“In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 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. 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 Cor 12: 7-10)

“Thorn in flesh”?

• Not a temptation

• Probably a physical weakness or a difficult person or situation

• Look around us: the most difficult person could be our God-given ‘thorn in the flesh’

God’s Strength Perfected in Our Weakness?

God withholds His power UNLESS we rely on Him

God’s Discipline

• God knows our arrogant easily-hardened hearts

• God knows the importance of destroying pride; our human nature ‘naturally’ longs to rely only on ourselves

• Gods wants to prove to us that our own efforts are insufficient

• Good news: He is always there at the ‘end’ of the road

We cannot experience God’s power unless we feel we need to rely on Him

God’s Frame

• Our pride tends to view our successes as resulting from our own efforts

• We need to see events with the eyes of Christ (and our weakness ‘forces’ us to see!)

• We don’t need miracles; we need believers

• Good news: He is already there even when we don’t know it

God’s power truly requires us to be weak

God’s Self-Limitation

• We are intimately connected to God’s power via our weaknesses (strength from weakness is like the irrevocability of freedom)

• Faith really moves the hands of God – why? Because God decided that it will.

• Good News: Weakness is raw material for greater faith - asking for more faith is itself an act of faith!

“Jesus could do no deed of power there…he was

amazed at their unbelief.”

(Mk 6:7)

God’s power always takes the form of weakness

God’s Hiddenness

• God wants to teach/show us another kind of power, one the world doesn’t understand

• God’s power “looks like” weakness, so our power also expresses itself through our weakness

• God’s power cannot but appear weak to a sinful world

• Good News: Whenever there is weakness, we know (contra appearances) that God’s strength is being perfected

Special Ordinary

But what we really need is…

The Purple Pill

Can we see the truth within illusion, the authentic embedded in the superficial, the wonder inside the ordinary, the miraculous of the banal?

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” (Isaiah 53:2-3)

Can we see the power of a ‘run down’ traditional church?

Can we see the kingdom inside ‘simple’ parables?

Can we see the glory and power of a man crucified?

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”