Does God want to weaken you? Paul, the great apostle, was given a "thorn in the flesh," a messenger of Satan, to torment him and to keep him from becoming conceited because of surpassingly great revelations that he received from God (2 Cor 12:7). Despite endless speculation, this thorn is not specifically known. God's specific intended purpose was to keep Paul humble and weak, so weak that his only recourse is to rely entirely on God's sufficient grace (2 Cor 12:9).
Generic thorns and a particular thorn. Every Christian who has any degree of self-awareness is surely conscious of some unbearable thorn in their own flesh, which feels like torture and which thus weakens and frustrates them. Common thorns might be laziness, lukewarmness, lust, licentiousness, liberalism, legalism and loneliness, from which all people/Christians experience to varying degrees. My particular thorn might be anger, exasperation, impatience and the incessant desire to retaliate against others--like Dirty Harry. I know that apart from marveling and grasping at the glory of the gospel of God's grace (Ac 20:24), I am completely helpless and powerless to restrain myself. Thank God for such a thorn that is surely nothing but his magnificent, magnanimous, mysterious and marvelous grace to me.
Good point! Mine might be laziness... We are always trying to overcome our weakness but finally find it is so hard because we may not exactly know how to rely on God to do this. But maybe we should thank God to give us such a thorn first.
ReplyDeleteYuxing, I think that comfort lulls us into complacency, while a thorn causes us pain and discomfort, which then gets our attention.
ReplyDeleteC.S. Lewis said, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”