Study from God’s Word… 2nd Corinthians, Chapters 10 – 13; and Acts 20: 2-3 … Passage for Reflection: 2nd Cor. 12: 8 – 9 … NIV 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
My Journal for Today: This passage of the New Testament from 2nd Corinthians is one of my favorites in the Pauline Epistles. Why? Because I so identify with Paul in his testimony and witness to his own weaknesses being the perfect lesson for others about our human weaknesses being uplifted and overcome by God’s Power.
I’m sure you know Paul’s story here of how Satan was allowed by God to give Paul some permanent “thorn,” from which Paul prayed repeatedly to be relieved. But God showed Paul that he “needed” this thorn, whatever it was, to remain humble enough to receive God’s enabling and empowering grace so that He, Paul, could be God’s empowered servant.
LaGard Smith gets right to it with his final question for meditation today, as he writes, ”If I’ve prayed to God that He might take away some ‘thorn’ in my flesh, what might I miss out on if that ‘thorn’ were actually removed?”
I’d almost bet that any reading here have some weakness, some ailment, some nasty little recurring sin pattern, that you’d like stripped from your life forever. Maybe you’re like me and you have some weakness to a certain type of temptation which chronically is the bane of your existence; and maybe, like me, you’ve prayed – as Paul did – over and over and over again for this weakness to be taken away so that you could be a more powerful witness for the Lord. But have you considered that this very weakness may be the one thing that allows you to be humble and meek in this life, the only two qualities which Jesus used to describe Himself (see Matt. 11: 29)?
Yeah; maybe this “thorn” in your flesh is the one thing that allows you to be more like Christ and, therefore, able to receive His empowering grace … so that you can shine His light and glorify the Father in heaven (see Matt. 5: 16). God’s grace truly is sufficient for any/all things we encounter in life; but if we’re too prideful or self-sufficient to see that, God cannot – or rather, will not – pour His light-shining grace into and through our lives. It’s only when we acknowledge, with thankfulness, that our weakness is God’s proving ground and stage for His power, that He will pour His enabling grace into our lives for His glory.
We need to think about that any time we have a tendency to complain to God about some chronic problem or weakness in our life.
My Prayer for Today:Lord, thank You for my “thorn,” which keeps me humble. Amen
Showing posts with label thorn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thorn. Show all posts
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
2009 – Day 299.Oct 27 – A Thorn in the Flesh
Passage for Study: 2nd Corinthians 12: 1 – 10 … Linked for study …
My Journal for Today: I’m glad Swindoll is revisiting this passage in his exposé on Saul, who became Paul. I personally think we could park and preach here for many days; and I just looked ahead in Swindoll’s book; and that’s exactly what Pastor Chuck will be doing as we close out the month of October. So, get ready as we park here for a while.
And I love the word picture Swindoll uses to start his discussion about this thorn in the flesh, which became a storm of pain in Paul’s life. Swindoll writes, and it’s true, that on the high seas, especially in Paul’s times, a sailor knew to tie himself down on deck during a storm. He would secure himself to something solid with a rope so the raging waves could not wash him into the ocean. To do that, the sailor had to have learned that he was not strong enough to weather the storm. He had to set aside pride and humble himself to use the strength of something much more solid than himself. And here was Paul in the midst of a storm of pain, which God had allowed Satan to bring into his life.
And when I was first learning about this passage, I couldn’t help but think about Job, who strapped himself to God when Satan was allowed by God to bring all that pain into his life. Job’s Rock for his anchor was God, wasn’t it? And here was the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, had just experienced some extreme spiritual high after getting a vision of God’s glory in some way; and God allows Satan to brings this physical “thorn,” whatever it was, into Paul’s life. And you see what Paul does. He immediately goes to the One Whom he knows is capable of helping him deal with the pain. Yes, Paul, who was once Saul who had rejected Christ, now cries out to The Lord as the only One Who can help him deal with this storm. He anchors himself to The Rock in his storm of pain. Yes, with his anchor of faith, Paul anchors himself to God for help.
God, … being God, knew that Paul needed to learn – or relearn – the lesson that only in humility could Paul receive and use the grace that He, God, would freely offer Paul to anchor himself in this storm of pain. And so over and over and over again, Paul attaches himself to God with his anchor of faith in prayer; because Paul had learned, by this stage in his discipleship, that the grace of Christ was the only place to attach his tether of faith.
