"If it weren’t for this difficulty, this hole in my life, I’d be really happy and could serve God to the fullest. But as it is I’m not a full person. I can’t serve God effectively and I don’t understand why God doesn’t do something to change things. Why doesn’t He deliver me? Why doesn’t He take this problem away?"

In his book, God's Plan for Our Good, Paul R. Smith tells of a young woman in his congregation who developed cancer when she was very young. The disease left her unable to have children. While many people would find such a condition very difficult to deal with, and I’m sure it must have been difficult for her, instead of allowing her circumstance to overwhelm her, this woman responded with increased faith in God. At one point she stated, "I need that hole in my life to keep me focused on [God]."(1)

Holes… Holes in our lives… Holes of disappointment… Holes of discouragement… Holes that hinder us… Holes that slow us down and hold us back… Holes that hinder our dreams… Holes that sometimes threaten to end our forward progress for good… Holes that won’t go away no matter what we do…

As I use the word this morning, a hole is something that hinders your human progress - and it won’t go away. You’ve asked God to take it away but every morning you get up it’s still there, tormenting you. You’ve tried to deal with it faithfully. You’ve asked God multiple times to take it away. Yet there it is, hampering your progress to the extent that you feel incomplete and maybe even unable to do much at all. It could be a physical ailment. Perhaps it’s a financial reversal or a divorce. It might be a non-cooperative spouse. Maybe you’re in debt through no fault of your own. Perhaps your grown children have disappointed you with their choices and behavior. Maybe you’ve lost a job or you have a disability or any number of other difficulties. Did I say that this hole just won’t go away? You’re discouraged and down about it. You get up each morning and its still there, hindering you, seemingly tormenting you.

Perhaps in response to one or more of such holes in your life, you’ve prayed for God to deliver you but so far it looks like He has done nothing to help. A person can be tempted in such cases to wonder about God, whether He is really there, whether He really cares, and whether He remembers His promise to "work all things together for good." It just doesn’t add up. A person can reason, "If it weren’t for this difficulty, this hole in my life, I’d be really happy and could serve God to the fullest. But as it is I’m not a full person. I can’t serve God effectively and I don’t understand why God doesn’t do something to change things. Why doesn’t He deliver me? Why doesn’t He take this problem away?"

If you’ve ever thought along these lines, this morning’s lesson is for you. You’re in good company. One of the most famous Christians of all time suffered such a "hole" in his life – and like anyone else he longed for God to take it away. To him it would only seem fair that since he was so dedicated, God should deliver him.

I refer to the Apostle Paul, and he called the hole in his life his "thorn in the flesh." In your Bible he described in 2 Corinthians 12. Please join me there. We’re going to read verses 1-10.

There are at least four things this passage tells us about these kinds of "holes" in life and how we can deal with them. I want to point them out to you.

Paul was a superstar among Christians. He worked harder, suffered more, and accomplished more than probably any Christian who has ever lived. Surely if any believer ever deserved a life free from holes, it was Paul. Yet he had this thorn in the flesh that took away some of his ability to get things done or made things very difficult for him. It is therefore false to believe the notion that the closer we get to God the fewer problems we will have. It is equally false to believe that the more faith we have, the fewer our troubles will be or that God will remove all our troubles.

I think its necessary to give a word about the context of this passage lest we misunderstand Paul’s multiple mention of boasting. He uses the words "boast" and "boasting" five times in these ten verses. The Apostle was forced in his letter to defend himself and his message from those who came into Corinth after he departed. These interlopers launched a smear campaign and were trying to tear down the church he had worked so hard to establish. While it’s always better to let your track record speak for itself rather than toot your own horn, sometimes people are unfamiliar with what you’ve done for them. They don’t know you’ve proven your devotion over and over. This can be especially true if you’ve served them repeatedly while trying not to attract undue attention to yourself. If then, there are those around who wish to discredit you who begin to say that you’ve done nothing for the good of others or that your motives are selfish and there is no one around to correct them, they can make their lying assertions believable and lead people astray. Paul was in such a spot. His detractors, those Jews who came into Corinth after he left, were making all kinds of accusations about Paul’s character that were causing the Corinthians to doubt him and his message. Paul didn’t want to correct them in a way that might seem boastful and self-serving but things were getting out of hand and souls hung in the balance. Thus, while he knew it was futile to boast in anything besides Christ, he spoke up to set the record straight. Because of this we who live thousands of years later know what kind of servant of God Paul was.

Let’s step into the passage a little farther and take a reading on the level of his defense. Look at chapter 11, verse 22:

Again, all this might seem like a lot of arrogant boasting, except that it was necessary to set the record straight and also, as one celebrity used to be fond of saying, it was "No brag, just fact."(2)

But this wasn’t the end of Paul’s accomplishments. Speaking in the third person so as to avoid sounding like a self-promoter, Paul wrote of his special experiences as an apostle of Christ in our text. Look again at verse 2-4:

2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-- whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- such a man was caught up to the third heaven. [Among the Jews, the "third heaven" was the dwelling place of God] 3 And I know how such a man-- whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows-- 4 was caught up into Paradise, and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak."

