Are you satisfied with your life? What I mean is this: Are you content? Are you happy with what you have been given? Or are you the kind of person who is constantly searching – moving from one activity under heaven to another? It is necessary for us to ask such searching questions because, unfortunately, we live in a world that teaches us to be unhappy, discontented people. Our culture promotes that idea. “God wants me to be happy!” Many people exclaim. And it’s true. God wants us to be satisfied. But so many of us are tempted to find happiness and satisfaction on our own terms.
McDonald’s used to have the slogan: “You deserve a break today”. That sums up our human philosophy on life. Whether it’s food, cars, cash, jewelry, or anything else, the consistent message is: “you have the right to own this. You’re entitled to possess that.”
We live in a world of instant self-gratification, and that idea has seeped into the church. Some churches even promote this attitude. They teach that you deserve to be healthy and wealthy, and free of pain. But such thinking sets people up for a fall. When we have expectations of the kind of life we feel we deserve, then what happens when things don’t the way we expect? We feel betrayed, that somehow God has let us down.
This is why the Holy Spirit led St. Paul to record these words in 2 Corinthians. The apostle Paul takes us back to the basics of what we truly deserve and what we can expect from God. And so to a world filled with selfish hearts, St. Paul proclaims: GOD’S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. He explains this for us in a most personal way. He tells us that God’s grace is plenty 1) Even When He Sticks Us With a Thorn. And the reason for this is that God, in his grace, 2) Provides Strength in Weakness.
1) Even When He Sticks Us With a Thorn
Have you ever had a splinter? They are the most annoying things. You can’t seem to get it out, and every time you rub your hand against something you are sharply reminded that it’s there. If you don’t remove it, it becomes infected, and swells. What was once a simple, little splinter has become a huge irritation. Paul was experiencing that same irritation. What this thorn in his life was, we’re not certain. Some claim it was a form of epilepsy. Others claim it was a recurring bout with Malaria, severe migraine headaches, or even a speech impediment. We just don’t know. Whatever it was, it was chaffing Paul, it was under his skin, and it was bothering him to no end. No matter how much he picked at it, he couldn’t seem to get that problem out of his life.
Perhaps a splinter isn’t the best description for what Paul suffered. He uses the word “thorn” yet; in the Greek language the word more literally describes a “spike, or stake.” This was no minor irritation, from which he suffered. This thorn, or problem, took away his ability to function, perhaps even hindering him from doing his work as an apostle.
Notice how else the apostle describes this weakness. He says it is a “messenger of Satan.” Now, we might wonder how that can be since Paul admits that God is the one who gave him this problem. What we have here is a hint of God’s all-surpassing power, even in the face of evil. Satan is bent on bringing down the Christian Church. He will stop at nothing to try and destroy our faith in Jesus, our Savior. He will even try to use the problems of this life to accomplish such a task. But God is bigger than the devil. And in the hands of our almighty God even big, scary Satan is nothing more than an unwitting tool. Satan would have seen this “thorn” as a way to bring suffering on Paul and to break down his hope in Christ, but God used it to accomplish his good purpose of keeping Paul humble in his faith.
Realize the apostle Paul had been granted an unusual gift from God. The Lord had given Paul visions of paradise in heaven. And so, to keep Paul from becoming puffed up with arrogance – thinking he was better than those who didn’t receive such visions – God gave him an affliction that would constantly remind the apostle that we was still a weak sinner, completely dependant on God’s grace.
This was no accident; God gave this ailment to the apostle. This happened to Paul, not because he was outside of God’s will, but because he was in it. This happened to Paul in order to mold his character, to make him more and more holy – living more and more as a child of God.
Don’t be deceived by the world or by your own ideals. If you live for Christ it isn’t going to be a cakewalk. We will experience very difficult times. We will experience trials, and hardships, just like every other person on earth. But we cannot believe the misconception of the world, that true happiness is found in getting what you feel you deserve.
