Our Lord God's grace is sufficient.

                                                       

                                                        A Thorn in the Flesh
                                                “But he said to me, ‘My grace is
                                               sufficient for you, for my power is
                                                     made perfect in weakness’.”
                                                           2 Corinthians 12:9
There are Christians today who still assume that if we are right with God, then everything will run
smoothly in our lives. That is not true of Scripture and certainly not true of Paul’s life. He gives us a
gift in coming out in the open about a thorn in his flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment him.

Paul doesn't disclose "what" this thorn in his flesh is, but he tells us he has it, not to be transparent in
any way, but to show how these threatening issues become an avenue for God to work in a new and
deeper way.
Paul tells us, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these
surpassing great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to
torment me.”
The danger Paul faced was something that might lead him to arrogance and pride.
A few verses earlier, he writes, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the
third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know – God knows. And I
know that this man…..was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is
not permitted to tell” (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).
It was these surpassing great revelations Paul talks about that caused him to be given a thorn in
his flesh. Though he writes in the third person, it is evident Paul is talking about himself. He goes
on to say,
“I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my
weaknesses.”
Whether it was in the body or out of the body or a vision or something literal he was
physically caught up in is irrelevant. The point is he saw and heard things that he was not permitted
to talk about and for fourteen years had kept it locked inside.
There is always a danger when God does something in our lives or through our lives that we are so
excited about and grateful for that we begin to take credit ourselves.
We like to be recognized and affirmed. The old ego wants to take ownership,  the focus shifts from God onto ourselves.
The temptation to go beyond what God gives is common to all of us. God works. God blesses. God
provides, and we want more.
Great experiences of God are often followed by melancholy and disappointment;
great victories followed by deep valleys and loneliness;
great triumphs by great temptations, and great exaltation to depression.
This is true of leading characters throughout the Bible; Elijah, Moses, David, all the
disciples, and of Jesus, Himself, when after His baptism, He was led by the Spirit into the
wilderness, alone for forty days of testing and trial. Great moments with God can lead to great
battles, "but a holy man or holy woman is always humbled", and the devil’s most prominent tool is to
provoke pride in us to get us to act independently of God.
 The thorn in Paul’s flesh was a trial to protect him from becoming conceited.
It was preventative and intentional…. “given to me,” Paul says. That begs the question: given by whom?
 It was a messenger of Satan, but it was God who permitted it.
Everything Satan does God has allowed and this is a perspective that can only come from knowing God and His ways.

In knowing God, we learn through experiences of Him,
 there is "no better friend than the hardships" that keep us "humble" and dependent" upon Jesus.
There is a great deal of speculation as to what the thorn in Paul’s flesh was. It could have been of a
physical nature; his poor eye sight, ear aches, migraines, gout, a speech impediment or perhaps
something moral, a temptation he struggled with.

Amongst the early church fathers, there was a
prevalent understanding that Paul is actually talking about a besetting sin, because they understood
the word ‘flesh’ to mean the old nature battling against the Spirit. God does not endorse sin, but
neither has He provided sinlessness as an option.

We are all going to fail and if that leads us to a deeper dependence on God, it has served a good purpose.
Maybe the thorn in Paul’s flesh was circumstantial, nothing to do with his health or morality, but
was simply a metaphor of all his trials, because he says, “I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in
hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.” Earlier he listed a whole string of hardships, ranging
from being stoned, to beaten, imprisoned and shipwrecked. Was he wondering when God would
make his way easier?

It’s also possible he’s referring to his past rising up and condemning him as
he did start out as an arch enemy of the Christian faith.
One of the things the devil does is accuse us night and day before God.
However, this is all speculation and it’s a good thing we don’t know,
because had Paul revealed what the thorn in his flesh was, such as his eyesight for example, our
resolve would be limited to just one thing. As it is, one size fits all.
Paul’s perspective is that this thorn in his flesh is going to be what
produces in him a fresh awareness of God’s grace that he would otherwise never have known. He
had pleaded and prayed three times to take it away, but Jesus said, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.” That’s triumph.

When all is well in our lives, our prayer life usually suffers. It’s when we’re faced with trouble that our prayer life is often awakened and deepened. But it cannot drive us to prayer in pride; only humility. To be driven to prayer is already to be humbled in recognizing the fact that “God, I can’t do this. I need you in this situation.”
What occupied Paul was not the incredible visions and experience of God locked up in his mind for
fourteen years, but the thorn in his flesh, because this is the area in which he had to battle. If it
would have been these surpassing great revelations, he would have wanted an audience to hear
about it and be impressed.

The thorn in his flesh didn't drive him to an audience, but to God.
Despite the fact that it torments him, there was something much greater in this, which can only be
learned through hardship, and it is experiencing the grace of God.

The grace of God is simply the presence of God. Though ‘grace’ can be defined in a number of ways, whatever else it may be, it is God doing what we cannot do, and God being what we cannot be in ourselves.
The surpassing great revelations in Paul’s life are offset by the great tribulation, and they balance
his life.

It’s the things that hurt us that humble us, and the things that weaken us that make us
dependent upon God. And that’s why Paul says he delights in weaknesses, hardships, persecutions
because when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
The best experiences in our lives are the ones that drive
us back to God with a fresh sense of dependence on Him and need of His grace and His working.

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise man boast
of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man
boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me…”
Jeremiah 9:23

I can only say that in our walk with Our Lord Jesus we can not boast in our self, for you see our life is only complete today,and we are only alive today because of who our Lord Jesus Christ is in us.
What ever your thorn is---- may it draw you into a greater dependence and trust in our Lord Jesus to make you all that He created you to be in Him and He alone.
To God be all the Glory.