If Paul’s detractors wanted to get into a contest of matching spiritual accomplishment, while he would rather have left it unmentioned, the truth was that he had been to heaven and back! Let them top that!

Having said all this so that you might better understand the context of our text, my first point again is that probably no one will get through this life without having to face and deal with some holes. Thus, it is necessary to learn God’s perspective on them so that we can cope. That we will do in the next points.

Apparently this "thorn in the flesh" was something in Paul’s life that made things very difficult for him. That’s the meaning of this verse. The thorn in the flesh "buffeted" him constantly and would not go away. The NIV says it tormented him. The RSV says it harassed him.

So what was this "thorn in the flesh," this "hole" in Paul’s life? He doesn’t say. Commentators have speculated about it for ages and they aren’t any closer to knowing for sure today than they ever were. Many believe it was some kind of physical ailment that limited him. Some suggest, based upon the stated fact that Paul wrote the book of Galatians in "large letters,"(3) that it might have been poor eyesight. Others imagine some kind of physical deformity that detracted from his appearance or some kind of mental anguish or perhaps even epilepsy. Whatever it was, it was one of those "holes" in life that you wish God would fill in so that you can be a complete person and live up to your full potential.

Let’s suppose for just a moment that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a problem with his eyes. Let’s suppose, for the sake of discussion, that he had Macular Degeneration. Macular Degeneration is an incurable eye disease that is the leading cause of blindness for people aged 55 and older in the United States. It affects more than 10 million Americans.(4) This disease of the eyes gradually takes away the ability to read, drive a car, recognize faces or colors, and see objects in fine detail. According to the American Macular Degeneration Foundation website, Americans dread blindness more than any other disability. Suppose this was Paul’s thorn. How would it affect his work as an Apostle? Soon he wouldn’t be able to write. He wouldn’t be able to find his own way around. Faces would be hard to recognize. He would struggle to read. What a miserable thing to contemplate, and even if he couldn’t diagnose the disease as we can today in order to know his prognosis, just dealing with the growing vision impairment while trying to do his work as an Apostle would be increasingly frustrating. What a "hole" to have in your life – right in the middle of all your efforts to serve God. What a frustrating thing!

"Help me Lord – there’s a hole in my life!" Or, in Paul’s case, "Help me Lord – there’s a painful, stabbing, nagging, tormenting, harassing thorn in my flesh that makes it very difficult for me to do what I want to do for you. Surely You don’t intend for me to have to put up with this. Surely it couldn’t be Your will that I suffer this way. After all, I’m doing so much for You and living so fully for You."

Holes like this can make life difficult and even miserable. They can even interfere with the plans we have to serve God. But wait, there’s more.

But look more closely at verse 7. For Paul this wasn’t just something that came along inadvertently and God allowed it to stay. Verse 7 says, "…there was given to me a thorn in the flesh…." God didn’t just allow this "hole" in Paul’s life, this thorn thing. In time, Paul came to realize that He gave it!

Sometimes we Christians are reluctant to say that God causes suffering. After all, He is infinitely good, so how could He cause something bad? But we’re short sighted in this. God is good, and when He causes or allows suffering in the life of His people, it is always for our good in the long run. God is far more concerned about our eternal destiny than He is about our momentary happiness. Of course, it takes a degree of spiritual maturity to see this.

Several commentators point out that the word Paul used for "given" in verse 7 has inherent in its meaning the idea of a gift or a favor.(5) Instead of looking at this as a curse from God or an act of cruelty or punishment, Paul considered it a gift. This is sounding more and more like the view of that woman whose story I read in the beginning of the message. She considered that she needed that hole in her life to keep her focused on God. That’s exactly what Paul is implying of himself here.

Yet this was not Paul’s initial reckoning. At first, just like you and me, he didn’t understand that God had a purpose in leaving this hole in his life - this thorn in the flesh to torment him. So he set about to pray that God would take it away – which brings us to our third point:

I’ve puzzled over Paul’s praying specifically three times. Maybe you have, too. Is there some special merit in the number three? Should we all stop praying to God after we’ve done so three times?

Jesus prayed three times in the Garden of Gethsemane that God might remove the cup of suffering from Him, then He submitted to God’s will, knowing that He must suffer. Some commentators suggest that there may have been a belief among the traditions of the Jews of Paul’s day that you pray three times, then accept whatever appears to be God’s will. Some even suggest that Paul’s three times prayer might have been intended to follow Jesus’ Gethsemane example.

