Grace and peace are yours through our God whose grace is sufficient in our weakness. Amen.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

What is God’s purpose for your life? I’m not referring to what kind of career you should have or whom you should marry or how many children you should have. I’m talking about the big picture – God’s overriding goal, his primary purpose for the lives of his people. I think many people would answer that God’s purpose for our life is that we are happy. He wants to take away our pain and sorrow. He wants to make our path smooth and give us the good things we desire. Would you agree? If you agree, then you are wrong.

I had someone tell me once that God wanted her to get a divorce because God wanted her to be happy, and she wasn’t happy in her marriage. But her idea of about our happiness is contagious. Our American culture certainly promotes that idea. McDonald’s used to have a slogan: "You deserve a break today." Father’s Day ads exclaimed: "Dad deserves this ratchet set." Politicians persistently proclaim: "My fellow Americans, you are entitled to health care, pension plans, better roads, and state grants. Those nasty people in the other party want to deny those things you deserve. But if you elect me, I’ll make sure you get them and the government will pay for them."

Even some churches and ministers, unfortunately, perpetuate this idea. They teach that "you deserve to be healthy, wealthy, and free of pain, and if you come to our church or give to our ministry, we’ll tell you how."

But this attitude does not come from advertisers or politicians. It comes from within us. We have expectations of the kind of life we are going to have – the kind of life we are entitled to. And when things don’t go the way we expect, we feel betrayed, that somehow God has let us down, that he has failed to keep his promises. Many people have unconsciously made a bargain with God: "God, I’ll believe in you and come to church, give you money, and try to lead a good life. In exchange, you’ll make sure things go smoothly for me. Make sure nothing tragic happens to me and I’m able to enjoy at least a comfortable middle-class existence. Because that’s what I deserve as a faithful, obedient Christian."

And when that doesn’t happen, when the wheels come off, when tragedies visit their life, then they get angry at God. First they become disappointed, then frustrated, then angry, and then depressed and bitter. They may even give up on God. Why? Because they somehow believe they deserve something different. They deserve to be happy! After all, what’s the point of following Christ if your life is just as difficult and painful as the life of an unbeliever?

I’m going to let all of you in on a little secret this morning – God’s primary purpose for you is not to make you happy but to make you holy. Take a look at the apostle Paul. Here was a godly man, faithful and obedient to Christ. He was a pastor, a missionary and an apostle. And yet, his God-given thorn in the flesh certainly did not make him happy. God did use that thorn, though, to make him holy. God provided Paul with strength in his weakness.

If you have ever had a splinter you know how annoying it is. You can’t seem to get it out and every time you rub your hand against something you are sharply reminded that it’s there. If you don’t remove it, it becomes infected and swells. What was once a simple, little splinter has become a huge irritation. Paul was experiencing an irritation. We aren’t sure what the thorn was that Paul had in his life. Bible commentators believe that it could have been malaria, severe headaches, epilepsy, poor eyesight, or even a speech impediment. Whatever it was, it was chaffing Paul. It was under his skin. It was a problem that was bothering him to no end. No matter how much he picked at it, he couldn’t seem to get that problem out of his life.

Perhaps a splinter isn’t the best description for what Paul suffered. He used the word "thorn," yet in the Greek the word more literally describes a "spike" or a "stake." This was no minor irritation that Paul suffered. This thorn took away Paul’s ability to function as an apostle. It would have been hard for him to travel to visit the new churches if he was sick from malaria, or difficult to write epistles to these churches if he couldn’t see, or tough to preach if he was stammering over his words. Paul calls this thorn a "weakness." It was so awful that he called it "a messenger of Satan."

Satan would have used this thorn to try to discourage Paul and pull him away from God. Notice that Paul writes that he was "given" this thorn by God. God was using this thorn to pull Paul closer to him. Big, bad, scary Satan was nothing more than an unwitting tool in God’s ultimate plan of sanctifying another saint.

This thorn was no accident. God gave this ailment to his apostle to keep him from becoming conceited by his visions of heaven or boasting about how great of an apostle he was in bringing all these new Gentiles to Christ and starting these new churches all over Europe and Asia Minor. This thorn wasn’t given to Paul because he was outside of God’s will, but because he was in it. This happened to Paul in order to mold his character, to make him more and more holy, so that he could live more and more like a child of God.

God is not opposed to our happiness; it’s just that our happiness is not his primary goal. God’s first priority is our holiness, our sanctification, our salvation. God is absolutely committed to our good, and the highest good is not for us to enjoy a pleasant, trouble-free life. Our highest good is to know Christ and receive his righteousness. As Jesus says in his prayer: "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3) Our highest good in this life is to become the kind of people who consistently honor and glorify God by our faith and obedience. And that usually requires struggling and suffering.

