“Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself!”
-2 Corinthians 12:7 NASB1995
You ever notice that no one ever points this verse out at church? Like seriously. They might skip down to my grace is sufficient for me, but no one had the honesty to just stop and acknowledge the possibility of what could be happening here.
Here we have Paul, who is suffering. We aren’t told exactly what is going on in his body, but we do know that he survived beatings and shipwrecks and being stoned and I have to imagine that that kind of abuse can take a serious toll on a person. I imagine that Paul was in some fairly significant pain. But he didn’t allow that to stop him. He prayed for deliverance from this ‘thorn’, but God said no. Here’s one thing that gets me here. Paul seems pretty confident that he knows WHY he is dealing with this thorn. That is because without it, he might become too big for his britches. He might become arrogant. Paul had already tasted power and he knew how it felt. He knew without something slowing him down, he might be pulled into that familiar desire for power. The satisfaction of doing something ‘impossible’ and feeling in control is terribly addicting.
I have struggled myself so many times with the need and desire for control. There have been many times when I have looked at someone and thought, ‘I absolutely could do a better job at this than you.’ Whether that was a true possibility or not. Whether it was something I wanted to do or not.
Basically, to break it down to its simplest terms, I struggle with arrogance. I was raised to think myself smarter than many others in the room, rather than to just be who I was made to be and leave others out of the equation. That is a really difficult cycle to break. More so, because at the end of the day, no matter how much I want to break the cycle, there is still a part of me that wants to hold onto that arrogance. A part that wants to hold onto the illusion of being the strongest person in the room. And I hate that. That is not the legacy that I want to leave for my family.
How do I break this cycle? As far as I know, even Paul didn’t break free of this cycle. What makes me think that I can do any better? I honestly don’t know if I can. But I’m not giving up hope. Because in my life I have learned one thing for sure. Even when we don’t want something with all of our hearts and nothing we can do in our flesh can change that, God can still work miracles.
Several years ago, I was trying to give up drinking Coca-Cola. I had tried several times only to just keep on drinking it. The craziest part was, I didn’t even like the flavor anymore, but I just kept drinking it anyway. And I wanted to quit drinking it, but I just couldn’t see to stop. One day I was praying and I was so frustrated and I said something to God like, ‘Why can’t I give this up? I don’t even want to drink this stuff.’ And He gave me a nudge and said, ‘Are you SURE you don’t WANT to keep drinking it? Does every single part of you want to quit drinking it??’ At first I was like, ‘Of course I’m sure. Would I be having this conversation with You if I wasn’t sure?!’ Silence. He just let me sit there with that in my spirit for a bit. After a little while, I realized He was right. There was still a part of me that didn’t actually WANT to give it up. In desperation I prayed, ‘Lord, please help me WANT to give it up.’ I prayed that prayer over and over for a while. I want to say it was at least a few weeks. Then I started making it a little later in the day before I drank one and a little later. Then a day came. I had never wanted one more in my life. It was hot and sunny. I was outside working, sweat just trickling down my back. We were bagging up a slow roasted pig off the grill. I was standing over that hot grill, cleaning the meat off the bones and I can’t even tell you how bad I wanted a drink of that Coke. But something inside of me just kept saying, just five more minutes, just five more minutes. You can make it just five more minutes. All day. Just five more minutes. I made it through the entire day and didn’t drink a sip of soda. The next day and every day after that, I’ve thought, I don’t want it as bad now as I did that one day and I made it through that day, because God helped me to want to be free more than I wanted that soda. This year it will have been eight years since I’ve drank any kind of Coca-Cola. I know victories are possible. Even though my struggles with arrogance feel a lot bigger and harder to defeat that a sugar and caffeine addiction.
I was having a little ‘chat’ with Google Gemini about this topic and it came up with a prayer that I thought really captured the heart of my issue.
“Lord, help me WANT to lay this ego down. Help me want total dependence on YOU more than I want the illusion of being the strongest person in the room.”
Maybe, if the thorn really is there to keep my ego and arrogance from running and ruining the show, then hopefully, laying my ego down and humbly surrendering it to God will make a difference…..as long as I don’t pick it up again. That might be the most difficult part of all.
Image created by Mel Seeley in collaboration with Chat GPT and Google Gemini
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