The Holy Spirit and Gradual Healing
The Holy Spirit Part 7
2 Corinthians 12:6-10
(From Steve Meenho Kang, Live by the Spirit (Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, 2022)
Currently we are going through the message series, “The Holy Spirit.”
During this series, we are examining the work of the Holy Spirit.
First week, we talked about the person of the Holy Spirit.
Second week, we talked about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Third week, we talked about the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Fourth week, we talked about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Fifth week, we talked about the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Sixth week, we talked about the Holy Spirit and healing.
And today we will talk about the Holy Spirit and gradual healing.
Someone once said that “Healing is a matter of time.”
However, in our world of “instant” everything, this does not sound very encouraging.
Yet it is, more often than not, true.
As we talked about last week, we get sick from time to time.
When we get sick, we must let others know about it, get proper medical treatment, and pray to be healed in faith.
Then we must leave the result to God.
Sometimes God heals us immediate.
Other times God heals us gradually.
Some people falsely believe that it is God’s will for everyone to be healed immediately.
However, when they pray for healing but do not experience it, they get confused.
They even feel that they are abandoned by God.
Can God heal?
Yes!
Does God heal everyone all of the time?
The answer is… No!
We always want to experience immediate healing from the Holy Spirit.
However, sometime He heals us gradually or does not heal us until we go to heaven.
This is what happened to the Apostle Paul.
According to the passage that we read today, Paul had a serious illness.
He did not mention what it was.
He prayed for healing, but God decided not to heal him.
So, what did he do?
Did he get upset, resentful, or discouraged?
No!
Through him, we must learn these important lessons on gradual healing.
I. We must focus on His grace rather than our sufferings (vv. 6-9a).
During this time, there were, many false teachers in Corinth.
They were promoting themselves and not Jesus.
However, some people in the church were so impressed by their self-promotions and were swayed by them.
Therefore, Paul, even though he hated boasting, found it necessary to remind them of his own credentials.
And his resume was impressive.
In 2 Corinthians 12:1-5, he talked about his experience of being in heaven… in the presence of God.
He said this to prove his authority and point out the falsity of other self-promoting teachers.
He did not say this to give himself credit for the glory that he experienced.
He went on to let people know about his weakness.
Verses 6-7 say this.
6 Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, 7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
God blessed Paul in so many ways.
God even showed him heaven.
Therefore, to keep Paul from becoming prideful, God gave him a thorn in his flesh.
The word translated “thorn” means “a sharp stake used for torturing someone.”
Paul did not say what the “thorn” was.
It was a physical affliction of some kind that brought pain to Paul.
Some think that it was failing eyesight because of what he wrote in Galatians 6:11.
But we do not know for sure what it was.
What we do know is that God permitted Satan to torment Paul physically.
The word “torment” means “to beat with the fist.”
And the tense of the verb indicates that this pain was constant.
Verses 8-9a say this.
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,
What did Paul do when he got sick?
He prayed.
He prayed three times to God to remove the pain from him.
And what did God say?
“My grace is sufficient for you!”
In His grace, God gave the illness to Paul because it was good for him.
To keep him humble, God gave him a physical illness.
That was a sign of God’s grace to Paul.
What is grace?
Grace is God’s provision for our every need when we need it.
He does not give us what we deserve.
God gives us grace that we do not deserve.
When Paul prayed to be healed, God did not heal him.
However, God gave him a deeper insight into what He was doing.
Paul learned that his illness was a sign of God’s grace.
He focused on God’s grace rather than his suffering.
When God does not heal us immediately, instead of being encouraged, we can become impatient.
We even develop the feelings of anger and resentment.
This is especially true when we are in pain and there is no prospect of being healed.
All of us want to be healed as soon as possible.
However, sometimes God heals us gradually or does not heal us at all until we go to heaven.
Then rather than focus on our sufferings, we must focus on His grace.
We must see the benefits of living with illness.
Let me tell you this from my experience.
In the previous church that I served, I overworked and did not take care of my body.
As the result, I developed hypertension at age 28.
However, I continued to abuse my body.
Then I developed diabetes at age 35.
After I developed these diseases, I prayed for healing several times.
However, up until this morning, God did not heal me.
I thought about the reason why.
Why is it that God, who loves me so much, does not heal me?
I realized some benefits of living with these illnesses.
First, I live with the perspective of dying.
We are all terminal beings.
I know in my head and I feel in my body that I am a terminal being.
