WEBVTT 00:00:00.700 --> 00:00:05.960 Good morning. Again, my name is Tommy. I'm the rector of Church of the Advent, and I am delighted 00:00:05.960 --> 00:00:12.280 to be here this morning. There was an op-ed in the New York Times not too long ago, and the title was 00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:19.240 this, Americans Stop Being Ashamed of Weakness. And it kind of stood out to me because I resonated 00:00:19.240 --> 00:00:27.300 with it. The author observed how reluctant we are in our culture to admit any form of weakness in 00:00:27.300 --> 00:00:35.640 our lives, and then observed how harmful that can be to us down the road. And I have certainly found 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:42.659 that to be true in my life, especially 20 years ago moving to Washington, D.C. Many people here 00:00:42.659 --> 00:00:51.859 are desperately afraid of appearing weak. We want people to think that we are strong, that we are 00:00:51.859 --> 00:01:00.460 competent, that we are self-sufficient. Anthropologists actually say this is a point of stark contrast 00:01:00.460 --> 00:01:08.099 between the modern West and other non-Western or traditional societies in other parts of the world, 00:01:08.299 --> 00:01:16.439 that other societies are much more comfortable expressing weakness, showing vulnerability, 00:01:16.439 --> 00:01:21.560 but not us. And this morning, we're going to see that this is actually one of the biggest obstacles 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:29.459 to knowing God. Our fear of admitting weakness is one of the biggest obstacles, one of the main 00:01:29.459 --> 00:01:35.079 reasons we struggle to feel any sense of connection to God. We're going to be looking at 2 Corinthians 00:01:35.079 --> 00:01:41.680 chapter 12, and we're going to be looking at how the Apostle Paul viewed weakness in his own life. 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:47.980 This is a man who learned a lot of hard lessons. And one of the hardest lessons he had to learn 00:01:47.980 --> 00:01:54.380 is how to embrace his weakness. But because he was able to do that, he experienced profound intimacy 00:01:54.380 --> 00:02:00.580 with God, and his ministry was empowered in ways that actually went well beyond his natural ability. 00:02:01.700 --> 00:02:09.020 And at the end of this passage, he actually says this. He says, when I am weak, then I am strong. 00:02:09.020 --> 00:02:16.200 Now, what does that mean? We're going to get into it. First, we're going to look at the kind of 00:02:16.200 --> 00:02:23.080 spirituality that was popular in Corinth, the spirituality that we all want. And then we're 00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:30.400 going to look at Paul's spirituality, which is the spirituality that we all actually need. Let's pray. 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:37.580 Lord, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your presence here with us this morning. We don't have to ask. 00:02:37.580 --> 00:02:42.300 Lord, we don't have to hope that you're paying attention or that you're near or that you're 00:02:42.300 --> 00:02:49.700 listening. We know that you're here. We are the ones who need to listen. We are the ones who need 00:02:49.700 --> 00:02:54.160 to pay attention. And I pray that you would open our hearts, that you would capture our hearts, 00:02:54.700 --> 00:02:58.960 that you would change our hearts through your Word. We pray this in your Son's holy name. Amen. 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:06.900 Amen. So first of all, I want to take a moment just to look at the spirituality that is prevalent 00:03:06.900 --> 00:03:14.020 in Corinth, the spirituality that we all want. Like D.C., Corinth was a highly pluralistic, 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:21.060 highly cosmopolitan culture. It was a place where people came to pursue their ambitions. It was a place 00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:28.520 where you could network and make connections and raise your status. And as is often the case, 00:03:28.520 --> 00:03:34.480 that surrounding culture had seeped into the culture of the church there. Paul had started 00:03:34.480 --> 00:03:39.240 the church in Corinth, but then he went on to continue his mission. And since then, the church 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:47.080 had drifted more and more in the direction of what we might today call a prosperity gospel way of 00:03:47.080 --> 00:03:56.379 thinking, beginning to see religion as being about having mystical experiences. Religion is a way to gain 00:03:56.379 --> 00:04:04.079 material success. The assumption came to be that the more spiritual a person is, the more blessed they 00:04:04.079 --> 00:04:12.759 are by God, the more successful they will be in life, and vice versa. And that kind of spirituality is 00:04:12.759 --> 00:04:18.300 always going to be popular, regardless of the culture, regardless of where you are in history. 