I asked for strength that I might achieve;
He made me weak that I might obey.
I asked for health that I might do great things;
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
He gave me poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
He gave me weakness that I might feel a need for God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
He gave me life that I might enjoy all things.
I received nothing I had asked for;
He gave me all that I had hoped for.
If you are on our email list you got an email from me this past Friday in which I told you that I was going to tell you the secret of life. If you are not on our email list and want to be just fill out one of the cards in front of you and get it to me and I’ll make sure you are added for next time. But if you came this morning wondering what I was going to say, what smart-alec thing I was going to come up with, well in all seriousness, I would like to propose to you this morning that the poem I just read IS the secret to life.
If you can understand, accept and fully embrace these words then you can have what Jesus came to earth to give you and that is, as it says in John 10:10, a full and abundant life. Who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t want to live their life in a way that at the very end you can say, “I did everything I was supposed to and wanted to. I am done. I ran the race the best I could and now I am ready to go home.”? That’s what happens when we embrace what this poem and our passage for today are talking about.
The problem is most of us get hung up asking the wrong question and so we never get the answer we are supposed to get. Most of us keep trying to figure out why God doesn’t answer our prayers like we think He should. We all know that prayer works. We would never admit to doubting the power of prayer. We talked last week about the kind of prayer God can’t wait to answer. We all know He has the power and the knowledge to answer our prayers but somewhere in the back of our minds; in a place we don’t want to admit exists, we doubt that God is going to answer our prayer.
Oh, sure we all, as mature Christians, know that God is probably not going to answer our prayers for a new 2013 Corvette ZR-1 in Velocity Yellow. Although, as I have said, I could bring God glory in that ride! I could. I would paint “Christ Fellowship” on the side and John 3:16 on the hood and everywhere I go I would say, “Look what God provided!” But nobody is seriously praying for that. What we are praying is, “Lord, my friend Robert Miller has cancer and I humbly ask that you would heal him.” “Lord, your servant Nadi lays unconscious in a bed in Nicaragua and the doctors don’t know what to do. Please help.”
And even though I am praying fervently and in the name of Jesus there is something at the back of my mind that thinks that these prayers are too big for God to answer. I know they are because I have prayed like this before and God still allowed the worst to happen. Oh, I’m not going to admit it to anyone; certainly not from the pulpit and probably not even to myself but it’s there, gnawing at me and proving my faith to be fruitless. And then I get mad and frustrated, wondering why God would waste His breath telling me to come boldly before His throne with my requests if He wasn’t going to do what I asked!
Why doesn’t God answer our prayer like we want? As I said before, it is the wrong question to ask but we will use it to get us to the right answer and to the secret of life that is found in II Corinthians chapter 12 verses 7-10. In my opinion these may be some of the most profound words ever written down in the history of the world. Next to the words of Jesus Himself in John 3:16, these words can be the most life-changing ever recorded. Paul wrote them to the church in Corinth ; a church that he started and where he spent so much time and effort.
Paul had a passion for this church that burned deep inside of him and he prayed for them and taught them and wrote to them and just when he would seem to think they were beginning to understand he would get word that some false teacher had gone in and undermined everything Paul had been telling them and modeling to them. And so it is out of this frustration and pain that Paul writes these words.
“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. 9But 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 the passages before this Paul talks about God allowing Paul to see some incredible visions; visions that were too incredibly great to even be able to share with anybody. And so Paul says that he was given a thorn in the flesh to keep him from being conceited about the fact that God had showed him these things. And isn’t that the tendency we all have? When God reveals Himself or does something supernatural in our lives we all just have a way of making it about us, don’t we? “I must be doing something right. God must think I’m something pretty special. I’m kind of a big deal with God.”
Some Christians are like this woodpecker that was pecking on the trunk of an old, dead tree when all of the sudden lightning struck the tree and split it right down the middle and left nothing but splinters. The woodpecker was able to fly away unharmed but as he looked at where the old tree used to be he thought, “Wow! Look at what I did!”
So that leads us to the first of the four reasons Paul outlines for us in this passage as to why God doesn’t answer our prayers like we want.
1) It humbles us.
2) It draws us to Him.
3) It displays His grace.
4) It gives us power.
If anybody ever had reason to brag on themselves it was Paul. Not only had he seen these incredible visions but he had started numerous churches all over Europe . He had seen and done incredible miracles and had felt God’s power in ways that most of us will never know. And so in verse 7 he says that he had been given a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble. Bible scholars and historians have long wondered and speculated on what Paul was exactly talking about in reference to the thorn. Some have said it was his eyesight or some disease, migraines, back problems or even a speech impediment but we really don’t know.
And actually the word translated“thorn” may be better translated “stake” which indicated the suffering Paul was enduring. It wasn’t a little thorn in his finger it was a large stake. And then Paul says it was from a “messenger of Satan”. We like to think that God wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to us but this would teach otherwise, as would Job chapter 1 where Satan approaches God asking to attack Job and God agrees. Or consider what Jesus says to Peter in Luke 22. “Satan has asked to sift you as wheat but I have prayed for you.”
Make no mistake. Satan’s attack on Paul was not outside of God’s will. God is sovereign over all of His creation and will use even the forces of the kingdom of darkness to accomplish His righteous purposes. Paul was critical to God’s redemptive plan and He would keep him humble by any means necessary, including using a demon. God sometimes allows Satan to bring devastating suffering on His saints to achieve their greater usefulness. (John MacArthur) And sometimes He doesn’t answer our prayers like we want in an effort to humble us and keep us useful.
