2 Corinthians - Encouragement and Warning

For this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me, and He said unto me, "My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then am I strong.

We have discovered that there are three possible ways to respond to personal suffering. First of all, we can seek to escape suffering. Paul prayed three times that his thorn might be taken from him, and God did not answer that prayer. God met the need, but God did not answer the prayer the way Paul prayed it.

I think it's a normal thing for us to want to escape suffering, but sometimes God will not take suffering away. So instead of getting bitter, then we try the next thing, which is to endure suffering. But oh, that's such a difficult thing to do and it just takes all your energy and you spend your whole waking time carrying a burden instead of being a blessing.

There has to be something better than just escaping or enduring, and there is. There is a third approach, a third response. We can seek to enlist our suffering, make it work for us. Suffering is not working against us; it is working for us. We can transform our trials into triumphs.

God does not always remove the thorn, but God can always transform the experience into one of glory and blessing. The answer to our prayer might be not the removal of the thorn, but instead a growing understanding of what this thorn really means.

Now, what steps can you and I take to transform our suffering into a servant instead of an enemy or a master? What steps can you and I take so that we are enlisting our suffering and it is working for us and not against us?

Step number one: Accept it as God's gift. Don't fight it, don't rebel against it, don't get bitter against God. He says, "There was given to me a thorn in the flesh." Strange gift, but this gift was given from God's heart because God loved Paul. He had to keep Paul humble.

I have said this before, permit me to repeat it: just put your hands out in front of you, your open hands. Suppose all that God did was fill these hands with blessing. He just kept pouring out abundant blessing, filling up your hands. Pretty soon you'd get unsteady, you'd start to totter, and then you'd fall flat on your face. And so when God fills my hands with blessing, He always puts some burdens on my back to balance me, to keep me from falling over.

You see, the purpose of blessing and the purpose of burden is to build character. God wants to build Christian character. He wants to make us more like the Lord Jesus Christ, and He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

I have yet to meet a mature Christian, I mean a really mature Christian who has the beauty of God about his life, who has not suffered. Don't fight against it; learn to cooperate with whatever God gives to you. Don't argue with God's will. Amy Carmichael used to say, "Our prayer is not 'thy will be changed,' but 'thy will be done.'" That's helped me. Step one: Accept your suffering as God's gift.

Step two: Listen for God's message. You see, Paul said, "All right, Lord, I'm going to accept this. I'm not going to fight, I'm not going to get bitter, I'm not going to argue with you, I'm not going to try to second-guess you." And then at that point, He said unto me, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

There is a message in every experience of life. Charles Spurgeon, who was a great preacher and also a man who suffered considerably physically and emotionally—people persecuted him, lied about him, his wife was a semi-invalid—Charles Spurgeon used to say that the promises of God never shine so brightly as in the furnace of affliction. That's true. Oh, how many times we have opened the Word of God and God has spoken to us.

Preacher friend, you're going through suffering out there. The furnace is hot and the battle is hot and heavy. Listen for God's message to you because that's the thing God wants you to hear. So just rest in His Word. Don't go by your feelings, don't go by explanations, don't listen to the empty words of people who don't know what you're going through. Just wait for God to speak. Oh, what a blessing it is to listen to the voice of God in the hour of suffering.

Step three: Draw upon God's grace. Draw upon the grace of God. 1 Peter 4:10 calls it the manifold grace of God. That means many-colored, the variegated grace of God. You know, life is many-colored. You have your dark days, you have your blue Mondays—they may last all week.

And God says, "I have grace for every situation." John 1:16, "And of His fullness have all we received, and grace upon grace." James 4:6 tells me He giveth more grace. 1 Peter 5:10 tells me He is the God of all grace who has called us to His eternal glory.

Now, grace is not something you earn. Grace is not something you bargain for. Grace is not something you merit. Grace is free and grace is sufficient. And God said, "Paul, I'm not going to change your situation; I'm going to change you. I'm not going to take away the thorn; I'm going to add something to you."

You see, pain can be conquered either by taking away the pain or by adding a new ingredient, and that new ingredient is the grace of God. "My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Where did Paul get his strength? Out of weakness.

Now listen closely: strength that knows itself to be strength is weakness. But weakness that knows itself to be weakness is strength. When you know you're strong, you become weak. Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall. If you know you are strong, my friend, you're weak. But if you know you are weak, then you are strong.

And Paul got the strength that carried him through because he knew he was weak. That's why he gloried and boasted in his weaknesses, his infirmities, because when he was weak, then he was strong. Draw upon the grace of God; He's the God of all grace.

Now, don't ask me how it works; I can't explain it to you. All I know is that when you cry out, your Father says, "Here's the grace that you need." "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

That word "rest" means put His tent over me. You know what that means? He says, "Paul, I'm going to turn this whole thing into a holy of holies. I'm going to put My tent over you. You're going to dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. I'm spreading My tent over you, and I'm going to move in with My grace and with My glory, and we're going to turn this place into a holy of holies." Your hospital room can be a holy of holies. He'll turn your trials into tabernacles of glory.

Which leads to our fourth step: Live for God's glory. Now, if Paul had said, "I take pleasure in infirmities, I take pleasure in reproaches, insults, necessities, persecutions, distresses," and he'd left out that little phrase "for Christ's sake," we'd think he was psychologically unstable.

Nobody takes pleasure in weaknesses, in insults and suffering and so forth. But when you add that little phrase "for Christ's sake," that changes it. A mother will suffer for her child. A father will suffer for his child. A soldier will suffer for his country. A Christian will suffer for his Savior.

