A Church That Embraces Weakness | Becoming A Praying Church, Week 8 | Rob Hall | New North Church

Alright, I'm gonna bet that every single person in this room, and I'd put my money on it, at least$20, that every single person in this room has at least one prayer that God did not answer in the way that you wanted him to.

Alright, that is true.

Let me see your hand if that is true.

Yep.

And if your hand is not raised, you probably don't do a lot of praying, and that's okay.

We're in the year of prayer because that's just the reality of prayer.

All of us, if you're gonna walk with Jesus for any amount of time, are gonna have prayers that God answers in different ways.

And those prayers sound something like this: Lord, please heal, or Lord, please remove, or Lord, please fix, or Lord, please change her now.

Like, and oftentimes what happens is God answers those prayers, and they often sound like this no, or not yet, you're not ready, or in my case, if I feel it's often like Rob, you don't really want that.

And so every Christian, if you're gonna walk with Jesus, eventually needs to answer this question.

Here's a question Can I still trust God?

When he answers my prayers much differently than I had hoped or imagined.

Let me say that again.

Let's just slow down for a second.

Can I still trust God?

When he answers my prayers much differently than I hoped or even imagined.

We are finishing Paul's prayers in the New Testament this morning.

And here's my encouragement for you today that even the great Apostle Paul, the man, the myth, the legend, had at least one prayer, and most likely more, that God answered very differently than even he wanted.

And I think that will bring us some encouragement today.

But before I go any further, let's take a moment to pray.

Why don't you pray instead of me praying?

Pray for yourself and for those around you, for me, that we would all be open to the word of God, that we would hear from him this morning.

Father, you're in this place.

As we open up your word, speak to us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So as we've been studying Paul and his prayers, now we're looking at his prayers for the church in Corinth.

We looked at one last week, we're looking at this one.

And remember, he planted this church.

It started off well, but usually what happens, and this even happens today, is that false teachers come behind church planters, and they were rejecting these false apostles, actually, they were calling themselves apostles.

They were rejecting the very things that Paul taught the church in Corinth.

And the reason why they were getting a foothold is because they were very impressive people.

And they look good, they talk good, they even were teaching things that people even love to hear today, that God's blessing looks like success and influence and power.

And Paul is gonna argue something completely opposite.

He's gonna tell us that power often looks like weakness.

And so in chapter 11, before the chapter we're gonna look at, Paul was kind of forced to reluctantly boast about himself because his authority and even his credibility were being challenged.

And so as he kind of lists off his resume, as he ends, he doesn't end with, see guys, look how great I am.

He ends with, look how weak I am.

And then he gets really honest.

And probably in one of the most raw prayers of Paul, he points to one of the most painful and hard challenges that he's had to live with, a prayer, really, that God answered radically different than even Paul hoped.

If you have a Bible, look with me at 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7.

2 Corinthians 12:7

Paul says this, he says, Therefore, in order to keep me from being conceited, he says, therefore, because he just lifted off all of his accomplishments, he says, I was given a thorn, literally in the origin in the original language.

The idea is more of a stake, a stake in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.

And again, if if if if you haven't been around church folk, Paul, just real quick, was a super impressive guy.

His heritage was top-notch, he was well educated, he was a brilliant thinker and theologian, he was actually a famous speaker and writer.

He would show up, hundreds of people would come to listen to him, and not to mention he was probably the greatest missionary and church planner that the world had ever seen.

And so Paul begins to share some of that, but he doesn't end with bragging or on God's grace or his many blessings.

Instead, what he does is he begins to scribe his own pain.

And he tells us that in God's wisdom and in God's grace, that he was given a stake, a thorn in the flesh, he tells us specifically to keep him, to keep Paul from becoming conceited.

And so Paul's honest about his weaknesses.

He says, Hey guys, like I needed help being humble, I needed help being teachable, I needed help being full of grace because I had a big head.

I can't relate.

But now, you guys know this, there's been all kinds of speculation over hundreds and hundreds of years, everyone trying to figure out what was this thorn in the flesh, and honestly, we don't know.

So I'm not even gonna go there.

We do know that it was sharp, that it was painful, that it caused constant suffering in his life.

It might have been a physical issue, it might have been a mental issue, it might have some scholars think that he was partially blind or deaf or suffered from malaria, but I think that's the point.

The point is we don't know because then we could put ourselves in the story.

Because the reality is for I think all of us in this room, we're all dealing with something painful, something, even something in someone else's life that's close to us, that we pray and we pray for God to take away and God doesn't.

And then Paul tells us something kind of interesting.

He says that this stake was actually a messenger of Satan sent to torment him.

That word torment also means to abuse.

So, so somehow, some way, again, we don't know, Paul was tormented by a demonic influence.

Now he wasn't possessed by a demon.

If you're a Christian, you cannot be possessed by a demon, but you can certainly be bothered by one.

And so Paul is describing for us some type of physical and mental struggle and some type of spiritual struggle as well.

But as all this was going on, Paul was telling the church, and he's telling us that something powerful was going on inside of him.