Think about it – if the apostle Paul, possibly the greatest missionary who ever lived and certainly the most prolific writer among the apostles – needed this kind of suffering to develop him to Christian maturity, what do you think we need? It is a fact of human nature that comfort, pleasure, and pleasant circumstances often make us spiritually lazy. When things are going well, we sometimes neglect the spiritual habits of prayer and Bible reading and worship. Instead, our minds become preoccupied with the things of this world and we become inattentive to the things of God.

More often than not, it is the hard times that drive us to God and teach us the deep lessons of faith, obedience and trust. When our child or spouse or parent dies, we come to God for resurrection comfort and hope. When we become seriously ill with cancer, a stroke, Alzheimer’s, or some other debilitating disease, we reach out to God for strength and healing. When our church has financial difficulties, we make sure that our emphasis is on God as he reminds us to reach out to the lost and straying in our own congregation, that we "tighten our belts" at home so we can increase offerings at church, and we find new and creative ways to do his ministry.

Times of difficulty are not to pull us away from God. They are meant to draw us closer to him. When we realize that we are insufficient, we find our sufficiency in our gracious God. He is bigger than our problems. He uses our problems for our eternal good.

God does not take pleasure in our suffering. If he could teach us these things by other means, he would. If he could transform us into mature, humble, godly disciples of Christ using nothing but Bahaman vacations, he would. But usually he can’t. We won’t allow it. And so the most loving and gracious thing he can do is to bring into our lives the kinds of spiritual challenges and personal hardships that will transform our character and keep us close to him. So, then, are you happy or holy when God purposefully sticks you with a thorn?

God will place a "thorn" or two under our skin. Today we might called it "a pain in the neck." God’s thorns come in all shapes and sizes: migraine headaches, bad backs, arthritis, depression, cancer, financial crisis, an impossible boss, a rebellious child, the person sitting next to you, and on and on. Though thorns vary in length and severity, most of us have at least one at any given time.

God’s thorn might cause pain or frustration, but the whole purpose is to keep us from relying on ourselves and becoming arrogant, proud people. Without these thorns, we would begin to rely on ourselves. We would become self-righteous, thinking that we deserve God’s love, and that we deserve to be spared this or that. When things are going great, we feel that we don’t really need God as much, as if we can get by on our own. But then comes the adversity. We get sick, financial problems set in, and family struggles flare up. We experience hardship and pain. Then we are quick to turn to God. And that is what God wants.

The Apostle Paul prayed three times that his thorn would be taken from him, and God answered saying, "No, I will not take away your thorn. My grace is sufficient for you." God allows hardships to enter our lives so that he can keep us humble, and, sometimes he’ll say, "no" to our prayer requests, too. This is God’s way of showing us just how much we need his grace.

I am afraid that Paul may sound a little crazy when he writes: "I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties." Who in his right mind would delight in those kinds of problems? A Christian would. Paul adds: "For when I am weak, then I am strong [in Christ]." Our weaknesses and problems only emphasize our strength in Christ. Paul reminds us that though God may not remove the suffering, he will direct the sufferer to the Solution, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

There’s a story about a young man who lived at the turn of the last century. His name was Clarence. One day he took his girlfriend on a summer outing. They brought a picnic lunch out to a picturesque island in the middle of a small lake. She wore a long dress with about a dozen petticoats. He was dressed in a fine suit with a high collar. Clarence rowed them out to the island, dragged the boat onto shore, and spread their picnic beneath a shade tree. He was so hypnotized by her beauty that he hardly noticed the hot sun and sweat on his brow. Softly she whispered to him, "Clarence, you forgot the ice cream."

Clarence pulled the boat back to the water and rowed to shore. He found a grocery store, bought the ice cream, and rowed back to the island. She batted long eyelashes over deep blue eyes and purred, "Clarence, you forgot the chocolate syrup."

Love will make a person do strange things. Clarence got back into that boat and returned to the store for syrup. As he rowed back toward the island, suddenly he stopped. He sat there in the boat the rest of the afternoon, fascinated by an idea. By the end of that afternoon, Clarence Evinrude had invented the outboard motor.

Clarence Evinrude illustrates the point St. Paul teaches us: God will hand us problems, so that he can force it to pay dividends in our lives. If God gives you a thorn he won’t remove, then he will make it produce a rose. The rose God wants to produce is a greater reliance upon our Savior Jesus, who is controlling all things in the universe, even our problems and pains, in preparation for our great homecoming in heaven.

So, what is your thorn? What person, situation, or illness is chaffing against you? Those hardships are there in your life because God allowed them and is proof that he is working in your life. God iss not trying to make you miserable or trying to push you away from him. Instead, he is using that struggle to bring you closer to him. Thank God for his thorns! Our thorns remind us that we are weak. When we know we are weak, then we can be strong because we are trusting God’s all-sufficient grace shown to us in Christ. Though we may not be happy, we trust that God is making us holy. Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7