Paul’s thorn in the flesh.
“Now 2 Cor 12:8. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice. Even after he knew why he had it he still prayed and there’s nothing wrong with that. He still prayed thrice that the Lord would take it away, and the answer was still no, I’m not going to take it away, and we may find the same thing in our lives that even though we may know that God is doing this for a purpose, yet we still continue to pray even three times that it might be, depart from me. The beauty of it here is that anytime you call on the Lord in such faith He will answer you. He will not ignore you, God did not ignore Paul, He did not take away this thorn in the flesh, but neither did He ignore what the apostle said. He still gave him a glorious answer and that answer is the theme of this particular portion. He said unto me in 2 Cor 12:9, My grace is sufficient for thee. Remember, God gives grace to the humble, and so He held Paul in this state of humility in order that He might reveal even more of His grace, and Paul learned through this. My grace is sufficient; yes I wanted to be delivered, yes I wanted to get rid of that thorn in the flesh, but I don’t have to get rid of it in order to go on with the Lord.”
My grace is sufficient. Grace will come in as the power in order to take me on beyond even this present situation, and then Paul spells it out even more. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Simply stated, that means that we are going to have to experience weakness in order to really know, and understand His strength; there’s no other way to learn it. God has to weaken us to the point where we truly rely upon His, and not simply rely, but we learn what His strength actually is, and what it can do, and so my strength is made perfect in weakness.
We have our choice once again. We can feel bad toward God, we can blame God because we didn’t get what we wanted, or let’s hope we do this: most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities. That’s contrary to all nature. Who wants to glory in the infirmities that they have in the natural? None of us do, we just as well be honest about that. We’re not thrilled to death with our ears gone, our eyes gone, everything else gone, but if we are brought more and more to a place of dependence, and if we are brought to a place where we can honestly say I will glory in my infirmities; why? Because I love to suffer so much? No, I will glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me, the power of Christ is manifest in my life, and that is exactly what we want for our experience, and this is where that the power of divine grace which has sustained and enabled Paul as we see here. That same power also enables us just exactly the same way as the grace enabled Jesus to go to the cross.
Gene Hawkins summer Youth Camp Seminar excerpt.
And then we come to you saying that the spiritual world is 100:1 evil you want no part of; I wouldn’t either. The revelation of you reading New Age, or any other source than God for your help is a definite clue to as to the door being open for satanic attack. The door can be closed for a season by resisting the devil; he will flee from you. Let’s use the perfect example when Jesus was tempted three times by Satan, and there was one defence: IT IS WRITTEN. Now we might think that Jesus being God in the flesh would have made this as nothing to Him, but no. In Mat 4:11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. This same resistance, humility, and reliance upon our Father carried Him to the cross for us. Sister
Angel, we are in a war and one wins; the one that is in Christ which you are. You’ve already conquered death in our Savior as you’re seated in the heavens with Him, and now we run a race to actually win Christ. It becomes no longer me, but Christ in me Who is the victor. Is there no longer a need to resist? Well we read in Luke 4:13 how that the devil leaveth him for a season. We have war from generation to generation with Amalek; that very figure of our flesh. (Exo 17:16), but I also have good news. It is finished, the battle is over and Jesus is Lord. As the song say, many of these battles are of our making.
My prayer? Dear Father, please bring this dear sister to me in Christ to know of Your will for her, the reason she suffers these different things, and allow her to experience the peace that passes understanding knowing that You which has begun a good work in her will continue to perform it until the Day of Jesus Christ. Thank You Father, and I give You the glory for this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. I hope you enjoy the following video.
