His Grace and Power

In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  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.  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. – 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10 (NIV)

Paul says in the beginning of this passage that he was given a problem, “a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me”.  Why did he have this problem?  The NIV says to keep him from being conceited; the NLT says to keep him from being proud; the Message says to keep him from getting the big head; and the KJV says “lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance”.   The dictionary defines conceited as excessively proud of oneself or vain. 

So Paul has this problem after he has been in contact with a man with great revelations and he seems to hint that he himself has seen great signs of God, but to avoid anyone’s lifting him up he will not discuss them.  And also, God allowed this problem to exist in his life and would not remove it although Paul had complete faith in God’s ability to remove it.  He tells us that he prayed for it to be removed three separate times.  Paul was also a righteous man doing the will of God and the Bible tells us in James 5:16 “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”  Yet God didn’t heal him. 

However, his prayers did provide much.  He learned through the experience that he could rejoice in his infirmities.  Yes, that is correct, he learned to be thankful for his problem because it showed him that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness”.  Paul had a problem and he didn’t want to endure it, but he learned to endure it through God’s grace and power.  The same grace and power that will take each of us from this world to heaven.  The same grace and power that raised Jesus from the grave.  The same grace and power in His Spirit living inside of every Christian who believes in Jesus as the only Son of the one true living God. 

Where in my life do I need to show grace but don’t want to?  What situation is in my life needs my forgiveness although it isn’t requested or merited?  What actions has God put on my heart to show to others but I can’t do them?  If I will “do them anyway” as Mother Teresa’s famous poem says, I have to believe Paul that God will do them through me in His grace and power.  And when I see His grace and power doing what I know I don’t want to do, then I can thankful for that problem because it reveals God’s grace and power.  This is another step of faith.  It is so much easier to type than to actually do.

We see this all the time in people who have been through terrible events.  They survive only to be grateful and thankful to God.  How can that be except they saw such depths of God’s grace and power that carried them through those events?  They testify, much as Paul does here, about how God arrived at exactly the right time to do what they could not do, and they are changed forever because of it. 

My personal reflection of these verses is that Paul's problem was his sin nature and he found within himself something he knew shouldn't be there.  He prayed for it to leave him but it wouldn't.  The presence of it made him realize that he was as every other man, a sinner.  He then felt unworthy to be a messenger of God.  Yet in this he realized that God's grace and power overcomes his sin.  He was the same man as before, forgiven.  God could still work His grace and power through him.  Just as those who testify of God's deliverance through great events, Paul testifies of God's deliverance through that "sin that doth so easily beset us" (Hebrews 12:1).  But, the interpretation of what the problem was is up to each person as they read the text and the lesson applies to both concepts.

I pray that we seek God’s grace and power in all areas of our life, especially in our problems, so that we can be thankful for them and watch Him work in miraculous ways.  Then we can testify at God’s deliverance and hand working in our life and be witnesses to His work.