In his suffering, Paul tells us that he became a greater conduit for the grace and the power of God.

And that's my first point if you're taking notes.

Sometimes God allows what we desperately want removed.

And again, I'm not God, and I'm not gonna pretend I know all the reasons why, but some of us, and I know this because I do, is some of us spend our entire waking moments trying to remove maybe the very thing God is using to form you more like his son Jesus.

And the reason why this is uncomfortable, the reason why we don't like to talk about our issues and our problems is because we live in a culture that values the self, self-help and self-esteem, and in the Bay Area, it's self-sufficiency and self-love.

Like the message we constantly hear everywhere is work on yourself.

You can become strong and intelligent and influential.

Weakness and pain are to be avoided at all costs.

And that's what these false prophets and apostles were teaching the church in Corinth.

And what happened to them happens to us as we begin to believe these lies.

Lies like, you know what?

I am strong enough to endure everything and anything, until your life falls apart at the seams.

Or we believe things like, you know, I can control and handle any situation until you can't.

Or I'm smart enough, I'm gonna figure it out until you realize you're not smart enough and you blow up your life.

And so if you're gonna walk with Jesus, you have to understand this that his worldview, our worldview, is so much different.

Jesus often describes this paradoxical way of living.

Let me give you some examples.

This is a whole nother sermon.

Jesus says things like, hey, if you want to be first, get to the back of the line.

Hey, if you're poor, actually you're more rich than you think.

Hey, if you want to go up, get down.

If you want to become great, great.

Become a servant.

Hey, if you want to real life, if you want to discover yourself, try this.

Try denying yourself and picking up your cross daily.

And then Paul tells us, hey, if you want to be strong, actually brag about your weaknesses.

And so what if, and again, I'm not God, so I don't know, but what if the God who loves you, the God who created you, the God who's all control and all-powerful is allowing that thorn, whatever it is, for your good and his glory.

He did that for Paul.

And so Paul continues and he tells us really honestly, and I love this about Paul.

This is so real.

He says, Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

That does not mean he only prayed three times.

That's his way of saying, Y'all, I prayed all the time for God to take this away from me.

But God said to me, this is what God told him, that my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

My grace, Paul, is sufficient for you.

My undeserved favor is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

And so again, whatever the thorn was, Paul prayed, God, remove it, remove it, remove it.

I think, and I'm just guessing here, Paul believed that this thorn, whatever it was, was interfering in his ministry, was hurting his ministry, was holding him back.

Um, and I think Paul thought, hey God, like I would be much more effective.

I could plant more churches, I could travel better if you would just take this away.

And God said, No.

And I'll be honest with you, this is incredibly frustrating for me.

Like, I look at this and I go, geez, God, like this is like the Apostle Paul, the guy that you were using to spread the good news all over the ancient world.

And you told him, No.

Like, honestly, out of all the people I could think of, I'm like, God, couldn't you give this guy, like, do a solid for him?

Like, come on.

You think that too.

I think that about my own suffering.

And and this is just one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith is that God often answers our prayers in ways that we don't like, in ways that we don't want.

We don't like no, we don't like to wait.

We don't like to be told that we don't even know what we're praying about.

But this is exactly what God does because his primary purpose for your life and my life, again, I say this all the time, it's not to make you happy, but to conform you into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

And he often, often does that through our unanswered prayers or prayers that he answers in much different ways than we thought or we think we need.

And so that's what I've wrote that sometimes God answers our prayers much differently than we hoped.

He does it all the time.

But I think this is actually a good thing.

Right, I think about my kids and they're older now, and but when they were younger, if I gave them everything they wanted, they would live off candy and have no teeth at this point, right?

And God's the same.

And so, what he does for Paul, what he does for us, instead of removing the thorn, God gave Paul and He gives us enough grace and enough strength to continue on.

And this is not like grace for tomorrow.

This is not power for tomorrow.

This is daily bread, daily grace, daily power.

Like we don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring, but today we can trust a God who gives us the grace and the power to sustain us for today's struggle, not tomorrow's.

And so I think Paul, as he's writing this, he's looking back at his weakness at this thorn, and he sees it now as one of the clearest signs for God's power and grace in his life.

And now he's able to see it as one of the things God allowed and enabled him to be used by God in incredible ways because of this weakness.

The late scholar who's with Jesus, F.

F.

Bruce, put it this way.

He said his prayer, talking about Paul, talking about this passage, was indeed answered.

Not by his deliverance from the affliction, but by his receiving the necessary grace to bear it.

And so, what about you?

Like, what is that one thing that you keep praying about?

And maybe it's not even for you, it's for someone else, but maybe it is for you that God seems to be answering or not answering in ways that you'd hoped.

I mean, I have those.

And so the question Paul is teeing up to the church in Corinth and New North Church is is God's grace enough?

Can we trust him?

Is God's power somehow, somehow being revealed through your suffering and your trauma and your pain?

See again, if you're a follower of Jesus, we actually believe that God is in complete control, that he's always working all things according to his good purposes.

