CRCF\u201d\u201d10-31-10<\/p>\n
Florence Willett<\/p>\n
I thank God for bitter things;
\nthey\u201d\u2122ve been a \u201d\u02dcfriend of grace\u201d\u2122;
\nthey\u201d\u2122ve driven me from paths of ease
\nto storm the secret place.
\nI thank Him for the friends who failed to fill my heart\u201d\u2122s deep need;
\nThey\u201d\u2122ve driven me to the Savior\u201d\u2122s feet, upon His love to feed.
\nI\u201d\u2122m grateful too through all life\u201d\u2122s way no one could satisfy, and so I\u201d\u2122ve found in God alone
\nMy rich, my full supply.<\/p>\n
The Paradox of Grace<\/p>\n
Our weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.<\/p>\n
2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (NLT)
\n7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.
\n8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9 Each time he said, \u201cMy grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.\u201d So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That\u201d\u2122s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\nThe Message
\n7-10Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,<\/p>\n
My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
\nMy strength comes into its own in your weakness.
\nOnce I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size\u201d\u201dabuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\nA thorn; specifically a thorn in the flesh; a barb under the skin; a stake driven right through his body, as if he had been impaled. Paul had what we all have: A crippling, limiting, frustrating condition, addiction, sickness, weakness. or set of circumstances that prevented him \u201d\u201c he felt \u201d\u201c from being all he could be, and doing all he wanted to do.
\n7 I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan
\nWhat was Paul\u201d\u2122s thorn in the flesh, his limitation? The church has speculated about it for years and guesses fall into one of a few categories: 1) Some say it was the temptation to quit the ministry. It was hard to put up with all these crazy Christians and their problems. John Calvin was convinced this was the cause of his pain. 2) Luther said, \u201cno,\u201d it can\u201d\u2122t be the churches. It\u201d\u2122s the constant persecution, the jailings, the beatings, the troubles from the outside. 3) The Catholic tradition is convinced it was sexual temptation; what Paul wanted was to throw off all restraint, and because he couldn\u201d\u2122t this was suffering. All of these are good guesses, but they are suspect.
\nThey are suspect because this word skolops, or thorn, indicates some kind of physical pain. It is a stabbing, piercing, slashing condition. Paul may have endured all of these other troubles and temptations and wanted to quit because of them, but here he seems to be speaking of something physical. He had a sickness or disability. Some say epilepsy, some say malaria, but more than likely it was something to do with his vision \u201d\u201c his eyesight. The traditional images of the Apostle Paul show him to be a little ugly man with large, bugging eyes, eyes that did not serve him well. And on two occasions in the book of Galatians he makes reference to his eyes being bad. He says to the Galatians: \u201cyou would have gladly ripped your eyes out and given them to me\u201d (4:15); and at the end of that letter he says, \u201cLook at what large letters I have written to you.\u201d A secretary or scribe usually wrote Paul\u201d\u2122s letters as he dictated them. At the end of the Galatian letter, he puts his own penmanship on the paper, and he has to write big, kindergarten-style letters in order to even see it.
\nRethink Paul\u201d\u2122s traveling, speaking, and writing ministry as a man who can barely see, and whose eye condition was extremely painful and limiting. He traveled more than 12,000 miles by foot, donkey, and boat, in his career, in the most primitive of conditions. He visited three continents, dozens of countries and hundreds of towns. By the numbers, he wrote the majority of post-Gospel New Testament and is the one chiefly responsible for the Christianization of Europe. It goes without saying, that outside of Jesus himself, Paul was and is the most important and dominating figure of our faith. And while he was bold, courageous, and seemingly with boundless energy, yet, it appears he was nearly blind, suffering from disease and in constant pain.
\nIt makes you think, what could Paul have done if he had not suffered from this condition? And that\u201d\u2122s exactly what Paul was thinking.
\n8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9
\nBut the answer was always, \u201cNo.\u201d No. No. No. We\u201d\u2122ve been there. We pray and beg and bargain with God for relief; for healing, for rescue, for him to take away some nagging impediment we can\u201d\u2122t shake off or get well from ourselves.
\nC.S. Lewis
\n\u201cWe go to God and find the door slammed and the sound of the door being bolted and doubled bolted from the inside.\u201d
\nWHAT\u201d\u2122S THIS ALL ABOUT? WHY DID GOD SAY \u201cNO\u201d TO PAUL\u201d\u2122S REQUEST?
\n7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.