God’s primary purpose for you in this life is not to make you happy, but to make you holy. Now, God is not opposed to us being happy, but he wants our happiness to come from knowing him. God wants us to experience peace and joy in his presence. These are things that go deeper than happiness, and will not be found in our ideal about what we deserve. The truth of the matter is, we are blessed to not get what we deserve. God makes this point crystal clear through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ. We deserve to be condemned, but God’s grace has declared us to be his forgiven, innocent children. We deserve to be forsaken and rejected by God, but God’s grace has promised us that we are his children who have an everlasting home with him in the realm of his inexpressible glory. God has declared us to be holy – pure and innocent in his eyes. And in order to keep us holy, he will humble us, too. We are not guaranteed earthly happiness the moment we put on Christ through the waters of baptism. Life is always going to have its hardships. St. Paul understood this. He knew all about suffering, and we too can learn from Paul.
2) Because He Provides Strength in Weakness
God will place a “thorn” or two under our skin. A thorn in the flesh in modern terms might be called “a pain in the neck.” God’s thorns come in all shapes and sizes: migraine headaches, bad backs, arthritis, depression, anxiety spells, cancer, an impossible boss, a rebellious child, and on and on. Though thorns vary in length and severity, most of us have at least one at any given time. God’s thorn might cause pain or frustration, but the whole purpose is to keep us from relying on ourselves and becoming arrogant, proud people. We would begin to think that we are perfect. We’d begin to rely on ourselves, thinking that our salvation depends on how we feel about ourselves. What happens is that we would become self-righteous, thinking that we deserve God’s love, and that deserve to be spared of this or that.
Sometimes, we Christians fail to understand or accept that truth. We feel that our faith is as strong as it will get and that we don’t need to grow in our understanding of God’s Word. There are times when we feel that we don’t really need God as much, as if we can get by on our own.
But then comes the adversity. We get sick, financial problems set in, or family struggles flare up. We experience hardship and pain. And we’re quick to turn to God and demand that he remove such discomforts from our lives, as if we know better.
St. Paul Prayed 3 times that his thorn would be taken from him, and God answered saying, “No, I will not take away your thorn. My grace is sufficient for you, Paul.” God allows hardships to enter our lives so that he can keep us humble, and, sometimes he’ll say, “no” to our prayer requests, too. This is God’s way of showing us just how much we need his grace. We will never be perfect while in the flesh. In fact, that is why God often gives us thorns, to show us the power of his grace. It is made perfect in our weakness. When we are weak, when we have trials, when the ailments of life tear us down, it becomes obvious just how much we need God, and his grace shines.
There’s a story about a young man who lived at the turn of the last century. His name was Clarence. One day he took his girlfriend on a summer outing. They brought a picnic lunch out to a picturesque island in the middle of a small lake. She wore a long dress with about a dozen petticoats. He was dressed in a fine suit with a high collar. Clarence rowed them out to the island, dragged the boat onto shore, and spread their picnic beneath a shade tree. He was so hypnotized by her beauty that he hardly noticed the hot sun and sweat on his brow. Softly she whispered to him, "Clarence, you forgot the ice cream."
Clarence pulled the boat back to the water and rowed to shore. He found a grocery store nearby, bought the ice cream, and rowed back to the island. She batted long eyelashes over deep blue eyes and purred, "Clarence, you forgot the chocolate syrup."
Love will make a person do strange things. Clarence got back into that boat and returned to the store for syrup. As he rowed back toward the island, suddenly he stopped. He sat there in the boat the rest of the afternoon, fascinated by an idea. By the end of that afternoon, Clarence Evinrude had invented the outboard motor (e-sermons, 7/6/03).
Clarence Evinrude illustrates the point St. Paul teaches us: God will hand us problems, so that he can force it to pay dividends in our lives. If God gives you a thorn he won’t remove, then he will make it produce a rose. And the rose God wants to produce is a greater trust and reliance in our Savior Jesus, who has freed us from sin and is, at this moment, controlling all things in the universe, even our problems and pains, in preparation for our great home-coming in heaven.
So, what is your thorn? What person, situation, or illness is chaffing against you? Those hardships are there in your life because God allowed them and is proof that he’ working in your life. God’s not trying to make you miserable, or trying to push you away from him, but he is using that struggle as a way to lead you closer to him in faith. Thank God for his thorns! They remind us that we are weak. And when we know we are weak, then we can be strong because we grow to trust God’s all-sufficient grace shown to us in Christ. Amen.
