II Corinthians 12:7b-10 (NIV) 7 b Therefore, in order to keep me from
becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to
torment me. 8 Three times I
pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 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.
Few of us are able to
accept suffering when it first hits us, and most of us will go through an
initial depression or embitteredness before we can accept suffering and offer
it to God. The good news for us is that
acceptance of our suffering does not depend on us. It depends on God and God’s
willingness to work in our lives.
How can we get to the
point of accepting our suffering and offering it to God in the same way Paul
did? Paul drew from the resources of his faith to deal with his thorn,
resources that had been placed in his life by his knowledge of the Scriptures,
his confidence in prayer, and by his complete love and devotion to Jesus
Christ. The
important thing for us is similar, that we keep coming to God with our
suffering. We keep directing our thoughts toward Him as Job did and as Paul did
- Three times I pleaded with the Lord. And when we run out of steam and strength to offer
our suffering to God, hopefully we will have friends around us who will do it
for us.
We can offer our
suffering to God in many ways. We can ask to be delivered from it or request
the grace to accept it. We can complain to God about our suffering. We can offer
up our suffering simply by sharing with God what we are honestly feeling. We
can offer up our suffering by committing our lives anew to Him and by
surrendering to Him the pain and agony of our suffering. We can also offer up
our suffering to God by thanksgiving, particularly by offering what is
sometimes called a believing prayer, thanking God for what He can do even if He
has not yet fulfilled that promise to us. We can thank Him for His healing,
comforting power. We can thank Him for the good He brings out of suffering as
He did with His own Son on the Cross. We can thank Him that ultimately we know
we cannot be defeated by suffering.
Ultimately, acceptance
of suffering comes not because of anything we do but because of what God does.
Acceptance came to Paul when he heard God say My grace
is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. And though Paul gained a new sense
of humility and tenderness because of what he had suffered, the thorn still
harassed him. Acceptance of
suffering does not necessarily ease the pain, but acceptance does redeem our
suffering.
From a sermon preached by Henry
Dobbs Pope November 24, 1974
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)
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