Accept NO Imitations

If offered the choice of enduring weakness or acting defeated, which one would you choose?

What do you think?
Does weakness automatically imply defeat?
Is defeat a foregone conclusion to being weak?
Now back to the question.
If offered the choice of enduring weakness or being defeated, which one would you choose?
Or maybe I should say, which one do you normally choose?
I know which one my flesh would choose.
My flesh prefers defeat, and I'm not talking about the magnificent kind of defeat that God produces when He breaks us, but of the sickly, pitiful, whiny kind I usually succumb to.

As a case study goes, my flesh has provided lots of activity for me to observe. You might say I've become an expert on the subject. Here are a few of my observations.
Defeat is my flesh protecting itself, refusing to be broken by God.
Defeat is the choice my pride makes when it comes face to face with its own weakness and refuses to accept it. Accepting defeat is less risky and less work than accepting weakness. As crazy as it sounds, defeat is really just my easy way out, the shortcut to end the process quickly, and the easy way is always more appealing to my flesh.
Like a fly caught in a spider's web, flesh entangles me with appealing deception.
Flesh would have me believe that weakness is bad, would have me keep resisting weakness until I feel defeated. Flesh would have me believe that I can't endure weakness, so be discouraged. It's safer and much more comfortable. Flesh would have me believe that hope has let me down, but conveniently leave out the small detail that it was hope in myself that failed me, not God. Flesh would offer me a poor imitation to dying to self, so that, I can mope in my misery, rather than experience victory. Flesh would have me believe I have no choice but to wallow.
That's the deceptive nature of flesh.

I am a dead man walking, starting every day with a death sentence. Weakness is one of the tools God uses to bring about that death. But until I accept that, weakness will just as easily lead me down the path of my flesh, straight to self-pity, guilt, anger, discouragement, and my pride's insatiable need for independence.
You know how our human nature thinks? It is better to have fought our own battle and lost, than to have asked for help from others, better to be discouraged and mope in failure, than to admit to myself how weak and needy I am. How often I have delayed the Lord's blessings because I chose to stay disappointed in myself, stuck in the cycle of cynicism and bitterness, rather than admit my weakness and total reliance on Him.
Stop resisting weakness and accept it!
Because in that weakness, God will break you, and brokenness is the sacrifice that pleases Him.
Refuse to be defeated!
We can't afford to let ourselves believe that we are justified in giving up, or that defeat equals dying to self. Our weakness is the clay jar to display God's power. We may be squeezed all around, but we are never crushed; confused, but never to the point of despair; tortured, but never alone; beaten down, but impossible to destroy.
Remember Hannah's prayer,
"The bows of the mighty are shattered, but the feeble bind on strength."
Weakness is your strength!
Strap it on, and accept no imitations!