00:04:18.300 --> 00:04:26.840 It's always going to be popular because it appeals to our innate desire to be strong and to be powerful 00:04:26.840 --> 00:04:35.379 and to be popular and to be important and to be successful. So this is the kind of spirituality that we all 00:04:35.379 --> 00:04:43.900 want. In our country, this kind of spirituality is always present and it has always been popular. Think of the 00:04:43.899 --> 00:04:51.979 prosperity gospel televangelists of the 20th century, building their ministry out of books like Norman 00:04:51.979 --> 00:04:59.099 Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. It's this idea that resonates with the ideals of the 00:04:59.099 --> 00:05:07.439 American dream, with our obsession with success and productivity. Think of the legions of online 00:05:07.439 --> 00:05:16.480 self-help influencers today. They make money by playing off our insecurities, by playing off our 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:22.779 aversion to weakness. They promise that major breakthroughs are just around the corner, that we 00:05:22.779 --> 00:05:28.079 have the power to build the kind of life we always wanted. We just need to raise our vibrational 00:05:28.079 --> 00:05:35.819 frequency. We just need to unlock the power to manifest the life that we want. And in all of this, 00:05:35.819 --> 00:05:42.339 the assumption about weakness is the same, that weakness is nothing more than a problem to be 00:05:42.339 --> 00:05:52.199 solved. It's a problem to be solved. And this kind of spirituality, I believe, is plausible in our 00:05:52.199 --> 00:05:59.000 society, in the West, in ways that it would not be plausible in other parts of the world. And the reason 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:07.660 is this, for the last 200 years, there has been such a dramatic increase in wealth and in quality 00:06:07.660 --> 00:06:13.519 of life for people in our society, that I believe our expectations are massively out of touch with 00:06:13.519 --> 00:06:20.939 reality. You know, if you think about the assumptions that you make about your life, most of us carry around 00:06:20.939 --> 00:06:28.959 certain baseline expectations, kind of bare minimum expectations for our lives. We expect that we will 00:06:28.959 --> 00:06:38.240 generally be safe and healthy and live long lives. Right, so when we get news that that's not the case, 00:06:39.379 --> 00:06:44.100 we're shocked, we're horrified, we can't believe that's a violation of our expectations. 00:06:44.100 --> 00:06:50.200 We expect that if we experience any sickness or pain, it should be brief, it should be infrequent, 00:06:50.320 --> 00:06:57.060 it should be treatable. And if not, somebody dropped the ball. We expect that we should be able to do 00:06:57.060 --> 00:07:02.980 whatever makes us happy, that no one should have the right to tell us how to live our lives. We expect 00:07:02.980 --> 00:07:09.560 that we should be able to have careers and sex lives and relationships and marriages that are 00:07:09.560 --> 00:07:17.379 totally fulfilling to us. We expect that kids should be something that we have total control over. 00:07:17.980 --> 00:07:22.379 If we have kids, we should be able to decide exactly when and how and where. If we don't want kids, 00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:29.199 we shouldn't have to have kids. Right, we treat all of these expectations as sort of rights that we 00:07:29.199 --> 00:07:38.079 believe we are entitled to. We don't realize that these expectations reveal how ridiculously privileged we are. 00:07:38.079 --> 00:07:44.139 Most people throughout history, and I would say most people in other parts of the world today, 00:07:44.579 --> 00:07:49.839 would think that we are absurd and ridiculous for expecting life to be like this. 00:07:51.259 --> 00:07:55.479 Right now, I want to be clear what I'm saying and what I'm not saying. Am I saying that all of 00:07:55.479 --> 00:08:02.379 these improvements to our quality of life are bad? Absolutely not. Right, I love air conditioning. 