Chronic PainContinuous Grace12_7
Chronic Pain and Continuous Grace
Text: 2 Cor. 12:7-10
(2 Cor 12:7-10 NIV) To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. {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." 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.
Intro
You know it's going to be a bad day when:
* You wake up face down on the pavement.
* You call suicide prevention and they put you on hold.
* You see a 60 Minutes news team waiting in your office.
* Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.
* You turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes out
of the city.
* Your twin sister forgets your birthday.
* You wake up to discover that your waterbed broke and then
realized you don't have a waterbed.
* Your horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow
a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.
Paul had learned, as we saw last week, that his Father in heaven knows best through trials, tragedies and triumphs. One way God chose to give His special revelation was through visions. Paul was called to Macedonia through a vision (Acts 16:9). After a difficult ministry in Corinth, God encouraged His apostle through a vision (Acts 18:9-10). After his arrest in Jerusalem, the Lord again encouraged Paul through a vision (Acts 23:11). During a ferocious storm on his way to Rome, an angel of the Lord stood by him and assured him that he and all the passengers on the ship would be saved (Acts 27:23). However, the greatest honor God gave Paul was taking him to heaven and giving him visions that no other human being had ever beheld.
The third heaven is paradise, the dwelling place of God. Thanks to the Wright brothers we can fly through the sky, the first heaven. Thanks to our space program and the Russian’s bankrupted space program, now even a tourist can reach the second heaven, space. Man has walked on the moon, but man cannot get to God’s heaven without God’s help.
Our Father knows best. Since all sunshine makes a desert, God allows the rain to give us balance. God knew that if Paul only had blessings, he would become proud. And we would too. Paul’s great experience of being caught up to the third heaven could have ruined his ministry on earth so God gave him a gift - suffering.
I. The Problem
The great experience of being caught up into the third heaven had occurred 14 years earlier. In order to keep Paul from becoming conceited God gave him a thorn in the flesh.
Identity of the Thorn
1. Physical
It is not spiritual temptations or persecution or depression. It was a physical illness.
Suggestions:
Physical disfigurement (2 Cor. 10:10, Paul’s critics said he was unimpressive in his person - he was ugly.
Epilepsy is a second suggestion. In Galatians 4:14 Paul says that when the Galatians saw his infirmity they did not treat him with contempt or scorn. The word translated scorn in the NIV and reject in the KJV literally means, “to spit out at me.” This is not likely because it would mean that his visions were the result of an epileptic seizure rather than from God.
Eye Trouble. Paul was blinded on the Road to Damascus and perhaps there was some lingering effect. Paul does say that the Galatians would have plucked their eyes out and given them to him (Gal. 4:15). He also tells them that he wrote with large letters, meaning the giant characters, which might indicate that his eyesight was so poor that he needed giant print (Gal. 6:11).
A burning fever like malaria, which haunted the eastern Mediterranean. The natives of the area, when they wished to harm an enemy, prayed to their gods that their enemy would be burnt up with fever. Historical records indicate the accompanying headaches are like “a red-hot bar thrust through the forehead.” Another victim describes the pain as “the grinding, boring pain in one temple, like the dentist’s drill.” Doctors of the first century said, “It reached the extreme point of human endurance.”
2. Excruciating
The word for thorn more likely means stake. It was like a stake twisting in his body. The pain was nearly unbearable.
3. Chronic
The present tense of the verb “to torment me” (kolafivzw) indicates that it was either constant or recurring pain. 80 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. A condition with high economic costs. It is estimated that US business and industry loses about $90 billion annually to sick time, reduced productivity, and direct medical and other benefit costs due to chronic pain among employees.
II. The Perspective
A. Human perspective
Paul’s critics, like Job’s counselors, saw Paul’s thorn as punishment from God.
B. God’s perspective
God saw it as a gift. Paul had experienced what no other man had ever experienced. Moses met the Lord on Mount Sinai, but Paul met God in heaven. God had permitted this thorn
God permitted Satan to afflict Job and God permitted Satan to torment Paul. This was even a roadblock to fulfilling the ministry God had called Paul to do.
Application:
How do we handle suffering in our own lives?
We often respond:
1. By becoming bitter and blaming God.
2. By giving up.
3. By enduring to the end.
But God is not obligated to heal every believer when he prays. We are commanded to pray. The means of producing the end – God’s will is prayer. However, we must discern the reason for sickness before God will heal. God promised the Jews special blessings in the Old Testament, but He never promised New Testament believers that they would never be sick or that He would heal everyone.