And Paul is asking us, hey church, do we actually believe that?

Because then he moves on.

And he starts to boast, but he's not going to boast in what the false apostles were boasting.

And he says, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses.

Not because I'm a masochist, not because I'm a weirdo, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

And he says, That is why.

For Christ's sake, not him, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulty.

Why and how could he do that?

He tells us, for when I am weak, then I am what?

Strong.

Strong.

See, he says this because these false apostles prided themselves, and the Corinthians too, prided themselves in being smart and wise and powerful, and they were actually teaching the church, and the church was eating it up, that true power is found not through suffering, but eliminating suffering and pain from your life.

And Paul says, that is not the way of Jesus.

He flips it all on its head and says, no, no, the Christian life, following Jesus, is actually experiencing God's grace and power in your suffering and in your trials and in your hardships and in your weakness.

And again, he's not talking about any power in general.

He's talking about the power of Jesus Christ, the power that we saw as he suffered and died on the cross, the power that he revealed as he rose from the dead.

Paul says, that's the kind of power that I'm talking about.

Not only that, but Paul could look back on his own life and he could look at all that he went through.

And guys, I've already said this, he's gone through a lot.

And now he can look back and say, Yeah, God sustained me there.

I experienced his power there.

Yep, and he sustained me there and he gave me grace there.

I was kicked out of that town and he helped me.

Now, let me just be clear.

Paul is not saying that, you know, weakness is power.

Paul is not saying that, oh, I love it.

I love when someone slaps me.

I love it.

He's not saying that, okay.

He's saying that his weakness and his suffering somehow, somehow became a door for him and for others to experience the grace and power of God.

And so I think about it this way: this is like spiritual math.

Paul says, hey, my weakness and my thorn plus God's grace and power equals real strength.

Weakness, thorn, grace, power, real strength.

See, Paul believed, and we should too, that he was most powerful when he relied less on himself and less on his intelligence and less on his experience and more on the grace and power of God.

And you guys know this.

If you've been around church, you know this.

This is this is a storyline of the Bible.

From beginning to end, Abraham, God comes to Abraham and says, I'm gonna make you into a great nation, I'm gonna bless you.

And Abraham says, Whoa, not me, God.

And God says, You're the man.

Get on it.

And the Hebrew nation is birthed through Abraham.

A little while later, God says, Hey, Moses, I need you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to set my people free, and you're gonna see my power.

And Moses says, I got a stuttering problem.

I cannot do that, God.

And God says, Oh, that's okay.

I know you can't do that, but I'm gonna work through you, and all of Egypt is gonna see my power through you.

And Moses says, Okay.

Esther, Queen Esther, was terrified to go unannounced to King Xerxes as her people were about to get eliminated.

And so she asks the people of God, Hey, pray for me, fast for me, because if I go in there and if God's not with me, I am dead.

And that's exactly what does not happen.

She goes in the room and her husband says, Oh, okay.

And God used her for such a time as this.

Of course, David, the last example, there's hundreds more.

King David, what a wild story, right?

Um, the prophet comes and says, Hey, Jesse, where are all your sons?

Brings out all his sons.

He doesn't even bring out his youngest son.

How terrible of a dad is that?

And Samuel goes, Yeah, God's not gonna bless any of these guys.

And they all look good.

And Samuel's like, Oh, that dude's study, that must be the king.

Nope, God says, Nope, nope, nope.

And so he says, Hey, Jesse, you have another son?

And Jesse's like, Oh, yeah, I got this scrub of a son out in the shepherd fields.

And he goes, Grab him.

He comes, and Samuel, God says, That's my man.

That's my man.

And that story is all over the Bible.

Even Paul, when he wrote his first letter to the Corinthian church, listen to what he said.

He said, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are wise, so that no one may boast before him.

And so Paul delighted in weakness and suffering, not because he enjoyed it, but because they all revealed the goodness, the grace, and the power of God most clearly in his life.

And so, what I've wrote down here for your notes is God's power often shines brightest, and I picked this word clear uh carefully, through surrendered weakness, through giving our weaknesses to God, for giving our pain and our suffering and our trauma to God, to surrendering it to him.

I was thinking about, man, we like like there's got to be some great examples of this, and there are, and there's a bunch, but I'm older, so I was thinking about uh Chuck Colson.

If you know Charles Colson, if you're under 40, look him up.

Um, but uh he went to prison in uh in uh 1974 and served prison time for his part, if you if you know what the Watergate scandal was.

But it was in prison where he renews his faith and he meets Jesus in a new way, and and as he leaves prison, he he feels like this calling to mobilize a Christian church to minister to prisoners.

And so in 1976, he founded what was called and what's still called prison fellowship, which to my knowledge is still the largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, um, their their families and former prisoners, and also working to uh advocate for criminal justice reform.

So I remember back in 2012 he passed away, but an incredible legacy.

By the way, if you want another book recommendation, I'd love to give those.

Years ago, I read one of his classics called Loving God.

Loving God.