00:08:02.379 --> 00:08:08.939 I love antibiotics, right? I'm thankful for those things. But everything comes with a cost. 00:08:10.480 --> 00:08:16.519 This is the point. What if the privileges of living in the wealthy modern West, 00:08:17.259 --> 00:08:22.300 what if the very things that make our lives more comfortable, more pleasurable, 00:08:22.959 --> 00:08:29.719 actually make it much more difficult for us to have a real relationship with the God who made us? 00:08:29.720 --> 00:08:36.759 What if that's the price of living with such a high quality of life, with such wealth? 00:08:37.779 --> 00:08:45.100 Not because those things are inherently bad, but because they insulate us from our weakness. 00:08:46.440 --> 00:08:52.920 And that's the problem. So that's the spirituality we want, spirituality that makes us feel strong 00:08:52.919 --> 00:09:01.919 and powerful and self-reliant. Here's the spirituality we need. As we said, the Corinthians, 00:09:02.279 --> 00:09:07.759 they were following false teachers. These teachers are twisting the gospel into a kind of health and 00:09:07.759 --> 00:09:14.939 wealth scheme. These false teachers tried to prove their legitimacy by talking about the mystical 00:09:14.939 --> 00:09:19.719 experiences they had, right? They would talk about their mystical mountaintop moments, 00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:25.940 and then they would promise to share their secrets for a price with other people. But look at what 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:31.180 Paul says. They've gone on and on and on about these experiences and how Paul hasn't had anything 00:09:31.180 --> 00:09:36.920 like this. And he finally says, okay, you care so much about visions. You care so much about 00:09:36.920 --> 00:09:43.320 revelations. And then he reluctantly shares about a mystical experience that he had had 14 years earlier, 00:09:43.320 --> 00:09:49.760 where he says he was taken up into the third heaven. Now, this is just a first century way 00:09:49.760 --> 00:09:55.760 of talking about the highest realm of heaven, being in the very presence of God. Clearly, 00:09:55.920 --> 00:10:02.620 whatever Paul experienced was profound. And you might expect that after experiencing something that 00:10:02.620 --> 00:10:08.240 profound, that he would come back and he would tell everyone about it. You might expect that he would 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:13.820 come home and he would write a book about his experiences called The Third Heaven, and that 00:10:13.820 --> 00:10:20.060 that book would be wildly popular, and that he would go speak at conferences and youth retreats and 00:10:20.060 --> 00:10:24.560 campus ministry retreats, right? And then they would option the book, and they would turn it into a movie. 00:10:25.299 --> 00:10:30.360 You might expect that there would be Third Heaven merch. You could get a t-shirt or a prayer journal, 00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:35.620 right, or a rubber bracelet or a Yeti mug with the Third Heaven logo on it, right? That it would become a 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:41.120 whole industry. You might expect that that would happen, but that's not what happens. That's the 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:50.600 exact opposite of what Paul does. Paul is bashful. He's embarrassed to even bring it up. He's so bashful 00:10:50.600 --> 00:10:56.600 that he talks about himself in the third person as though it was somebody else, as though he's like, 00:10:56.659 --> 00:11:05.159 that's the old Paul. That's the old Paul. He gives almost no detail about it. And we say, why? 00:11:05.620 --> 00:11:12.379 And it's because Paul understands that because of the human heart, mystical experiences like this 00:11:12.379 --> 00:11:20.500 can be dangerous. Now, you say, you mean being brought into the very presence of God is dangerous 00:11:20.500 --> 00:11:28.779 for Christians? And I would say it depends. Our hearts are extremely vulnerable to pride, 00:11:28.779 --> 00:11:38.439 extremely vulnerable to pride. And the problem is when God blesses us with experiences of himself, 00:11:38.839 --> 00:11:47.039 it is so easy for that to become a source of personal pride. You know, if I have some kind of 00:11:47.039 --> 00:11:53.259 mystical experience and other people don't, it is so easy for me to start believing that must mean I'm 00:11:53.259 --> 00:11:58.439 somehow superior to those other people. Have you ever been talking to somebody and they pull out 00:11:58.439 --> 00:12:06.240 this line, well, God told me this? How do you argue with that? It's like the ultimate spiritual trump 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:13.460 card, right? So what do you say? Either you say, well, I don't believe God speaks, or what, right? 