To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

One of the greatest hindrances we face in coming to salvation or in being used of God after salvation is our very high opinion of ourselves. Before a person is saved, they think they know so much, when in fact they don’t know either their own self or the God who made them. We can think we are so good morally. As we look around us, we tend to see so much in others that we think is inferior to us. It can anger us that so many people can do so many things and think in such ways that are so repugnant to our own sensibilities, all the while failing to see all the repugnancy within our own heart. We think ourselves so right in our judgments that we even make moral judgments about the nature of God, and thus make a god in our own image that is, in reality, as inferior to the true God as the earth is inferior to the heavens. It is only when a person’s eyes are opened to the blackness of his or her own heart and the great contrast between that heart and the magnificent glory of God that they can ever come to see their need of God and find their way to His feet in humble submission and the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). However, although we may, as a result of God’s great longsuffering grace towards us, come to the place of seeing ourselves in our hopelessness without God and turn to Him in repentance to be saved, it is in the very grace of salvation that we need to continuously be humbled before our God time and time again.

It is to this that Paul speaks in the passage above from 2 Corinthians 12. Paul has just spoken of the awesome work of God in his own life. This included incredible spiritual experiences, like being given a vision of heaven with all the sights and sounds of its glory. Paul was used of God in awesome ways as he founded churches and wrote letters to churches and individuals that were truly inspired by the Holy Spirit and preserved for us as the very Word of God in the New Testament. He was given great wisdom and insight into the mind of God. But in the face of it all, Paul faced the continual temptation to become spiritually conceited. It was for this reason that God sent difficulties into Paul’s life that continually humbled him, for it was only in that condition that he could be used of God in the way that he was. Every time Paul turned around, he faced situations both without and within that exposed his weaknesses rather than his strengths. He speaks of “insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities” that were such a significant part of his life. But it was these very things that God was using to keep Paul from becoming conceited. It was in and through these things that humbled Paul and exposed his own weaknesses and neediness, that God worked to reveal His own power, rather than Paul’s. Of course, Paul wanted this more than anything, so it was in such things that Paul could be content.

So, what does this say to you and me in this day when self-sufficiency, “empowerment,” and self-esteem are held up as the greatest virtues in all of life? When sickness plagues us and weakens us in one way or another, do we become angry? Do we reject it as something that we should not have to deal with? Or do we understand that “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). If someone disagrees with us about something, including our view of some moral or spiritual issue, do we tend to become angry and argue vociferously to prove we are in the right, or do we, “correct (others) with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:25), for it takes real humility to be able to disagree in that way? If we face some calamity that threatens our bank account and places us in a position of need, are we too proud to admit it, or do we realize that even in this, God is at work to show His strength? Are we too proud to admit that we have a difficult problem in our own lives or in the lives of others in our family? Perhaps its time to realize that it may be exactly that problem, that thorn in our flesh, that God has allowed to afflict us so that we might learn more about how awesome He is in contrast with our own weaknesses.

You see, it is often in these very situations that God is most at work in our lives. It is in these circumstances we can come to understand that it is only as we “decrease” that He might “increase” in and through our lives (John 3:30).

So, are you prone to boast about your strengths as you talk about yourself to others, or like Paul, do you find that it is your own weaknesses that you find yourself talking about more? You see, it is God’s strengths that should be the focus of our life and thereby our words. It is in His strength that we should boast. For you see, so often it is in those things that expose our own weaknesses rather than those things that show our strengths that His strength is most often displayed.