III. The Purpose
A. Specific: For Paul
To keep him from becoming conceited - 12:7
Song: The Fire
I've been through a fire that has deepened my desire, to know the living God more and more.
It hasn't been much fun, but the work that it has done in my life has been worth the hurt.
You see sometimes we need the hard times to bring us to our knees, otherwise we do as we please and never heed him.
For he always knows what's best and it's when we are distressed that we really come to know God as he is.
See: Jam 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-7
B. General: All Sickness
1. The sickness unto death (John 11:4). One of the ways the Lord takes us from this life is by sickness. That is why one time when we pray for healing, a person is miraculously healed. Another time when prayer is made, the person does not get well, but dies.
2. The sickness for the glory of God (John 11:4). In this case God may divinely heal an individual, or perhaps allow suffering to give that person a testimony unlike any he has had before. In both instances, God can be glorified.
3. Sickness due to sin. Spiritual healing is far more important than physical healing. The Lord must convict us of our sin and bring us to repentance. Perhaps the only way we will do that is through sickness.
4. Sickness for spiritual growth. God can teach us many vital lessons through trials, sickness, or infirmities. The Apostle Paul learned these lessons of humility, spiritual strength through weakness, and God's sufficient grace through his physical problems. In fact, he prayed three times for healing, but it was not the Lord's will for him to be healed (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).
IV. The Provision
A. Sufficient Grace
1. For physical weariness
It was God’s grace that made Paul keep on keeping on. John Wesley preached 42,000 sermons. He averaged 4,500 miles a year on horseback. He rode 60-70 miles a day and preached three sermons a day on an average. When he was 83 he wrote in his diary, “I am a wonder to myself. I am never tired, either with preaching, writing, or traveling.” That was God’s sufficient grace in Wesley’s life. And God has sufficient grace for you in your weariness too. So don’t give up!
(Isa 40:28-31 NIV) Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. {29} He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. {30} Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; {31} but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
(Gal 6:9 NIV) Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
2. For physical pain
God’s grace made Paul able to bear the pain of the stake.
“If God sends us on stony paths, he provides strong shoes.” Corrie TenBoom
3. For opposition
Paul faced constant opposition, from the enemies of the cross, from false teachers, from other preachers and even from his own flock. Yet he never gave in. Opposition could not deter him because he depended, not upon his strength, but God’s all-sufficient grace.
4. For slander
Paul not only faces opposition, but constant slander and ridicule as is evidenced all through the Book of 2 Corinthians. Yet slander could not stop him because he trusted in God’s all-sufficient grace. As a result Paul did not care what men thought, but what God knew him to be.
Potiphar’s wife slandered Joseph, but he would not compromise his convictions.
Application: If God’s grace is sufficient to save us, then surely it is sufficient to keep us and strengthen us bringing us into conformity to the image of Christ.
(Eph 2:8-10 NIV) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- {9} not by works, so that no one can boast. {10} For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
(Phil 1:6 NIV) being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
(2 Tim 1:12 NIV) That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.
B. Transforming Grace
While the blessings of salvation come wholly through substitution, blessings in the Christian life more often come through transformation rather than substitution. When Paul prayed three times that his thorn in the flesh be removed, he was asking God for substitution. He wanted health rather than sickness. Sometimes God meets a need by giving us what we want. Therefore, it is certainly right to pray for healing. However, sometimes God meets our need by transformation. He does not remove the affliction, but rather gives grace so that the affliction works for us and not against us.
God did not change Paul’s situation by removing the thorn. He changed it by adding a new ingredient - His grace. Our God is the God of all grace (1 Peter 5:10). His throne is the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16). The Word of God is the word of His grace (Acts 20:32). His promise is that “He gives more grace (James 4:6).”
Instead of healing Paul of his thorn, God gave him insight into the thorn as a gift from God. Sometimes God’s gifts may seem strange to us. There was only one thing Paul could do with this strange gift - accept it.
Application: What strange gift has God given you today? You have prayed for a substitute. You want God to take it away. If God choose not to take it away, then you can be sure it is His gift to you.
You have a choice. You can rebel against God’s gift and become bitter, or you can accept God’s gift and become better.
Lessons for Today:
1. Recognize that the spiritual is more important than the physical.
2. Experience daily the grace of God.
3. Live on promises not expectations.
4. Accept God’s perfect balance between afflictions and blessing.
5. Rejoice in the fact that afflictions are not a barrier to effective Christian service.
6. Rest in God’s Word.