00:12:13.460 --> 00:12:20.400 It's the same kind of thing, right? It's a claiming of some sort of set-apart superiority. 00:12:22.900 --> 00:12:28.040 This is the problem that Paul has realized. He's come to learn this about his own heart. 00:12:28.300 --> 00:12:33.840 It's so easy for us to make an idol out of these experiences. It's so easy for us to begin to worship 00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:41.220 our experiences and to worship our feelings about God rather than God himself, so that our faith becomes 00:12:41.220 --> 00:12:45.960 contingent on those experiences. If we're not having them, it must mean none of it's true. 00:12:47.220 --> 00:12:52.019 We're making an idol out of those experiences when we think that way. Paul knows this about himself, 00:12:52.440 --> 00:13:01.279 and so does God. Now listen to this, verse 7. So, just listen to this. To keep me from becoming conceited, 00:13:01.940 --> 00:13:08.460 to keep my heart from giving in to that pride, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, 00:13:08.460 --> 00:13:16.600 a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming 00:13:16.600 --> 00:13:25.759 conceited, to protect me from pride. This, I would say, is the key. If we understand what Paul is saying 00:13:25.759 --> 00:13:34.340 here, we begin to see what sets his spirituality apart from the false spirituality that is so prevalent 00:13:34.340 --> 00:13:41.019 in our society. In order to protect Paul from the pride that might arise in his heart, God gives Paul 00:13:41.019 --> 00:13:48.980 a thorn. Now, people have debated for centuries what this thorn might be, right? Some people have 00:13:48.980 --> 00:13:54.519 suggested that it was a spiritual or an emotional struggle. Others have suggested that it may have 00:13:54.519 --> 00:14:00.160 been some kind of physical ailment. We know that the word thorn could just as easily be translated 00:14:00.159 --> 00:14:06.439 as a kind of spear. So, this is no minor annoyance. This is something that he's constantly aware of, 00:14:06.519 --> 00:14:13.339 that it's constantly causing pain to him. What's really most important is not the specific nature 00:14:13.339 --> 00:14:19.360 of Paul's thorn, because I think this could apply to many different things. What's most important is 00:14:19.360 --> 00:14:25.819 the way Paul views this thorn in his own life. For starters, Paul is not a masochist. 00:14:25.820 --> 00:14:33.300 He's not someone who says, well, I'm just going to seek out suffering because I enjoy it. Or he's 00:14:33.300 --> 00:14:38.580 not a stoic who says, well, this is going to be better for me in the long run. It's going to make 00:14:38.580 --> 00:14:45.260 me more resilient. Paul actually says he prayed three times, which is probably just a way of saying 00:14:45.260 --> 00:14:52.340 he prayed over and over and over and over. He might have prayed 30 times. He prayed over and over, 00:14:52.340 --> 00:14:58.280 God, please remove this thorn. Please take it out of my life. Please heal me. Please restore me. 00:14:58.620 --> 00:15:06.460 Please eradicate this suffering. But God answered Paul's prayer by allowing the thorn to remain. 00:15:07.759 --> 00:15:13.399 So, Paul prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed that it would be taken away. God let it remain. 00:15:13.399 --> 00:15:25.000 Moreover, Paul understands God's heart as our heavenly Father. He understands God's fatherly love 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:36.199 for his people. Paul says, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan. Satan wants us to 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:43.900 suffer. Satan wants us to be destroyed. God, on the other hand, sometimes allows us to suffer, 00:15:44.200 --> 00:15:50.379 allows us to have thorns, but it brings him no pleasure. In Lamentations 3, it says this, 00:15:51.240 --> 00:15:57.040 verse 32, but though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his 00:15:57.040 --> 00:16:03.680 steadfast love, for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. He doesn't 00:16:03.679 --> 00:16:13.559 afflict from the heart. He does what is necessary, but it brings him no joy. I often quote Johnny 00:16:13.559 --> 00:16:18.779 Erickson Tada, who says this in a different way. Sometimes God uses what he hates to accomplish what 00:16:18.779 --> 00:16:27.099 he loves. Now, parents understand this intuitively. There are so many times as a parent when we have to 00:16:27.099 --> 00:16:32.259 allow some degree of suffering in our children's lives. Otherwise, we're not good parents. 