I live with that perspective daily.
This is why I want to end each day well.
If I did anything wrong, I want to be reconciled with that person by the end of the day.
There is no guarantee that I will have tomorrow in this world.
However, this perspective does not depress me because I have the hope for heaven.
I sometimes cannot wait to go to heaven where I will be free from illnesses.
Second, I learned to live for the important things in life.
Too often we are so busy with non-important things.
These are the things that do not matter eternally.
When I got sick, I realized how stupid I was.
I was able to see the foolishness of my life.
Therefore, I decided to become choosy with what I do with my life.
I want to do things that will leave eternal impact in this world.
I saw many people on their death beds.
I never heard anyone regretting that they did not work more, eat more or play more.
They regret that they did not spend more time with their loved ones.
But I do not want to have regrets when I am on my death bed like them.
I want to live for important things in my life.
Third, my pride is greatly reduced.
It is not completely gone but greatly reduced.
I am dying anyway.
What is the point of being prideful?
We all fight over some stupid things from time to time.
Spouses argue over some trivial things.
And we are so prideful that they do not want to apologize.
We need to realize that life is too short to live in that kind of hostility
We must say ‘sorry’ and be reconciled.
These are some wisdom that I have gained because of my illnesses.
We tend to not appreciate the benefits of not getting healed.
We must focus on His grace rather than our sufferings.
II. We must focus on His will rather than our will (v. 9a).
Verse 9a says this.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Because Paul believed that God can heal him, he prayed to God three different times.
However, God gave Him a surprising answer.
His answer was ‘no.’
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
It was not God’s will to heal him.
Rather His will for Paul was to live with his illness.
Sometimes it is God’s will to not heal.
Why?
There can be many reasons for this.
But when it is God’s will to not heal us, we must stop asking for healing and submit to His will.
The Bible is very clear on this.
Sometimes it is not God’s will to heal everyone.
Some people claim that it is God’s will for everyone to be healed.
They base their belief upon the last phrase of Isaiah 53:5, which says this:
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
However, the context of this verse refers to spiritual illness and healing, not physical.
Peter underscored this when he wrote this in 1 Peter 2:24.
“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
Therefore, in His sovereign will, sometimes God does not plan to remove all sicknesses, diseases, and death from us.
I do not pretend to know why He sovereignly chooses to heal some and not others.
I do not know why He heal some and not all.
But that is His choice.
That is His right.
Therefore, on this issue of healing, we must focus on His will rather than our will.
III. We must focus on His power rather than our weakness (vv. 9-10).
Verses 9-10 say this.
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
In verse 9, the word “perfect” means “complete.”
This is the same word Jesus cried out as He hung on the cross: Tetelestai! — “It is finished!”
It is complete!
The reason why God did not heal Paul was that it made him complete.
It gave him spiritual power.
Even though he became weak physically because of his illness, he became strong spiritually.
Verse 9b starts with the word “therefore.”
This means that because God’s power is made perfect in his weakness, Paul glorified God.
We must realize this truth.
God’s primary focus is not to make us comfortable.
His primary focus is to make us to conform to His image.
God gave Paul a thorn in his flesh to keep him from glorifying himself.
It was to keep him humble and check his spiritual pride.
God did not arbitrarily say, “I want Paul to suffer awhile.”
No!
He saw the possibility of spiritual conceit in him.
Therefore, God gave him a thorn.
That kept Paul relying on God.
And that made Paul turn to God and glorify God.
It was not the thorn that mattered, but what it did.
Too often we try to rely on our own power.
Then comes illness.
Our illnesses remind us of fact that we are terminal beings.
This forces us to rely on God’s power.
Then we will realize how powerful we can be in Him.
This is why when God decides us to heal us gradually or not heal us at all, we must focus on His power rather than our weakness.
Conclusion
Paul had two drastically different experiences.
Paul went from heaven to pain.
He tasted the blessing of God in heaven and the felt the torment of Satan on earth.
He went from ecstasy to agony.
Yet these two experiences belong together.
His one experience of glory prepared him for the constant experience of suffering.
It is because Paul knew that God was able to meet his need.
He had gone to heaven and then he learned that heaven could come to him.
God does not promise a pain-free life.
Instead of becoming angry and resentful, we must trust God even when He does not heal us and explain why.
He will honor that response.
Paul knew about the power of God because he entrusted the will of God and depended on the grace of God.
That same power can be ours today.