And it was, it might be in my top 10 book.

I'm sure you can find it at The Goodwill for like a dollar.

Anyway, here's what he said.

I love this.

He says the great paradox of my life is that every time I walk into a prison and see the faces of men and women who have been transformed by the power of the living God, I realize that the thing God has chosen to use in my life is none of the successes or achievements or degrees or awards, honors, or cases I won before the Supreme Court.

That's not what God is using in my life.

What God is using in my life to touch the lives of literally thousands of other people is the fact that I was a convict and went to prison.

That was my great defeat.

The only thing in my life I didn't succeed in.

Wow.

And so again, I'm not God.

I don't know what He's trying to do in your life.

But could something like this be part of your story too?

So I want you to think about your thorn, whatever that might be, or your trauma, or your pain, or the struggle, or the hardship.

And again, I can't be sure, but I wonder, I just wonder, if it's time today to stop resisting what God has chosen to remain.

Maybe today is a day that you surrender it to God and you ask him to give you the grace and the power to live with it.

Maybe today is a day where you ask him, would you give me a ministry because of this?

Maybe the one thing that you're praying for God to remove is the one thing that you need most to experience his grace and power.

And here's what I found that sometimes God's greatest answer to our prayers isn't removing our weakness or our pain or our suffering or our trials, but meeting us right in it with his grace.

I mean, how does this not hit home for us in so many ways?

I mean, I don't know about you, I don't know your life, I know mine.

I have all kinds of weaknesses.

I have all kinds of struggles.

Just ask my family, ask anyone I work with.

Like I worry about all kinds of things.

I worry, for example, about being judged for not having like a perfect pastor family in a marriage or kids that all want to be worship leaders and pastors.

They do not.

When I read the news of another pastor failing, I don't go, oh, he got what he deserved.

All I do is look at my own heart and I go, gosh, Lord, protect me from messing up my own life and ministry and marriage.

Like I am fully aware that I don't have what it takes, or the power, or the strength, or the intelligence, no matter how many degrees I have, to lead our family or our church well through everything that's coming, or against the enemy of our souls that wants nothing more than destroy me and this church.

At the same time, I'm very well aware that God reminds me and shows me that through my own weaknesses, through my own failures, through those very feelings, he's often revealing his grace and his power in my own weakness.

And so, like Paul, I have no idea what tomorrow may bring.

I have no idea how all respond.

But here's what I do every day I choose to trust him today.

Today I choose faith and obedience.

Today I receive God's grace.

And today I say, Holy Spirit, help me to walk in your power today.

And Paul got that.

May we get that too.

May we be a people.

May we be a church that embraces weakness, that embraces our trauma and our failures.

Not because we're weird, but because we believe that when we are weak, God is strong.

That when we don't have it, He has it.

Then when we don't know what to do, He knows what to do.

Then when we're at the end of our rope, that's right where God shows up.

Do you want that today, church?

I certainly do.

Let's pray together.

I've been praying all week and just feeling like today is a day for people to come to faith.

So I'm gonna pray into that.

If you're not yet a follower of Jesus, if God is speaking to your heart, if these words are ringing true in your soul, I'm just gonna invite you.

I'm not gonna force you, I'm just gonna invite you to share a prayer, to repeat a prayer that's similar to what I did when I prayed when I was 17 years old.

We're not gonna embarrass you.

You can just pray this prayer right in your heart, right where you're at.

To say, Lord Jesus, here I am.

I'm a mess.

I don't have the answers.

I confess my sin to you.

I turn away from it.

I repent of it, and I ask you, Jesus, right now to be my Lord, my master, and my savior.

I give you my heart.

Take it, forgive me, change me, help me to be the person that I that not only I want to be, but the person that you want me to be.

And Father, help me right now to find strength and weakness, to find your grace, and to experience your power even in my brokenness.

I am yours.

With all of our heads bowed, with all of our eyes closed, if you prayed that prayer, can you just slip up your hand so I could pray for you one more time?

Awesome, I see your hands.

Great.

Anyone over here?

I see yours.

Awesome.

You can put your hands down.

I'm gonna pray for you.

Father, for those men and women who said yes to Jesus, Holy Spirit, would you come upon them in power right now?

Would you give them everything they need for a life of godliness, God?

Would you draw near to them in their struggles, in their pain, in their trauma?

God, would you be a very real and near God to them?

Jesus, forgive them.

Jesus, cleanse them.

Holy Spirit, empower them now to live for you.

In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of the Spirit, we pray.

And all God's people said, Amen.

Hey church, what do we do when lots of people come to faith?

We celebrate that, we honor that, we're thankful for that.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

Hey, if you raise your hand, this is the first time you would say, Man, I'm a I became a Christian, like I mean it.

A couple quick things.

I want to encourage you to come up for prayer at the end of the service.

We also have a free gift for you on your way out at our Orange Tent called the Hub.

We want to give you a Bible that's just for you.

I want to encourage you to start reading that in the New Testament.

Start on what's called the Gospel of Matthew and just keep reading.