00:16:32.259 --> 00:16:40.340 We have to allow them to experience the consequences of their actions. We have to give them consequences 00:16:40.340 --> 00:16:47.000 that seem totally unfair, that seem totally horrible. We have to say no to things that they 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:53.200 really want, even though it seems unfair. And we don't do these things because we love to watch our 00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:58.319 children suffer. We do these things because we love them. And ultimately, we do these things because 00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:03.660 we know far better than they do what will be best for them in the long run. You know, just this past 00:17:03.660 --> 00:17:09.019 week on the 4th of July, we had an experience of this. We were setting off some fireworks. Let's just 00:17:09.019 --> 00:17:16.039 say we had a little more than sparklers going on, maybe some heavy artillery. And my six-year-old 00:17:16.039 --> 00:17:23.299 really, really, really wanted to hold one of the more powerful ones. And her idea was to light it, 00:17:23.299 --> 00:17:26.460 and then she would hold it, and then she would throw it up in the air, and then it would launch 00:17:26.460 --> 00:17:34.879 into the sky. I thought about it. I said no. I don't think that's a good idea. She was so furious. 00:17:35.579 --> 00:17:41.319 It's not fair. Why won't you let me do it? She was so angry. I was so unfair. I was so horrible. 00:17:41.619 --> 00:17:47.519 But I said no, because I'm mean, and I'm a horrible parent. And we get this old cutting board, 00:17:47.700 --> 00:17:52.180 one of my old cutting boards, because we needed to create a level surface. And we set that firework on 00:17:52.180 --> 00:17:57.360 the cutting board, and we light it, and we all back up. Well, wouldn't you know it? It malfunctioned. 00:17:57.640 --> 00:18:03.360 It tipped over. It didn't launch into the sky like it was supposed to, and it exploded right there on 00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:11.680 the ground. It blew that old cutting board apart. It blew it apart. I said, hey, that could have been 00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:20.900 your hand. That's why I said no. Right? So when it comes to our hearts, there is nothing that will 00:18:20.900 --> 00:18:28.700 blast your heart apart worse than pride. There's nothing that will do more damage to your heart than 00:18:28.700 --> 00:18:34.360 pride. Pride is the thing that convinces us that we don't need God. Pride is the thing that convinces 00:18:34.360 --> 00:18:38.980 us that we're better off being in charge of our own lives. Pride is the thing that convinces us to lift 00:18:38.980 --> 00:18:43.640 ourselves up above other people, and to judge them, and to treat them with contempt. 00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:52.700 And God is a loving Father, and God knows how dangerous and destructive pride can be. So the 00:18:52.700 --> 00:18:59.120 most loving thing God can do is anything that protects us from pride. We look at it like my 00:18:59.120 --> 00:19:04.020 six-year-old looked at the fireworks. That doesn't look that dangerous. I can handle that. Let me have 00:19:04.019 --> 00:19:15.240 it. But God knows how dangerous it is. And so as a loving Father, He gives us thorns. Now explaining a 00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:20.619 thorn to a child is hard enough. Explaining a consequence to a child is hard enough. Imagine 00:19:20.619 --> 00:19:24.559 God trying to explain all our thorns to us. It would be like trying to explain it to an aunt. 00:19:24.559 --> 00:19:33.440 But as Paul learns to embrace his weakness, as he learns to embrace this thorn, to recognize it as a 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:40.039 gift, he begins to tap into a tremendous source of power. We begin to realize that thorns do far 00:19:40.039 --> 00:19:47.059 more than simply protect us from pride. Right? Paul prays and asks Jesus to take away the thorn, but 00:19:47.059 --> 00:19:54.079 here's what Jesus says in response. My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect 00:19:54.079 --> 00:20:03.579 in weakness. In other words, Paul learns this. Weakness is an invitation into God's grace. 