\nPaul says, \u201cI hate this limitation of mine, this disability. It is a torment sent straight from the devil. It is evil. It is satanic \u201d\u201c Satan means adversary, so it was adversarial \u201d\u201c it never lets up. But somehow it is for my own good.\u201d
\nPaul had been the recipient of all these heavenly visions and revelations \u201d\u201c he talks about these in opening verses of this chapter. The Corinthians to whom he was writing were infamous trouble makers. At times they had what could best be described as an antagonistic relationship with their founder and pastor, Paul. They said things like, \u201cHe\u201d\u2122s not very impressive. He\u201d\u2122s speaking skills could be better. I wish he was more spiritual.\u201d So when he had had enough, he unloads with both barrels about his qualifications as an apostle and missionary. He tells them how much he has suffered for the cause, he talks about his training and his pedigree, he gives them his personal testimony, and finally \u201d\u201c the coup de grace \u201d\u201c he tells them about these fantastic experiences, these out-of-body experiences, where he was ushered into God\u201d\u2122s presence in the highest of heavens.
\nYou experience something like that, and it would be easy to become terribly conceited, impossible to live with. So this thorn in the flesh, while not from God, is used by God to keep Paul from being an arrogant, religious snob. God was saying \u201cno\u201d to Paul\u201d\u2122s request for Paul\u201d\u2122s own good.
\nGod can do anything; but he can\u201d\u2122t do much with the self-sufficient. How can he? How can we full of God if we are full of ourselves? How can we be dependent upon his ability when we are depending upon our own? How can we be everything God wants us to be, when we are still trying to be all we can be? How can we boast about the power of God in our lives while we boast about our own power? The human heart does not have enough room for both our own supposed power and the true power of God\u201d\u2122s grace; they are incompatible. God\u201d\u2122s \u201cno\u201d to Paul\u201d\u2122s prayer is for the purpose of him saying \u201cyes\u201d to something far better.
\nTHIS IS THE SOMETHING BETTER: THE LORD SAYS TO PAUL, \u201cMY GRACE IS ALL YOU NEED.\u201d
\n9 Each time he said, \u201cMy grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.\u201d
\nThe Lord\u201d\u2122s response to Paul is written, in the old red-letter editions of the Bible, in red. Now, what did we learn about the red letters in the New Testament? Those are the words of Christ himself. So, here, pages and pages away from the gospels and years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus into the heavens, here Jesus speaks directly to Paul. Apparently, in one of these heavenly visits Paul was prone to brag about, Paul and Jesus were hanging out together. It is then Paul learns that the only thing to be proud about is weakness. In weakness God makes us strong. \u201cMy grace is all you need,\u201d Jesus says.
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\nI have heard this little proverb my whole life, usually rolling off the lips of someone trying to comfort another. It is well-intended I suppose, but not very effective. In fact, I now think it is grossly dishonest. It goes like this: \u201cNow don\u201d\u2122t worry. God won\u201d\u2122t put any more on you than you can stand.\u201d
\nThat is a lie. If we could handle every situation on our own, there would be no need for grace.
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\nBut it is because the human life is limited and finite and sometimes largely unbearable \u201d\u201c with its suffering and pain, its handicaps and its injustices \u201d\u201c because we all have thorns that stab through our bodies and souls that keep us from being all we can be, that we need God\u201d\u2122s mercy and grace to be what he can make us. In every situation, in every weakness, every day, and every moment: We might exist without this mighty grace, but we cannot truly live without it.
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\n9 So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That\u201d\u2122s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\nWill we live out this paradox of grace? Will we, like Paul, refuse to try to fix our weaknesses and be strong in ourselves, and, instead, admit our weakness so Jesus\u201d\u2122 power can flow through our lives?
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\nThere is more to learn from our thorns in our flesh than simply endurance. We can change; we can let our weaknesses transform and carry us to God, and let God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace have the last word.
\nIsaiah 40:27-31 (New Living Translation)
\n27 O Jacob, how can you say the LORD does not see your troubles?
\nO Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights?
\n28 Have you never heard?
\nHave you never understood?
\nThe LORD is the everlasting God,
\nthe Creator of all the earth.
\nHe never grows weak or weary.
\nNo one can measure the depths of his understanding.
\n29 He gives power to the weak
\nand strength to the powerless.
\n30 Even youths will become weak and tired,
\nand young men will fall in exhaustion.
\n31 But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength.
\nThey will soar high on wings like eagles.
\nThey will run and not grow weary.
\nThey will walk and not faint.
\nOur weaknesses are the channels through which God\u201d\u2122s mighty grace flows into our lives.
\nPRAYER: Lord Jesus, you must do all or all is nothing. May our limitations, our painful places, and the thorny nature of life, make us dependent upon you and the grace you freely give to those who will receive it with open and empty hands. We ask this in the name of the Christ, Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CRCF\u201d\u201d10-31-10 Florence Willett I thank God for bitter things; they\u201d\u2122ve been a \u201d\u02dcfriend of grace\u201d\u2122; they\u201d\u2122ve driven me from paths of ease to storm the secret place. I thank Him for the friends who failed to fill my heart\u201d\u2122s deep … Continue reading