Something worse than suffering
- Mike Flynn (Vicar, St Columb's)
During our teaching series on answers to prayer recorded in the Bible we had to eventually come to Paul's haunting and desperate prayer for his own healing in 2 Corinthians 12. The answer Paul receives is the answer we don't want to hear. No.
Paul is told that the disability he struggles with, the angel of Satan, will be used by God to keep him from becoming proud - especially proud of his unspeakable experiences of God. He is told: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Which is why he decides to boast in his weakness, "for when I am weak, then I am strong..." strong, because of his dependence upon God in Christ Jesus.
To put this another way, God considers pride to be so dangerous for the apostle to the gentiles that he is willing to let him suffer this angel of Satan so that Paul will turn outward to Jesus, to soak his suffering in the vast grace of God and not turn inward to self, remaining in the small world of his distracted heart. Paul is not offered cost-free and easy answers to his hardship but he is pointing out to the Corinthians that by grace, even of our angels of Satan can become opportunities to grow. If you want to see someone who is truly resilient - watch what they do with their suffering.
Is this an adequate answer to our pain? Is this the final answer to our prayers for healing? Of course not. The final answer comes only when, the murderer, the accuser, the liar, the Satan and all his works are destroyed and heaven and earth roar in delight (see Revelation 19 & 20 - go team!). What Paul learns is in the meantime, as we wait for Jesus' return, living these Advent lives, our hardships - when they are consciously held before God, have something of the cross of Jesus about them. What Paul the miracle worker learnt is that Satan's work is mocked not only when it is healed but when it is used to grow the life of Christ in us.
Recordings of our talks are heard in various parts of the world and sometimes we hear back from the people who have been listening. Below is an email I received that responds to my talk on Paul's prayer. I asked the sender for permission to publish it below.
"I was just listening to your latest sermon and thought I would share how it reflects what God has been doing in my life in the past year or so.
I have been sick for many, many years with this Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and have in the past prayed, and begged, and cried, and sought prayer over it yet have not been healed. I had to accept that for now this is what God asks of me. However I am now finding that I am getting deeper into God's word than I ever have before, because I am sick. If I were not sick I would be busy working and doing this and that and not spending the time learning what I am now. It has taken a long time getting to this point as for a long time I did not have the concentration to do what I am now where I can listen to talks and the like about the Bible and get a lot out of it.
I have often felt that we are in too much of a hurry for God to do things in our lives when he is actually doing things in small increments over the course of our life. A nudge here, a word there that shapes us until one day we are ready to do what he is calling us to do.
In our Bible Study last week we were asked to share something that we feel thankful for and something that perhaps we are afraid to pray about. So I shared how for me this is the one and the same thing: I am thankful that I am to learn more of God's word in such depth because of my illness, and I no longer pray about my illness as I now recognise that God is using that for me to grow in this way."
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