00:20:05.299 --> 00:20:12.539 Right? Jesus says, Paul, this thorn, this messenger of Satan, it's going to weaken you. 00:20:13.519 --> 00:20:20.960 It's going to weaken you in such a way that it's going to strip away all of your power. It's going to 00:20:20.960 --> 00:20:28.160 leave you powerless. It's going to leave you on your knees. This thorn is going to bring you to a 00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:35.180 place where if you have any power at all, it will have to be the power of my grace. I'm going to strip 00:20:35.180 --> 00:20:42.279 everything else away. And this is really the core difference between false spirituality, the kind that 00:20:42.279 --> 00:20:49.819 we find so appealing, and the true spirituality we need. False spirituality, the spirituality of 00:20:49.819 --> 00:20:57.019 prosperity gospel televangelists, and Instagram influencers. It promises strength, but ultimately 00:20:57.019 --> 00:21:05.299 it makes us weak. It promises strength, but it makes us weak. It caters to our pride. It promises to make 00:21:05.299 --> 00:21:10.559 us powerful, and effective, and successful, and important, but all those are empty promises. 00:21:12.439 --> 00:21:18.279 You know who the most likely self-help customers are? The people who are most likely to buy all the 00:21:18.279 --> 00:21:24.180 self-improvement stuff that's out there? It's the same exact people who purchased similar products 00:21:24.180 --> 00:21:30.339 18 months earlier. Right? It's the same people who come back again, and again, and again. They're 00:21:30.339 --> 00:21:37.039 chasing the promise of a quick fix, a breakthrough, but they never find it. It never comes. 00:21:38.740 --> 00:21:43.539 True spirituality is the opposite. It promises weakness. It guarantees weakness, 00:21:43.539 --> 00:21:52.240 but ultimately it makes us strong because it strips away our pride. It teaches us not to rely on ourselves. 00:21:52.460 --> 00:21:57.779 It teaches us to rely on the grace of Jesus Christ moment to moment. And in the grace of Christ, 00:21:57.779 --> 00:22:03.839 we begin to tap into an infinite source of strength, an infinite source of strength. 00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:14.379 Most Christians these days believe what this verse says. The grace of Christ is sufficient. His power 00:22:14.379 --> 00:22:19.459 is made perfect in weakness. This is one of those that we love to memorize and teach our kids as we 00:22:19.459 --> 00:22:30.759 should. But I would say very few of us have ever experienced this because most of us spend a lot of time and 00:22:30.759 --> 00:22:40.400 energy trying to insulate ourselves from anything that makes us weak. But here's the thing. You can't 00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:47.960 have your cake and eat it too. If we run from our weakness, we are running from the arms of Christ. 00:22:49.980 --> 00:22:53.920 If you run from your weakness, you're running from the arms of Christ. 00:22:53.920 --> 00:23:01.620 If you've ever met someone who has learned this hard lesson, you know exactly what I'm talking about. 00:23:02.620 --> 00:23:09.740 I'm thinking now of a very close friend of mine, a guy I really love. Alcoholism has been his thorn, 00:23:10.200 --> 00:23:17.160 one of his thorns, for his entire adult life. Now he's about a year and a half into his sobriety. 00:23:17.160 --> 00:23:22.560 And over the last years, year, year and a half, he has completely transformed. 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:33.380 He is shockingly honest about his weakness. Shockingly honest about his failures and his 00:23:33.380 --> 00:23:41.480 vulnerabilities. And he has described his struggle for sobriety as sometimes a battle for the next five 00:23:41.480 --> 00:23:49.400 minutes, for the next five minutes, for the next five minutes. And every step of the way, he's crying 00:23:49.400 --> 00:23:56.880 out to God to give him the grace to make it through the next five minutes. And I talked to this guy about 00:23:56.880 --> 00:24:02.579 this battle. And I know most Christians, including me, we can talk theologically about the grace of 00:24:02.579 --> 00:24:08.839 Christ. But this is a man who knows it viscerally. He knows it in the marrow of his bones. 