And so here's the fourth step: Live for God's glory. It's for Jesus' sake. It's not just for our sake or for the church's sake or for the family's sake; it's for Jesus' sake. And when you're doing it for Jesus' sake, that gives you the greatest motive in all the world to glorify God.

You know what happens? God uses you to be a blessing. How many millions of people have read of Paul's experience and been helped by it? How many millions of people who have gone through the trials of life have identified with Paul? They've thanked God for Paul's faithfulness. You see, you can be a blessing to other people.

The Lord Jesus led the way, didn't He? He took a crown of thorns and made a crown of glory out of it. He took a cross and turned it into glory. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.

Don't just try to escape suffering. If God heals, if God removes the pain, marvelous. Don't just try to endure suffering; that'll wear you out. Learn to enlist your suffering. Accept it as God's gift, listen for God's message, draw upon God's grace, and live for God's glory.

2 Corinthians 12:11-21, Paul shames the believers at Corinth. Then in 2 Corinthians 13:1-8, he warns them, and then in 2 Corinthians 13:9-14, he encourages them. This wraps up the book of 2 Corinthians. These three final attempts on the part of the Apostle Paul to help these people with their spiritual problems.

2 Corinthians 12:11-12, he shames them for their lack of commendation. "I am become a fool in glorying, in boasting; ye have compelled me. For I ought to have been commended by you." Ah, there's the problem. There's the problem. Paul says, "You know, you should have been boasting about me when these false teachers came into the church and tried to steal the converts away. You should have said, 'Oh no, no, no. Paul is a true apostle. Paul has given evidence of his apostleship.' For in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles."

This is a word that Paul invented: super-apostles. 2 Corinthians 12:5: "For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles, the super-apostles." It's one thing to be an apostle; quite something else to be a super-apostle. And these men who had come into the church were claiming to be very super-apostles.

Beware of that kind of an attitude. "For in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing." Well, he says, "I'm ashamed of you for your lack of commendation. Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience." Oh, it would have taken a lot of patience to minister at Corinth. It was sort of like taking care of an evangelical playpen. Paul had to defend himself; they would not defend him.

Now, this ties into the second failure that Paul shames them for in 2 Corinthians 12:13-18: their lack of appreciation. Not only their lack of commendation—they didn't defend the Apostle Paul and didn't admit that he was truly a servant of God—they didn't appreciate what he did.

I tell you, sometimes we just don't have appreciation; we take it all for granted. Listen to what he says: "For what is it in which ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you?" And he's a little sarcastic here: "Forgive me this wrong."

He said, "I didn't charge you anything. I didn't take up any collections from you. I cost you nothing. Behold, the third time I'm ready to come to you, and I will not be burdensome to you. I'm not going to take any money from you. For I seek not yours, but you. For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children."

These Judaizers were robbing the church. Paul said, "Your lack of appreciation. I paid the bill. I labored day and night. I raised my own money. I laid up money for you, for your ministry, but you don't appreciate it. And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved."

Well, he said, "I caught you with guile, didn't I? I kind of fooled you. You'd have been glad if I'd have taken up some money, then you could have criticized me. But I didn't do it that way. Did I make a gain of you by any of them whom I sent to you? When I sent Titus to you, did he rob you? No." Their lack of commendation—shame on you.

We'd have revival in our churches if we'd start saying thank you to people. We'd have revival; the Spirit of God would be free to work if we would just love people and say, "I appreciate, I appreciate what you've been doing."

And not just our churches. How about our families? There's some son or daughter you take for granted what mother and dad do for you. Or here's a student in a Christian school and these—your instructors, your professors and the administrators—work hard, they sacrifice, and you just take it for granted and criticize it. Well, he shames them for their lack of commendation and he shames them for their lack of appreciation.

And then he hits the nail on the head in 2 Corinthians 12:19-21: he shames them for their lack of consecration. Here's the whole problem. "Again, think ye that we excuse ourselves unto you? We speak before God in Christ."

He said, "God's watching me and God hears me. But we do all things, dearly beloved, for your edifying, to build you up. I've tried to build you up and you wouldn't let me. I lived an honest life, a sincere life, and I tried to serve you and you would not let me. For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would." Oh, you can just feel the heartbreak of the Apostle Paul.

"And that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not." He said, "You're going to be what I wish you weren't and I'm going to have to treat you the way you don't want me to treat you." Well, "unto you such as ye would not, lest there be debates"—they were fighting—"envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings."

Oh my, do these things go on in churches? Yes, they do. "Conceit, disorders." They were all tearing down when Paul was trying to build up. "And lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many who have sinned already." Paul said, "I want to come and have joy, but I'm going to stand there and cry when I see the way you're living and have not repented of the uncleanness and the fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed."

Oh, says Paul, "I'm ashamed of you for your lack of consecration, because lack of consecration means lack of appreciation and lack of ministry, and this is the cause of all of our troubles." Are you taking for granted the ministry God gives to you? It might be that you're even taking for granted the ministry over the radio or the ministry of literature. You take it for granted that somebody has written a book that you can study. Oh, don't do this.

Let's be the kind of people, first of all, who practice commendation. Let's be those who practice appreciation. Say thank you. Every day, try to say thank you to somebody. Maybe you ought to sit down and write a letter to that Sunday school teacher years ago who got you started on the right track in the Lord. Appreciation. Let's be those who are known for our consecration. May the Lord help us to be the kind of Christian about whom Jesus Christ is not ashamed.