“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me…”{2 Cor 12:8}
Firstly, He could have acted to remove it – which He didn’t, but we see the second way He deals with is to impart Himself! Displaying Himself, His grace, and power to and through Paul. “My grace is sufficient for you, power perfected in weakness.”
The Lord did not answer Paul the way he had asked to remove the “thorn.” There are times God says “NO!” But He always does it with purpose, not to be mean but He is going to do something else through the circumstance!
Jesus is “the grace.” His grace and power to endure the pain, not somehow but TRANSFORMING the attitude of the man in pain, as he perceives all he needs he has in Christ! Paul saw Jesus was enough!
We need to use our sorrows, “thorn” as a means to deepen our faith, and our dependence upon the LORD, and allow Him to display Himself to and through us in the spreading of His fame!
Don’t waste your sorrows. Use them as a springboard to pray and depend by faith on the LORD!
Alexander MacLean wrote, “A grief, a trial, an incapacity, a limitation, a weakness, which we use as a means of deepening our sense of dependence upon Him, is a blessing, and not a sorrow.”