“Learning to See Thorns as God Sees Them: The Stewardship of Suffering”
Nobody likes a thorn. You might name your baby girl, Rose, but I have never heard of a child named Thorn. To us, a thorn is a bad thing. We do not like thorns. We do not plant them, and we do not want them around, not in our gardens, flower beds, or fingers. Thorns are a nuisance, and we do everything we can to get rid of them.
That is just the way it is with thorns. Thorns are bad. Thorns bring pain and should be avoided at all costs, and eliminated when present. We do not want thorns in our lives!
Everyone agrees, right? Actually, there is someone in the universe who sees amazing potential in a thorn. He is known to give them to people, and not to His enemies either, but to His dear children.
Who would do such a thing? God. God has a different view of thorns than we do. His ways are often paradoxical. He gives a barren couple a son and then tells the father to kill that beloved son on an altar. Strange, isn’t it? That’s an odd way to show a couple you love them. But the ways of the Infinite One often seem strange to finite minds.
William Cowper, a godly man who battled suicidal depression most of his life, said it well, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.”
When Pain Is Part of Your Story
The Lord has given me the privilege to serve as a pastor in the same church for thirty-seven years, in Wheelersburg, Ohio, in the foothills of Appalachia. About a year after I began my ministry at Wheelersburg Baptist Church, I started having migraines. As time passed, the frequency increased to fifteen painful days a month. This pattern went on for years. Not every day was debilitating, but some were. In the past three decades I have spent a lot of time in dark rooms.
What good is a pastor who, for several days a month, finds it difficult to read his Bible, look at a computer screen, and be with people? Pain is a bad thing, right? It distracts us, or worse, disables us from doing the ministry God has called us to do. Or does it?
Actually, it does not. Early in my battle with chronic pain, I read a book by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey entitled, Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants (HarperCollins, 1993). That’s precisely how I had viewed pain. I didn’t want it. Pain is painful! And yet, as the authors helpfully demonstrated, it is also a gift.
Back in 2012 the church graciously allowed me to take a sabbatical break, in part, to seek medical help for the migraines. Unfortunately, after the three-month break, my migraine condition had not changed. But something else was changing. My perspective. I began to see that God intends to use painful circumstances, not to hinder my ministry, but enhance it.
A Promise to Live By When in Pain
When I returned from the sabbatical, I preached a series of messages entitled, “Promises to Live By, in the Crucible of Suffering.” In that expositional series, I shared with the congregation ten promises in the Word of God that had become very hope-giving to me. One of these promise-texts had to do with a thorn.
You probably know the passage. In 2 Corinthians 12:7, Paul says he received “a thorn in the flesh”. What was this thorn? There’s been much speculation. The Greek term skolops refers to a sharp, pointed object. Paul says this sharp object was placed in his flesh, and that it “tormented” him. The Greek kolophizo means “to beat, to strike with a fist, to cuff.” It’s what they did to Jesus during His trial in Matthew 26:67, as they “struck him with their fists.” This is what Paul’s thorn did to him. It smashed him in the flesh producing excruciating agony.
Some think he’s speaking literally, that Paul had some sort of eye problem, or other physical ailment. William Barclay’s proposal captures my attention, suggesting that Paul suffered from chronic attacks of a certain virulent malarial fever common in the eastern Mediterranean. He cites a present-day sufferer who described the headache that accompanies this malaria as being like “a red-hot bar thrust through the forehead” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, p. 258).
Others think Paul is talking metaphorically. One suggestion is that the thorn was a vicious person who was relentlessly attacking the apostle. Any church leader knows how painful a critic can be.
The bottom line is this. We don’t know what Paul’s thorn was. What we do know is the promise that the Lord gave Paul for dealing with his thorn. The promise?
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9a ESV).”
Grace Sufficient for the Thorn, and All Other Suffering Too
We know the outcome of the Lord’s promise to Paul. The suffering apostle shares this resolve, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me (9b).” What a difference Christ’s promise makes for the sufferer!
Allow me to clarify something. I do not believe that we all have a thorn as Paul did. That kind of faulty notion could lead to faulty application, such as, “My thorn is my church, or, “My thorn is my wayward child.” Let’s be clear. Paul had a thorn. It was a messenger of Satan. God permitted this thorn to enter Paul’s life for a good outcome.
We don’t all have a thorn. But…we all suffer. We all experience the kind of painful realities that Paul knew. For some of us, the pain is physical. For others, it’s the anguish of the soul that comes from trying to shepherd “well intentioned dragons” (to borrow a phrase from Marshall Shelley in a book I read when I first became a pastor).
So suffering is inevitable. But here’s the good news. We too can find hope in this wonderful promise that the Lord gave to Paul. This promise has much to say to us about how to process our own suffering. It informs us that our suffering is a stewardship. In other words, it’s a trust that the Lord has placed in our lives, a trust that provides us with the opportunity to put the Lord’s sufficiency on display for all to see.
Putting Sufficient Grace on Display – Where to go next?
I encourage you to memorize 2 Corinthians 12:10. But don’t just memorize it. Allow this wonderful passage to shape the way you pray, particularly when you’re processing suffering.
It’s also vital to develop a biblical theology of suffering. With that in mind, here are some other resources I’ve written that I hope will be a source of encouragement in your life.
Brandt, Brad. Help! I Live with Chronic Pain (Lifeline Mini-books). Wapwallopen: Shepherd Press, 2020.
Brandt, Brad, Promises to Live by in the Crucible of Suffering, audio and transcripts of sermon series preached at Wheelersburg Baptist Church, www. wheelersburgbaptist.com.
Brandt, Brad, A People to Live with in the Crucible of Suffering, audio and transcripts of sermon series preached at Wheelersburg Baptist Church, www. wheelersburgbaptist.com.
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