Our Lord has many weak children in his family, many dull pupils in his school, many raw soldiers in his army, many lame sheep in his flock. Yet he bears with them all, and casts none away. Happy is that Christian who has learned to do likewise with his brethren.
One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point.
For men have no taste for (God's power) till they are convinced of their need of it and they immediately forget its value unless they are conditionally reminded by awareness of their own weakness.
Author: John Calvin Source: Calvin's New Testament Commentaries, 2 Corinthians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, 1964, p. 161.
The deepest need that you and I have in weakness and adversity is not quick relief, but the well-grounded confidence that what is happening to us is part of the greatest purpose of God in the universe - the glorification of the grace and power of his Son - the grace and power that bore Him to the cross and kept him there until the work of love was done.
Men fall in private long before they fall in public.