what the song needs. So in both cases, the song is better. Right. Me reeling it in and get my ego in check and learning to like not be so self-conscious. 

Russ Ewell 

Yes, exactly. That’s right, 100 %