Members of our congregation were asked to write some devotionals to make up a collection and to be read during services in November. Below is a sample of one of those deveotionals. View entire devotional booklet as a PDF.
Thank You for My Life
Dear God, thank you for my life on this earth, however challenging or not.
Thank you for giving me free will to love and be loved, to make my own decisions, to learn from my mistakes, to laugh when I am happy, to cry when I am sad.
Thank you for my family, my pets, and for every other living creature I meet along my journey.
Thank you for giving me the strength to overcome adversity, to do what’s right for the benefit of others, and to rise above negativity.
Thank you for giving me hope for an end to world suffering, pain and war for a better world filled with light and everlasting love.
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
April 19th 2009
"Perfected in Weakness"
Today we are going to be talking about the Grace of God. We can define it in our heads but sometimes it is like Paul said in our scripture “I heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” Grace is sometimes beyond what we can understand. It is something that needs to be experienced. It is something that needs to go from our heads to our hearts. As one man said, “We can define it in our heads but do we know it in our hearts?”
Do we know the Grace of God in our hearts and live it in our lives?
In our scripture, Paul tells about two experiences he had. One would be called a rapture or translation into heaven. He tells this story in the 3rd person, so at first you don’t know that he is talking about himself, but he is making the point to his opponents, who are claiming greater visions and spiritual experiences than him, that his visions are even better.
But he does it in such a way that he says, “Yes, I may have had better mystical experiences but that doesn’t really matter. God’s power is not shown best in personal mystical experiences but through my weaknesses.”
Paul mentions his “thorn” or “stake” in his flesh. The Greek shows that whatever he suffered from was more than just a little cactus spine. It was deeply painful even to the point of him feeling tortured.
In his rapture or vision experience he speaks of being caught up into the “third heaven” and later in verse 4 speaks of being caught up into “Paradise”. These are one and the same experience using different words and expressions to explain it.
In Paul’s time the “first Heaven” was what we would call the sky”. The second heaven was the place of the moon and stars. The “third heaven” was the place beyond both. It was the “spiritual” outside of the physical where God dwells. “Location” and “geographic” words are used to describe a state of being with God that the categories of human language can’t describe. Paul claims he went there and was forbidden to reveal what it was like.
He was given this vision of “Heaven”, “Paradise,” the “Third Heaven” as a means of strength to face his many personal, physical and emotional trials “hardships, persecutions, calamities for the sake Christ” as he says in verse 10.
No one knows what Paul’s “thorn or stake in the flesh” was. Over the centuries the three most popular ideas have been that it was his opponents, a physical problem, or an eye problem. There has been endless speculation.
But since we don’t know what it was it “allows us to admit our thorn in the flesh, be it visible, private, physical, or psychological that we’ve prayed to be released from, yet which God has given to keep us humble.” Hughes “The Second Epistle to the Corinthians”
In some way each and every one of us has a “thorn in the flesh.” We have some temptation, some physical illness, some broken relationship, some loneliness, some psychological condition that keeps us humble. If it is not readily apparent we are often then in denial of the reality of our lives.
We all suffer. We all are separated from ourselves, from others and from God. We live in a state of weakness that if we allow God to meet us there we will be perfected. Often we will not be released from our thorn in the flesh like Paul, but we like Paul can use that weakness for God’s glory to shine through.
“3 times Paul prayed to have it removed and only after the 3rd time did God speak. The point is to persevere in prayer and “No” does not mean God abandoned you, but that you have something that can be used for good. Not to receive what one asks for does not mean to not receive at all.” Hughes “The Second Epistle to the Corinthians”
This thought is reflected in the statement a friend of mine made when she learned she had breast cancer. She said, “Lord let me use this for your glory.”
The most famous verse in our scripture is God’s word to Paul when he prayed for his thorn/stake to be removed. The Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
‘God is not looking here for some aimless, non-resistance of dispirited resignation. God is looking for a dynamic response to the thorns in the flesh.’ Paul has seen God use them for good. That’s how the Galatian church came into being and so many other good things. God does not cause all things, there is evil in this world, but works in things good or bad for the good.
Years ago an older woman, a grandmother came to speak to me. I no longer remember her name. She said that recently she had been to her Dr. and found out that she had only months to live. She came to me to ask if I would intercede with on her behalf with her family so that she could have some reconciliation and peace before she died.
Years before she had a falling out with her daughter who blamed her for her oldest daughter disappearing. This woman’s oldest daughter had disappeared and no one knew if she was dead or alive and the mother blamed the grandmother for the disappearance. Because of that she banished the Grandmother from her home and from even speaking to her younger daughter. I knew both families and did not know they were related until that day.
The grandmother would come to worship every Sunday hoping that her granddaughter would be singing. She would sit about 5 rows back and listen and cry. The family split came when the remaining granddaughter was so young that she did not remember what her grandmother looked like. This young woman had a voice like an angel, so she sang often in church never knowing the woman who sat directly in front of her and cried when she sang was her very own grandmother. This had gone on for years.
