Horslow Street, Potton

Sandy, Beds, SG19 2NS

New Year Message

The 2012 text  for Potton Baptist Church:   “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”  (2 Corinthians 12: 9)                                                                                   

Paul, the Apostle, has endured opposition in his labouring for Christians in Corinth.  Strong characters have descended into immoral behaviour, yet  retain the support of many.  Paul hears that people speak of him as strong on paper, but weak in presence.

And so God allows Paul to boast of the striving and suffering incurred working to carry God’s love  in Jesus Christ to the Corinthians.  But, as Paul’s recounts his trials on their behalf, he meets with cold defiance and further hot boasting.  So it is, that in 2 Corinthians Chapter 12, Paul is allowed to reveal, in compensation perhaps for his ordeals as God’s Ambassador, that God once showed him Paradise, fourteen years previously.  

Is Paul now placed above contradiction in recognition of God’s unusual seal ?  Not so.  For God required a further something to accompany this privileged viewing of Paradise - a thorn !   Many have  debated whether this thorn was located in Paul’s physical flesh, his heart and mind, or perhaps in the presence of such enemies as Corinth provided.  Whatever that reality, which God has chosen not to disclose, it was a sharp impediment in Paul’s life.

Three times Paul begged God to take it away.  But the Lord replied to his strong pleas with the words of our text for 2012, quoted at the beginning.  For Paul there would be no proof of his specialness to God in renewed life without the thorn.  Instead, as the text indicates, the power of Christ would “rest upon him” through a daily diet of sufficient grace for his needs.  If Paul remained in weakness, his thorn always a reminder of it, then Christ’s strength would continue to be made perfect, complete, unhindered and uninterrupted.  

So Paul ! - Tell the Corinthians that you have seen Paradise, but tell them the price was a thorn.  Reserve the boasting for testifying to the works of God.  Let those Corinthians, and we who follow Jesus Christ in 2012, know that God’s power remains complete in us in inverse proportion to our reliance on natural strength.  As we are weak, and strive to keep it so, He will be strong.

 Joe King   (Elder)