Read one chapter a day.

And then lastly, your next act of obedience is to get baptized.

Baptism is really the entrance, the membership into the life of the church.

And in a couple weeks, we're gonna have baptisms right here.

You can sign up on the connection card, sign up at the hub, and we will get you in the waters of baptism and explain that for you.

Alright, would you just grab those communion cups as the band comes up and it's gonna lead us in a second?

I want you to hold that in your hand.

And here's what I want you to do.

As you look at that little piece of bread and that cup of juice, I want you to consider everything Jesus did for you and everything He is.

See, the good news is that Jesus, just like Paul, prayed three times for the cup of suffering to pass.

He prayed and he begged God for another way other than the cross.

But God said no to his son because he loved the world too much to say yes.

And Jesus went to the cross where he suffered and died for you.

But the story was not over.

After three days, he rose from the grave, defeating sin, Satan, and death once and for all.

Through the prayer of Jesus, that God answered differently than he wanted, through the thorn of the cross, you and I can now receive forgiveness and be welcomed into the family of God.

Through the blood of Jesus, you can experience his grace and walk in his power even in your pain and your suffering and your thorn and your weakness.

So we're gonna sing a powerful song that I love, and then hold on to those elements, and I'll come back up and we'll take them together.

So if we can help you in any way at all, just reach out to us.

The email address is hello at new north.church.

With that, let's go right to this week's message.

That every single person in this room has at least one prayer that God did not answer in the way that you wanted him to.

Alright, that is true.

Let me see your hand if that is true.

Yep.

And if your hand is not raised, you probably don't do a lot of praying, and that's okay.

We're in the year of prayer, because that's just the reality of prayer.

All of us, if you're gonna walk with Jesus for any amount of time, are gonna have prayers that God answers in different ways.

And those prayers sound something like this: Lord, please heal, or Lord, please remove, or Lord, please fix, or Lord, please change, her now.

Like, and oftentimes what happens is God answers those prayers, and they often sound like this, no, or not yet, you're not ready, or in my case, if I feel it's often like Rob, you don't really want that.

And so every Christian, if you're gonna walk with Jesus, eventually needs to answer this question.

Here's a question Can I still trust God?

When he answers my prayers much differently than I had hoped or imagined.

Let me say that again.

Let's just slow down for a second.

Can I still trust God?

When he answers my prayers much differently than I hoped or even imagined.

We are finishing uh Paul's prayers in the New Testament this morning.

And here's my encouragement for you today that even the great Apostle Paul, the man, the myth, the legend, had at least one prayer, and most likely more, that God answered very differently than even He wanted.

And I think that will bring us some encouragement today.

Before I go any further, let's take a moment to pray.

Why don't you pray instead of me praying?

Pray for yourself and for those around you, for me, that we would all be open to the word of God, that we would hear from him this morning.

Oh God.

Father, you're in this place.

As we open up your word, speak to us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So as we've been looking as as we've been studying Paul and his prayers, now we're looking at his prayers for the church in Corinth.

We looked at one last week, we're looking at this one.

And remember, he planted this church.

It started off well, but usually what happens, and this even happens today, is that false teachers come behind church planters, and they were rejecting these false apostles, actually, they were calling themselves apostles.

They were rejecting the very things that Paul taught the church in Corinth.

And and and the reason why they were getting a foothold is because they were very impressive people and they look good, they talk good.

They even were teaching things that people even love to hear today, that God's blessing looks like success and influence and power.

And Paul is gonna argue something completely opposite.

He's gonna tell us that power often looks like weakness.

And so in chapter 11, before the chapter we're gonna look at, Paul was kind of forced to reluctantly boast about himself because his authority and even his credibility were being challenged.

And so as he kind of lists off his resume, as he ends, he doesn't end with, see guys, look how great I am.

He ends with, look how weak I am.

And then he gets really honest.

And probably in the one of the most raw prayers of Paul, he points to one of the most painful and hard challenges that he's had to live with, a prayer really that God answered radically different than even Paul hoped.

If you have a Bible, look with me at 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7.

2 Corinthians 12:7

Paul says this, he says, Therefore, in order to keep me from being conceited, he says, therefore, because he just listed off all of his accomplishments.

He says, I was given a thorn, literally in the original language, the idea is more of a stake, a stake in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.

And again, if if if if you haven't been around church folk, Paul, just real quick, was a super impressive guy.

His heritage was top-notch, he was well educated, he was a brilliant thinker and theologian, he was actually a famous speaker and writer.

He would show up, hundreds of people would come to listen to him, and not to mention he was probably the greatest missionary and church planner that the world had ever seen.

And so Paul begins to share some of that, but he doesn't end with bragging or on God's grace or his many blessings.

Instead, what he does is he begins to scribe his own pain.

And he tells us that in God's wisdom and in God's grace, that he was given a stake, a thorn in the flesh, he tells us specifically to keep him, to keep Paul from becoming conceited.

And so Paul's honest about his weaknesses.

He says, Hey guys, like I needed help being humble, I needed help being teachable, I needed help being full of grace because I had a big head.

