From 2 Corinthians chapter 7 we read “….I was given a thorn in my flesh” and this is my basis for this posting. I have suffered many different issues in my life and most of them have been things that I have been able to recover from and also healed from the injury. Broken bones, heart ailments, a plethora of injuries from getting hit by a car. I have healed and/or recovered from all of those. I am also afflicted with leukemia and skin cancer. And in the ways of mankind I will not likely ever be cured from those maladies. Instead I count on the grace of God more each day.
The Apostle Paul wrote about the thorn in his flesh and his words have meant more to me in the past 5 or 6 years than they ever did in my previous 50-something years here on God’s green earth. Paul never really tells us what that thorn in his side really was. Some have thought that Paul might have been speaking of when he was stoned and left for dead. There are some places we can read that the writer thinks that Paul was afflicted with malaria, epilepsy, or a disease of his eyes. But whatever his thorn in his flesh was it was debilitating to Paul.
Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe. ~ Acts 14:19-20 +++
Maybe Paul tells us this story so we can see how God touched him in a unique manner. Paul prayed many times for God to remove this malady. He writes that he prayed three times and three times God refused to remove it. Instead Paul received blessings that were so much more to him and those around him. Paul received greater grace from God and this helped Paul’s ministry and helped him emphasize with those around him and they themselves could see God’s work in his life.
I know my friends and family have prayed for my cancer to go away. I have been prayed upon with hands over my shoulders asking God to supernaturally heal me and take the cancer away. That would be nice but I have to admit that I don’t trust myself if that happens. I fear that I might revert to my old ways of not recognizing the sovereign Lord our God in the way that I must. I was a proud person before these afflictions struck me down. I thought I was tough and strong. I was invincible!
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 12:10 +++
Why are some healed and some are not? Why are some, like myself, blessed with great things while some are not? We don’t know why this is. We know that God doesn’t heal some believers while He does others. He has a sovereign plan and our task is to pray to Him, and we must do this every day and many times a day. Everything we do and say should be to glorify His Name and to help lead others to that righteous path of glory.
Now I know that I am strong because I am weak. I have given my trust to Jesus and have quit relying on myself to get through things. I know that Jesus was holding me in His arms when I was struck down by that car. I know that Jesus has a better plan for me than ridding me of my cancers. He has a Divine purpose to this plan of His. I have prayed for healing in the past but when I pray for healing in the present day I pray that my faith is healed so that my soul can become more pure than it was yesterday.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~ Romans 8:35-39 +++
We must recognize that nothing separates us from the love of Jesus and that our spiritual health is more important than our physical health. God didn’t remove Paul’s affliction, but instead He promised to demonstrate His power in Paul. The fact that God’s power is displayed in our weaknesses should give us courage and hope. We should do our best to recognize our own limitations and if we do that then we need to depend even more on the hand of God to help guide us each day. I have seen this in my own life. When I finally saw that I was not as tough as I wanted to be I spent more time talking to God and carrying on a conversation with Him. It was then that God spoke more to me…..or was it then that I finally opened my ears to His Word? Either way, we can develop a better Christian character and our way of worship deepens and our foundation is set more firmly.
