SERMON
NOTES

5 I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6 Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, 7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given 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.
2 Corinthians 12:5-10 (NIV)
Wedding anniversary. Table booked for one
He drinks to forget he drinks
“What’s a shadow?” asked the sun

Through my suffering, experienced Jesus’ Love (SB)

Our stories don’t just describe our lives; they also reveal what makes us who we are. The Samaritan woman at the well with her “stories of brokenness” in John 4 was a life that comprised several stories of possible brokenness – of prejudice, religious trauma, and loneliness. But then Jesus steps in and “re-purposes” them so that her story becomes a story of restoration and witness. Zacchaeus’ life in Luke 19 was a story of salvation when his stories of rejection, exclusion, betrayal of his own people, and money-centeredness were transformed into a story of salvation, where the lost were found. Salvation exploded with irrepressible joyous generosity. Peter’s story could have ended as one of failure, but it became one of purpose, love, and devotion.

We often are taught to ignore or minimize our suffering. However, turning a blind eye to suffering exacts a price. We can either deal with it or wait until it affects our health, marriages, friendships, work, and relationships with God. I have come to believe it is through the engagement of sorrow that God is known and our own purpose on earth is best understood.

Paul’s life had many stories of suffering. We don’t know too many details of his early life, except that as an adult he was the cause of much suffering to Christ-followers. Then, after his conversion in Acts 9, that all changed. He now faced the same kind of persecution that he used to mete out; he experienced suffering as a follower of Christ. It is interesting to note that he was not averse to writing about suffering – whether it was Jesus’ or even his own. But when it came to his own suffering, he told those stories only in terms of how they drew him closer to Christ. They were real to him – painfully real – but they helped him to understand God’s love for him, as well as experience God’s love for others in that same suffering.

• Honestly confront the magnitude of our own suffering (Galatians 6:17; 2 Corinthians 4:8-10a; 11:23b-27)
  • My suffering is real, even I know that suffering was never God’s intention for anyone
  • There is more harm done by the three reactions usually shown to suffering, even among Christ followers:
    • - We try to forget it by "burying" it
    • - We try to distract ourselves from it with something else (work, entertainment, drugs)
    • - We rationalize it (God is testing me) or minimize it (it really is nothing compared to what others are experiencing – “I complained I had no shows until I saw someone with no feet!”)
    • But Paul spoke openly about his suffering
    • Our stories of suffering need to honestly see/accept the magnitude of our own suffering and the devastation it does to our lives

• Surrender our suffering to God, so that he may “redeem” it (2 Corinthians 12:5-10)
  • In the 2 Corinthians 12 passage we read about a “thorn in the flesh” that Paul experienced. Was it a person (like we refer these days to someone as a “pain in the neck”)? Possibly. It is more probable that it was something physical, something chronic, something so debilitating that Paul believed it came as an affliction from Satan. Three times he asked Jesus to heal him – after all, didn’t that same Jesus do works of miracles through him? Three times the response he got was “My grace, is more than enough for you.”
  • Paul discovered that when he surrendered something that he could not change to a God who could, he did exactly that. God did not always change his circumstances, but he constantly changed him!
  • In surrendering our pain and suffering to God we discover “…when we are weak we are truly strong,” because somehow in our complete dependence on him “his power in us is made perfect.”
  • My summer of 2003 in India, when I almost suffered a mental and emotional breakdown. I did not pass that test – must have got a “F minus.” Yet I experienced God’s healing after…
  • Do your stories of suffering lead to surrendering that pain and suffering to a Messiah who knows that suffering because he has endured it as well, and allowing him to “redeem it” or transform it to change and/or grow us?

• Experience the love of Christ through your suffering (Philippians 3:10; Colossians 1:24)
  • This may seem strange when we read this. But I believe that Paul’s stories of suffering include two aspects of his experiencing God’s love:
  • The first is how Jesus’ own suffering was connected to our own. When we realize that God did not wave a magic wand to take away all suffering, but instead became human and experienced all our suffering, we see the magnitude of his love for the world, for me.
  • When I understand that Jesus experienced – even took all – my suffering because he loved me, I want to participate in that love myself, to experience his love that cannot be separated from his suffering
  • But there is a second way that Paul wanted to experience God’s love through his suffering.
  • Through our suffering that we surrender to God, we re-purpose our own suffering to become signposts to the greater suffering that Jesus endured for our salvation. Our suffering does nothing to bring salvation to anyone, but we can use it to point people to Christ’s suffering that saves
  • In John Piper’s words: “…our community experiencing the transforming love of Jesus in their lives will not happen without suffering. Because suffering is not simply the consequence of obedience, it is a means of obedience. It is a way of obedience. It is a strategy of sharing our living Faith.”
  • Do your honest stories of suffering witness to the saving love of the Suffering Messiah?