I can't relate.

But now you guys know this, there's been all kinds of speculation over hundreds and hundreds of years, everyone trying to figure out what was this thorn in the flesh, and they honestly we don't know.

So I'm not even gonna go there.

We do know that it was sharp, that it was painful, that it caused constant suffering in his life.

It might have been a physical issue, it might have been a mental issue, it might have some scholars think that he was partially blind or deaf or suffered from malaria, but I think that's the point.

The point is we don't know because then we could put ourselves in the story.

Because the reality is for I think all of us in this room, we're all dealing with something painful, something, even something in someone else's life that's close to us, that we pray and we pray for God to take away and God doesn't.

And then Paul tells us something kind of interesting.

He says that this stake was actually a messenger of Satan sent to torment him.

That word torment also means to abuse.

So, so somehow, some way, again, we don't know, Paul was tormented by a demonic influence.

Now, he wasn't possessed by a demon.

If you're a Christian, you cannot be possessed by a demon, but you can certainly be bothered by one.

And so Paul is describing for us some type of physical and mental struggle and some type of spiritual struggle as well.

But as all this was going on, Paul was telling the church, and he's telling us that something powerful was going on inside of him.

In his suffering, Paul tells us that he became a greater conduit for the grace and the power of God.

And that's my first point if you're taking notes.

Sometimes God allows what we desperately want removed.

And again, I'm not God, and I'm not gonna pretend I know all the reasons why, but some of us, and I know this because I do it, some of us spend our entire waking moments trying to remove maybe the very thing God is using to form you more like his son Jesus.

And the reason why this is uncomfortable, the reason why we don't like to talk about our issues and our problems is because we live in a culture that values the self, self help and self esteem, and in the Bay Area, self sufficiency and self love, like the message we constantly hear everywhere.

Is work on yourself.

You can become strong and intelligent and influential.

Weakness and pain are to be avoided at all costs.

And that's what these false prophets and apostles were teaching the church in Corinth.

And what happened to them happens to us.

As we begin to believe these lies.

Lies like, you know what?

I am strong enough to endure everything and anything until your life falls apart at the seams.

Or we believe things like, you know, I can control and handle any situation until you can't.

Or I'm smart enough, I'm going to figure it out until you realize you're not smart enough and you blow up your life.

And so if you're going to walk with Jesus, you have to understand this that his worldview, our worldview, is so much different.

Jesus often describes this paradoxical way of living.

Let me give you some examples.

This is a whole nother sermon.

Jesus says things like, hey, if you want to be first, get to the back of the line.

Hey, if you're poor, actually you're more rich than you think.

Hey, if you want to go up, get down.

If you want to become great, great.

Become a servant.

Hey, if you want to real life, if you want to discover yourself, try this.

Try denying yourself and picking up your cross daily.

And then Paul tells us, hey, if you want to be strong, actually brag about your weaknesses.

And so what if, and again, I'm not God, so I don't know, but what if the God who loves you, the God who created you, the God who's all control and all powerful is allowing that thorn, whatever it is, for your good and his glory.

He did that for Paul.

And so Paul continues and he tells us really honestly, and I love this about Paul.

This is so real.

He says, Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

That does not mean he only prayed three times.

That's his way of saying, Y'all, I prayed all the time for God to take this away from me.

But God said to me, this is what God told him, that my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

My grace, Paul, is sufficient for you.

My unreserved favor is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

And so again, whatever the thorn was, Paul prayed, God, remove it, remove it, remove it.

I think, and I'm just guessing here, Paul believed that this thorn, whatever it was, was interfering in his ministry, was hurting his ministry, was holding him back.

Um, and I think Paul thought, hey, God, like I would be much more effective.

I could plant more churches, I could travel better if you would just take this away.

And God said, No.

And I'll be honest with you, this is incredibly frustrating for me.

Like I look at this and I go, geez, God, like this is like the Apostle Paul, the guy that you were using to spread the good news all over the ancient world.

And you told him, no.

Like, honestly, out of all the people I could think of, I'm like, God, couldn't you give this guy, like, do a solid for him?

Like, come on.

You think that too.

I think that about my own suffering.

And and this is just one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith is that God often answers our prayers in ways that we don't like, in ways that we don't want.

We don't like know.

We don't like to wait.

We don't like to be told that we don't even know what we're praying about.

But this is exactly what God does because his primary purpose for your life and my life, again, I say this all the time, it's not to make you happy, but to conform you into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

And he often, often does that through our unanswered prayers or prayers that he answers in much different ways than we thought or we think we need.

And so that's what I've wrote that sometimes God answers our prayers much differently than we hoped.

He does it all the time.

But I think this is actually a good thing.

Right, I think about my kids and they're older now, and but when they were younger, if I gave them everything they wanted, they would live off candy and have no teeth at this point, right?

And God's the same.

And so what he does for Paul, what he does for us, instead of removing the thorn, God gave Paul and he gives us enough grace and enough strength to continue on.