But then there is also that parable that Jesus spoke in Luke 18 about the judge who wouldn’t give the widow legal protection from her opponent until she kept coming to him to the point that she "wore him out." The lesson of that story is clarified in Luke 18:1 where Luke said, "He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart…."

Then again there is that case where King David prayed and fasted and lay on the ground for seven days on behalf of the child conceived by himself and Bathsheba. No specific number of prayer sessions is mentioned but it sounds like there were more than three. Then when the child was dead, he stopped praying, got up, washed himself, and took food. What can we make of all this? How long should we pray until we give up?

I think we should pray until the will of God is clear that we should stop. That’s more likely what Paul did. He didn’t necessarily pray three times and stop on his own. He prayed until God made His will clear, which was after the third time. In his case, God spoke to Him directly. Believing that God does not speak to us directly today, I say that for us, we should keep praying unless it becomes clear from God’s word that we should stop.

In Jesus’ three-times prayer in Gethsemane, He already knew that the will of God the Father included His suffering on the cross.(6) He taught that very thing several times prior to that night in Gethsemane. What we have in Jesus’ case is not praying until He knew God’s will. It was praying until His struggling human side accepted God’s will. So again, I see nothing particularly special in the number three.

In the case of David, the king prayed continually until the child died, which made the will of God clear. Again, there seems to be nothing special about the number three.

I think we should pray until we know that the Lord’s will is different than what we are praying for. Isn’t that how the Bible says we are to pray? John wrote: "…If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." We are not to pray for something that is clearly not God’s will. Having learned from this passage that sometimes God actually sends trouble for our own good, we should pray, yes. But eventually we will probably need to accept what happens as God’s will.

That’s hard though, isn’t it? To know God could do something to change things, but maybe He doesn’t and maybe He won’t?

God didn’t answer Paul’s prayer the way he expected.

God didn’t take away the thorn! His will was to leave Paul weak in that area. Instead He informed Paul that He would give him sufficient grace (or favor) to help him do what he needed do even with the thorn. Then he gave the reason:

I like the way the New Living Translation renders this verse. It says, "My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness."

So God would leave the thorn, whatever it was - in place where it would continue to harass and torment Paul, presumably until his dying day. And each time its stabbing pain was felt, the apostle who accomplished so many things would be reminded of how insufficient he was on his own and how much he needed God to complete him.

Its rather sad, but true, that we became very independent when things are going well and we have no pain in our lives to remind us of our need for God. Yet a person could lose his or her soul in such a frame of mind! Thus we see, at least in part, God’s reason for sending thorns – His reason for leaving those holes in our lives.

Thomas Brooks put it this way: "Afflictions are sweet preservatives to keep [God’s] saints from sin."(7)

Folks, the prospect of a thorn in the flesh or a hole in my life doesn’t thrill me any more than it does you. My human side recoils from the thought. But I know from this teaching that sometimes it is necessary for me - and for you. God may not want us to work without the holes in our lives. He may instead want us to work around them with His help.

So what is the upshot of all this? What is the point? What does God expect from us?

We may be able to accomplish many things on our own. Some of us are multi-talented. Some of us have gifts and talents coming out our ears. We’re self-confident. We’re competent. Just call on us, Lord, and we’ll get it done!

But that’s just the problem. In time we’re off working on our own, trusting our own strength and forgetting that really, without God, we can do nothing. What attitude is God after in us? Look back at our text:

If you have a hole in your life that God hasn’t taken away, be assured that if you continue to serve Him in spite of the hole, He will give you sufficient grace or favor so that you can serve Him effectively. He will always provide for you what you need to do what He wants you to do – hole or no holes.

Robert Louis Stevenson was bedridden much of his life with tuberculosis. One day his wife heard him hacking loudly and said, "I suppose you still believe it's a wonderful day." Turning toward a sunlit window, Stevenson said, "I do! I will never let a row of medicine bottles block my horizon!"

If God chooses to leave those dreadful "holes" in our lives that we hate so much, we can’t take them away ourselves. So we have a choice to make. We either continue to serve Him, learning more everyday to depend on him and not ourselves for the outcome, or will we conclude the opposite – "Unless God removes this hole in my life, I can do nothing."

The choice remains for you and me. When we have a hole in our lives it may be just what we need to stay focused on God.

Footnotes: (Use your "back" button to return to your place)

1. God's Plan for Our Good: Romans 8:28 (Foundations of the Faith: Romans 8: 28) Chicago: Moody Press, 2000, pp. 163-166.
2. The late Walter Brennen
3. Galatians 6:11
4. This information is from the website of the American Macular Degeneration Foundation at: http://www.macular.org/disease.html
5. See Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament, section on 2 Corinthians 12:7.
6. Mark 8:31
7. Thomas Brooks in Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices. Christianity Today, Vol. 40, no. 6.

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

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All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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