In fact, if you have a red-letter Bible, Paul quotes Christ directly, which is the only red-letter quote you will find in all of the Pauline epistles. You find it in that great line in 2nd Cor.. 12: 9, in which somewhere/sometime Christ had told Paul personally, “My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” And experiencing Satan’s storm of pain, Paul apparently learned the lesson that this storm of thorns was apparently necessary in his life so that he could deal with the pain. Job learned that lesson after faithfully going to God over and over again; and so Paul.
But now the question for us is, “Have we learned this lesson?”
My friend, when we have a storm of thorns come into our life, what do we do? Do we go the “Why me” questions first; or do we, in faith, strap our anchor to the Rock so that we can ride out the pain, praying to God saying, “What are You teaching me here, Lord?” Do we ask God what we can learn from the thorns, rather than why we’re going through the storm? I’m afraid all too often my default question is “WHY,” rather than “WHAT.” But here we see Paul had learned that God’s enabling grace is only released when we can set pride aside and come to our Lord, humbly, asking God WHAT we need to gather from the thorns of life.
I pray that we can lean that humility is the key to unlocking God’s strength when we don’t have the strength to weather the storms of life. Because only when we can do that will we be able to capture God’s strength from His grace to cover our human weakness.
My Prayer for Today: Lord, when the thorn storms come, may I be faithfully tethered to The Rock. Amen
My Journal for Today: I’m glad Swindoll is revisiting this passage in his exposé on Saul, who became Paul. I personally think we could park and preach here for many days; and I just looked ahead in Swindoll’s book; and that’s exactly what Pastor Chuck will be doing as we close out the month of October. So, get ready as we park here for a while.
And I love the word picture Swindoll uses to start his discussion about this thorn in the flesh, which became a storm of pain in Paul’s life. Swindoll writes, and it’s true, that on the high seas, especially in Paul’s times, a sailor knew to tie himself down on deck during a storm. He would secure himself to something solid with a rope so the raging waves could not wash him into the ocean. To do that, the sailor had to have learned that he was not strong enough to weather the storm. He had to set aside pride and humble himself to use the strength of something much more solid than himself. And here was Paul in the midst of a storm of pain, which God had allowed Satan to bring into his life.
And when I was first learning about this passage, I couldn’t help but think about Job, who strapped himself to God when Satan was allowed by God to bring all that pain into his life. Job’s Rock for his anchor was God, wasn’t it? And here was the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, had just experienced some extreme spiritual high after getting a vision of God’s glory in some way; and God allows Satan to brings this physical “thorn,” whatever it was, into Paul’s life. And you see what Paul does. He immediately goes to the One Whom he knows is capable of helping him deal with the pain. Yes, Paul, who was once Saul who had rejected Christ, now cries out to The Lord as the only One Who can help him deal with this storm. He anchors himself to The Rock in his storm of pain. Yes, with his anchor of faith, Paul anchors himself to God for help.
God, … being God, knew that Paul needed to learn – or relearn – the lesson that only in humility could Paul receive and use the grace that He, God, would freely offer Paul to anchor himself in this storm of pain. And so over and over and over again, Paul attaches himself to God with his anchor of faith in prayer; because Paul had learned, by this stage in his discipleship, that the grace of Christ was the only place to attach his tether of faith.
In fact, if you have a red-letter Bible, Paul quotes Christ directly, which is the only red-letter quote you will find in all of the Pauline epistles. You find it in that great line in 2nd Cor.. 12: 9, in which somewhere/sometime Christ had told Paul personally, “My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” And experiencing Satan’s storm of pain, Paul apparently learned the lesson that this storm of thorns was apparently necessary in his life so that he could deal with the pain. Job learned that lesson after faithfully going to God over and over again; and so Paul.
But now the question for us is, “Have we learned this lesson?”
My friend, when we have a storm of thorns come into our life, what do we do? Do we go the “Why me” questions first; or do we, in faith, strap our anchor to the Rock so that we can ride out the pain, praying to God saying, “What are You teaching me here, Lord?” Do we ask God what we can learn from the thorns, rather than why we’re going through the storm? I’m afraid all too often my default question is “WHY,” rather than “WHAT.” But here we see Paul had learned that God’s enabling grace is only released when we can set pride aside and come to our Lord, humbly, asking God WHAT we need to gather from the thorns of life.
I pray that we can lean that humility is the key to unlocking God’s strength when we don’t have the strength to weather the storms of life. Because only when we can do that will we be able to capture God’s strength from His grace to cover our human weakness.
My Prayer for Today: Lord, when the thorn storms come, may I be faithfully tethered to The Rock. Amen
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