And this is not like grace for tomorrow.

This is not power for tomorrow.

This is daily bread, daily grace, daily power.

Like we don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring, but today we can trust a God who gives us the grace and the power to sustain us for today's struggle, not tomorrow's.

And so I think Paul, as he's writing this, he's looking back at his weakness at this thorn, and he sees it now as one of the clearest signs for God's power and grace in his life.

And now he's able to see it as one of the things God allowed and enabled him to be used by God in incredible ways because of this weakness.

The late scholar who's with Jesus, F.

F.

Bruce, put it this way.

He said his prayer, talking about Paul, talking about this passage, was indeed answered, not by his deliverance from the affliction, but by his receiving the necessary grace to bear it.

And so, what about you?

Like, what is that one thing that you keep praying about?

And maybe it's not even for you, it's for someone else, but maybe it is for you that God seems to be answering or not answering in ways that you'd hoped.

I mean, I have those.

And so the question Paul is teeing up to the church in Corinth to New North Church is is God's grace enough?

Can we trust him?

Is God's power somehow, somehow being revealed through your suffering and your trauma and your pain?

See, again, if you're a follower of Jesus, we actually believe that God is in complete control, that he's always working all things according to his good purposes.

And Paul's asking us, hey church, do we actually believe that?

Because then he moves on.

And the and he starts to boast, but he's not going to boast in what the false apostles were boasting.

And he says, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses.

Not because I'm a masochist, not because I'm a weirdo, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

And he says, That is why.

For Christ's sake, not him, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulty.

Why and how could he do that?

He tells us, for when I am weak, then I am what?

Strong.

Strong.

See, he says this because these false apostles prided themselves, and the Corinthians too, prided themselves in being smart and wise and powerful, and they were actually teaching the church, and the church was eating it up that true power is found not through suffering, but eliminating suffering and pain from your life.

And Paul says, that is not the way of Jesus.

He flips it all on its head and says, no, no, the Christian life, following Jesus, is actually experiencing God's grace and power in your suffering and in your trials and in your hardships and in your weakness.

And again, he's not talking about any power in general.

He's talking about the power of Jesus Christ, the power that we saw as he suffered and died on the cross, the power that he revealed as he rose from the dead.

Paul says, that's the kind of power that I'm talking about.

Not only that, but Paul could look back on his own life and he could look at all that he went through.

And guys, I've already said this, he's gone through a lot.

And now he can look back and say, Yeah, God sustained me there.

I experienced his power there.

Yep, and he sustained me there and he gave me grace there.

I was kicked out of that town and he helped me.

Now, let me just be clear.

Paul is not saying that, you know, weakness is power.

Paul is not saying that, oh, I love it.

I love when someone slaps me.

I love it.

He's not saying that, okay?

He's saying that his weakness and his suffering somehow, somehow became a door for him and for others to experience the grace and power of God.

And so I think about it this way: this is like spiritual math.

Paul says, Hey, my weakness and my thorn plus God's grace and power equals real strength.

Weakness, thorn, grace, power, real strength.

See, Paul believed, and we should too, that he was most powerful when he relied less on himself and less on his intelligence and less on his experience and more on the grace and power of God.

And you guys know this.

If you've been around church, you know this.

This is this is a storyline of the Bible.

From beginning to end, Abraham, God comes to Abraham and says, I'm gonna make you into a great nation, I'm gonna bless you.

And Abraham says, Whoa, not me, God.

And God says, You're the man.

Get on it.

And the Hebrew nation is birthed through Abraham.

A little while later, God says, Hey Moses, I need you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to set my people free and you're gonna see my power.

And Moses says, I got a stuttering problem.

I cannot do that, God.

And God says, Oh, that's okay.

I know you can't do that, but I'm gonna work through you, and all of Egypt is gonna see my power through you.

And Moses says, Okay.

Esther, Queen Esther, was terrified to go unannounced to King Xerxes as her people were about to get eliminated.

And so she asks the people of God, hey, pray for me, fast for me, because if I go in there and if God's not with me, I am dead.

And that's exactly what does not happen.

She goes in the room and her husband says, Oh, okay.

And God used her for such a time as this.

Of course, David, the last example, there's hundreds more.

King David, what a wild story, right?

Um, the prophet comes and says, Hey, Jesse, where are all your sons?

Brings out all his sons.

He doesn't even bring out his youngest son.

How terrible of a dad is that?

And Samuel goes, Yeah, God's not gonna bless any of these guys, and they all look good.

And Samuel's like, Oh, that dude's studly, that must be the king.

Nope, God says, Nope, nope, nope.

And so he says, Hey, Jesse, you have another son?

And Jesse's like, Oh, yeah, I got this scrub of a son out in the shepherd fields.

And he goes, Grab him.

He comes, and Samuel, God says, That's my man.

That's my man.

And that story is all over the Bible.

Even Paul, when he wrote his first letter to the Corinthian church, listen to what he said.

He said, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are wise, so that no one may boast before him.