00:24:11.579 --> 00:24:15.199 I want to invite you to rethink the weakness in your life. 00:24:18.199 --> 00:24:21.799 I feel like God has been teaching me a lot about my own weakness this year. 00:24:23.740 --> 00:24:26.039 Frankly, I've experienced a lot of personal failure. 00:24:26.039 --> 00:24:33.839 I've just realized there are a lot of things that in my life, in my ministry, that I am simply not 00:24:33.839 --> 00:24:40.960 good at. And that's been hard. And I don't know what your thorns are. You know, for some people, 00:24:41.039 --> 00:24:48.659 their thorn might be chronic pain. It might be an illness. It might be a disability or some form of 00:24:48.659 --> 00:24:54.220 mental illness that's chronic. For others of us, it might be circumstantial. It might be unemployment. 00:24:54.220 --> 00:25:01.920 It might be unwanted singleness. It might be infertility. It might be an unplanned pregnancy. 00:25:02.920 --> 00:25:08.039 It might be addiction. You know, I've known Christians like Wesley Hill who refer to their 00:25:08.039 --> 00:25:17.200 unwanted same-sex attraction as a thorn in the flesh. Wherever in your life you feel most powerless, 00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:27.740 most hopeless, most incompetent, wherever you feel like God has been most silent when you have cried out, 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:36.720 the invitation is to stop running from those places. The invitation instead is to ask, 00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:46.440 what would this part of my life look like if I fully believed that this weakness was a gift from a God who 00:25:46.440 --> 00:25:55.220 loves me? What would my life look like? How would it change the way I think, the way I feel, the way I act, 00:25:55.220 --> 00:26:02.980 if I believed this area of weakness was a gift from my loving Father? 00:26:05.799 --> 00:26:11.799 Because those places of weakness are the very places where we are most likely to encounter 00:26:11.799 --> 00:26:17.500 the grace of Jesus Christ in ways that actually transform us from the inside out. 00:26:17.500 --> 00:26:26.079 And we say, well, how can we be sure? And we find the answer to that question. We find the guarantee to that 00:26:26.079 --> 00:26:33.819 in the Garden of Gethsemane, where we have Jesus Christ knowing that He is about to face unimaginable suffering 00:26:33.819 --> 00:26:42.680 at the weakest moment of His life. And just like Paul, Jesus prays three times that the Father would take it away. 00:26:42.680 --> 00:26:54.039 And just like Paul, the Father's answer is no. But while Paul only had to endure a thorn, Jesus wore a crown of thorns. 00:26:55.240 --> 00:27:00.920 Jesus suffered more than we can possibly imagine. He knew weakness on a level that we can't even begin to fathom. 00:27:01.860 --> 00:27:09.320 And yet, because Jesus was willing to become weak, He's able to offer unlimited strength to His people. 00:27:09.319 --> 00:27:17.859 And this is why we know, why we are guaranteed that we can trust Him with our weakness. 00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:22.559 Because He's the one who is able to guarantee that one day there will be no more weakness. 00:27:22.759 --> 00:27:27.019 There will be no more suffering. There will be no more thorns and thistles. 00:27:27.579 --> 00:27:30.019 Because one day every tear will be wiped away. 00:27:31.759 --> 00:27:32.419 Let's pray. 00:27:32.420 --> 00:27:42.680 Lord, we are tapping into some deep mysteries here and we need Your guidance. 00:27:43.279 --> 00:27:49.340 We need Your Holy Spirit to take Your Word and make it flesh. 00:27:50.300 --> 00:27:55.700 To press it like a salve into those places of pain and hopelessness. 00:27:55.700 --> 00:28:02.319 To enter into those places of weakness and meet us there. 00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:09.380 Lord, so that when we turn to that darkest place in our life, that darkest, most fearful corner. 00:28:10.120 --> 00:28:14.660 Lord, that we know that as we move into that darkness that we will find You. 00:28:15.740 --> 00:28:17.700 And that You will be that light in the darkness. 00:28:18.700 --> 00:28:20.860 That You will be the life that comes out of the tomb. 00:28:20.859 --> 00:28:22.899 Lord, we pray this. 00:28:23.419 --> 00:28:26.119 That we wouldn't just know and believe intellectually. 00:28:26.779 --> 00:28:30.299 But that we would all experience Your grace viscerally. 00:28:31.240 --> 00:28:33.219 Lord, we pray this by Your grace. 00:28:33.319 --> 00:28:34.899 And in the name of Your Son, Jesus. 00:28:35.259 --> 00:28:35.479 Amen.