So, I approached the woman whose daughter was missing and other daughter would sing. I approached her and asked if the grandmother could reveal herself to her granddaughter before she died.
There was drama, there were tears, but there was grace. This young singer finally got to know her grandmother shortly before her grandmother died.
In this grandmother’s weakest hour, the hour of her approaching death forgiveness was asked for given and received. Grace was asked for and received. That was the Grace of God at work. Shortly after this the missing older daughter was found in another state; alive and married.
In a grandmother’s weakest hour forgiveness, and grace was sought and found and a family was reunited.
Romans 5:6 says, “You see at the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
“In his short story “The Capitol of the World,” Ernest Hemingway tells the story of a Spanish father and his teenage son. The relationship between this father and son became strained and eventually shattered. When the rebellious son—whose name was Paco, a common Spanish name—ran away from home, his father began a long and arduous search to find him. As a last resort, the exhausted father placed an ad in a Madrid newspaper, hoping that his son would see the ad and respond to it. The ad read,
Dear Paco,
Please meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven.
Love, Father
As Hemingway tells the story, the next day at noon, in front of the newspaper office there were 800 Pacos, all seeking forgiveness from their fathers. Youth Specialties, Inc. Hot Illustrations copyright 2001
More people than you know have thorns. More people than you know are prone to wander to leave both their earthly father and their Father in heaven as the words of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” say.
My best friend in the world besides my wife is named Michael. Michael is a pastor. As a child he was sorely abused by his father. He told me stories of his being beaten until his flesh was ripped wide open. He knows what Paul was speaking about in this letter to the Corinthians when he speaks of being beaten.
Eventually he was removed from his home and raise in foster care. He never really reconciled with his earthly father but told me a story of grace in his childhood that helped sustain him in life. Why he was raised in foster care I do not know when he had family but here is a story of one Thanksgiving visit to his family so long ago.
He had been invited to sit at the main table with the grownups in a southern plantation home in Virginia. It was a table and a meal as elegant as you might think in the south in an elegant home.
It was a huge table with a lace table cloth, cloth napkins, china plates, more forks than anyone would need, knives, spoons, and crystal goblets filled with milk. It was a magical setting for a little guy of 7 or 8.
All the guests came and sat down. It was as formal as it gets with the patriarch at the head of the table.
Now Michael sat there a moment and in the silence before the prayer reached for his crystal glass of milk and horror of horrors knocked it over.
Dead silence filled the room. Every eye at the table stopped and stared at him. If he could have died and been carried away at that moment he would have preferred it to the silent stares. He thought he was about to get the chewing out or beating of his life.
But in that silence there was another big crash. The patriarch at the head of the table had deliberately knocked over his crystal glass of milk.
In shock now the people at the table stared at him and someone asked why he knocked over his glass.
This wise and graceful man looked down at that crushed and embarrassed boy and said, referring to the knocked over glass, “That was more than any little boy could bear.”
The Patriarch joined him in his embarrassment, in his pain and offered Grace.
As Jesus said, “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.” No one at that table was going to say anything about spilled milk when the patriarch, the father himself spilled it.
When you’re weakest, come to Jesus. When you are most powerless, come to Jesus. If you have wandered off like Paco, come to Jesus. If you need to give forgiveness, come to Jesus. If you are tortured of body soul or mind, come to Jesus today. If you live in embarrassment and shame come to Jesus and be set free, or have your suffering redeemed and perfected through the Grace of God.
I am going to give you a moment to reflect today on the Grace of God and your thorn in the flesh. I am going to show you a video clip about the hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” As it plays think and pray and know that the grace of God is here. This video is a modern retelling of the life of its writer, Robert Robinson.
As a child his father died. His mother tried to raise him well. She sent him to a boarding school in London but he disappeared into gang life and alcohol. In a drunken state he consulted a medium an experience that very much disturbed him. In a strange way he was confronted by his lostness and need for God. He later went to hear an evangelist whose words converted his heart. Grace was understood in his heart.
He later started to preach and died in his sleep at the age of 54 while on a preaching mission.
As his life is reenacted contemplate your own. Are you prone to wander from God? Do you need to be forgiven and forgive others? Is this the day you say to God once again “here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.” In your weakness do you need to feel God perfecting you?
In the song it refers to an “Ebenezer”. An Ebenezer is a stone or place of remembrance where God has acted powerfully in your life.
Now is the opportunity to turn yourself, your trials, thorns, spikes, temptations, failures, your weakness over to God. Now is the time and the place to give and receive forgiveness. This time and this place can be your Ebenezer, your place of remembrance, where the Grace of God comes powerfully into your life.
If you would make it so, I invite you and every other Paco, shame filled child sitting at the table of God to receive God’s grace and forgiveness as we sing now “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”.