Not only does God not always answer our prayers like we want to keep us humble, it also draws us closer to Him. I like to think that Paul was a praying man. I like to think that he knew from where his power came and from where his peace and joy and comfort came. In fact, Paul says himself in the very first chapter of this book, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles…” Paul knew that it was through a relationship with God through His Son Jesus that he was comforted and yet God wanted Paul to spend time with Him so much He allowed Paul to continue on with the thorn in his flesh.
Paul did the same thing that was modeled by Jesus Himself in the garden. Jesus prayed 3 times to God to deliver Him in Matthew 26. Paul drew near to God in the intensity of his pain and it was the most blessed place that he could be just as it is for us. What happens when we go through pain and suffering? The universal response to pain and suffering is almost ALWAYS to turn to God. It’s the theory behind there not being any atheists in foxholes. God knows how we think and our relationship with Him is so important that he sometimes allows us to go through bad things so we can trust in Him and Him alone.
C.S. Lewis said, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, and shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”(The Problem of Pain) Everybody in the world goes through pain and many of us right here this morning are enduring our own thorns in the flesh. I have said before that everybody we know should be at the top of our prayer list. But our relationship with God is so important that He sometimes allows us to continue in our pain because it draws us closer to Him.
Paul prays 3 times and when it says that he prays 3 times it doesn’t mean he brought up the subject to God 3 times. It means there were 3 periods of time in Paul’s life – maybe days, weeks, months or even years that Paul went before God and poured out his heart. I happen to think there is reason to believe that the thorn was actually Paul’s grief and concern about this very church. He was so concerned about the church in Corinth knowing the truth and having a relationship with God through His Son Jesus that when false teachers came in it pained Paul to his very core.
Now you would think that surely God would answer that prayer. Paul was praying for the health of the church. What could be more God-honoring than that? And yet what is God’s answer to Paul? “My grace is sufficient for you.” God didn’t remove the pain because it kept Paul humble and drew him closer to God but instead God chose to display His grace in the circumstance. We know that grace is God’s undeserved favor on mankind but if it is God’s favor then why allow Paul (and us) to continue going through pain? What kind of favor is that?
It is the kind of favor that does not give you something good so that ultimately you will get something better and God will get more glory. Did you hear that because this is the key that unlocks this big secret of life? In fact, repeat after me: Grace is God not giving you something good so that ultimately you will get something better and God will get more glory. That is grace. Grace makes pain spiritually productive.
This family has been wonderful to continue to pray for my friend Robert Miller. As most of you know Robert has a rare form of cancer and he has gone through all the chemo and radiation and all the pills and therapy and everything else that can possibly be done. He will find out Tuesday what his status is officially but they believe that the tumors have all but disappeared. And thank you Lord, that’s wonderful but the doctors say there is a 100% chance that they will come back.
Robert is dying and he knows it. The chemo has given him some more time but who knows how long it will last? And in my prayers for Robert I know that God can heal him. I know that He has the power to do that and so I think to myself, “God why don’t you? Robert is a wonderful Christian who has always been bold in his witness for Jesus. Why would you take him so early? It’s not fair! Why don’t you just be the Superman I know you can be and get the glory of healing him?”
I talked to Robert just a few days ago. He called me as I was driving somewhere and we chatted for a second and then I asked him how he was really doing. I didn’t ask him for some deep theological nugget of motivation. I didn’t tell him I needed some great quote for a sermon. I just asked how he was doing and he said first that he was pretty tired but then he said, “You know, this whole cancer thing has just about been worth it for all the people I have gotten to speak to about Jesus.”
That’s the secret to life! That’s “my grace is sufficient for you”! When you look up “my grace is sufficient for you” in the dictionary you see Paul’s picture and right next to Paul is Robert’s picture! Why? Is it because Robert deserves God’s grace? No. As good as Robert is he doesn’t deserve God’s wonderful, boundless, immeasurable grace. If he did it wouldn’t be grace. That’s why it is grace.
Blogger Jon Acuff says, “The truth is, grace is offensive. Grace offends in its’ generosity. Grace offends in its’ availability. Grace offends in its’ depth. Grace offends in its’unwillingness to be controlled or owned or manipulated. Grace is offensive, and when I see people who I think don’t deserve it, I am reminded of ultimately how desperately I still need it.” God loves you so much He sometimes allows us to continue in our pain to humble us, draw us closer to him and to display His grace; His wonderful, boundless, immeasurable and offensive grace. And thank you Lord for it.
Lastly, sometimes God does not answer our prayers like we want because it actually gives us power. God told Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” God not only wanted Paul to be humble but also strong. John MacArthur says that “it was necessary for the fires of affliction to burn away all the dross of pride and self-confidence” in Paul.
Paul had done everything humanly possible for the Corinthians and still he could not fix the situation. He was at the point where he had to totally trust in God’s will and power. And what better place to be? See, nobody is too weak to experience God’s power but many of us are too confident in our own strength. God sometimes allows our suffering, anguish, disappointment and failure to squeeze the impurities of pride and self-confidence out of our lives so that we are a clear channel for His power to flow through.
So, though his circumstances had not changed, Paul could say in verse 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.” Paul got it. He understood the secret of life. He understood why God doesn’t always answer our prayers like we think He should and so he didn’t even ask that question anymore. He said he delighted in all of his difficulties. Can you say that? Can you relax and be still and know that He is God and that He loves you and wants all the best for you, instead of just some good things?
Can you accept that God is sovereign and is in control of everything including your pain and suffering and sometimes allows it to continue to make you more like Him? When you can delight in that fact then you can have that full and abundant life in John 10:10 and that is the secret of life.
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