And so Paul delighted in weakness and suffering, not because he enjoyed it, but because they all revealed the goodness, the grace, and the power of God most clearly in his life.

And so, what I've wrote down here for your notes is God's power often shines brightest, and I picked this word clear uh carefully, through surrendered weakness, through giving our weaknesses to God, for giving our pain and our suffering and our trauma to God, to surrendering it to him.

I was thinking about, man, we like like there's got to be some great examples of this, and there are, and there's a bunch, but I'm older, so I was thinking about uh Chuck Colson.

If you know Charles Colson, if you're under 40, look him up.

Um, but uh he went to prison in uh in uh 1974 and served prison time for his part, if you if you know what the Watergate scandal was.

But it was in prison where he renews his faith and he meets Jesus in a new way, and as he leaves prison, he he feels like this calling to mobilize a Christian church to minister to prisoners.

And so in 1976, he founded what was called and what's still called prison fellowship, which to my knowledge is still the largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, um, their families and former prisoners, and also working to advocate for criminal justice for reform.

So I remember back in 2012 he passed away, but an incredible legacy.

By the way, if you want another book recommendation, I'd love to give those.

Years ago, I read one of his classics uh called Loving God.

Loving God.

And it was, it might be in my top 10 book.

Um, you can, I'm sure you can find it at the Goodwill for like a dollar.

Anyway, here's what he said.

I love this.

He says the great paradox of my life is that every time I walk into a prison and see the faces of men and women who have been transformed by the power of the living God, I realize that the thing God has chosen to use in my life is none of the successes or achievements or degrees or awards, honors, or cases I won before the Supreme Court.

That's not what God is using in my life.

What God is using in my life to touch the lives of literally thousands of other people is the fact that I was a convict and went to prison.

That was my great defeat.

The only thing in my life I didn't succeed in.

Wow.

And so again, I'm not God.

I don't know what he's trying to do in your life.

But could something like this be part of your story too?

So I want you to think about your thorn, whatever that might be, or your trauma, or your pain, or the struggle, or the hardship.

And again, I can't be sure, but I wonder, I just wonder if it's time today to stop resisting what God has chosen to remain.

Maybe today is a day that you surrender it to God and you ask him to give you the grace and the power to live with it.

Maybe today is a day where you ask him, would you give me a ministry because of this?

Maybe the one thing that you're praying for God to remove is the one thing that you need most to experience his grace and power.

And here's what I found that sometimes God's greatest answer to our prayers isn't removing our weakness or our pain or our suffering or our trials, but meeting us right in it with his grace.

I mean, how does this not hit home for us in so many ways?

I mean, I don't know about you, I don't know your life, I know mine.

I have all kinds of weaknesses.

I have all kinds of struggles.

Just ask my family, ask anyone I work with.

Like I worry all about all kinds of things.

I worry, for example, about being judged for not having like a perfect pastor family in a marriage or kids that all want to be worship leaders and pastors.

They do not.

When I read the news of another pastor failing, I don't go, oh, he got what he deserved.

All I do is look at my own heart and I go, gosh Lord, protect me from messing up my own life and ministry and marriage.

Like I am fully aware that I don't have what it takes, or the power, or the strength, or the intelligence, no matter how many degrees I have, to lead our family or our church well through everything that's coming, or against the enemy of our souls that wants nothing more than destroy me and this church.

At the same time, I'm very well aware that God reminds me and shows me that through my own weaknesses, through my own failures, through those very feelings, he's often revealing his grace and his power in my own weakness.

And so, like Paul, I have no idea what tomorrow may bring.

I have no idea how I'll respond.

But here's what I do every day I choose to trust him today.

Today I choose faith and obedience.

Today I receive God's grace.

And today I say, Holy Spirit, help me to walk in your power today.

And Paul got that.

May we get that too.

May we be a people, may we be a church that embraces weakness, that embraces our trauma and our failures, not because we're weird, but because we believe that when we are weak, God is strong.

That when we don't have it, He has it.

Then when we don't know what to do, He knows what to do.

Then when we're at the end of our rope, that's right where God shows up.

Do you want that today, church?

I certainly do.

Let's pray together.

I've been praying all week and just feeling like today is a day for people to come to faith.

So I'm gonna pray into that.

If you're not yet a follower of Jesus, if God is speaking to your heart, if these words are ringing true in your soul, I'm just gonna invite you.

I'm not gonna force you, I'm just gonna invite you to share a prayer, to repeat a prayer that's similar to what I did when I prayed when I was 17 years old.

We're not gonna embarrass you.

You can just pray this prayer right in your heart, right where you're at, to say, Lord Jesus, here I am.

I'm a mess.

I don't have the answers.

I confess my sin to you.

I turn away from it, I repent of it, and I ask you, Jesus, right now to be my Lord, my master, and my savior.

I give you my heart.

Take it, forgive me, change me.

Help me to be the person that I that not only I want to be, but the person that you want me to be.

And Father, help me right now to find strength and weakness, to find your grace, and to experience your power even in my brokenness.

I am yours.

With all of our heads bowed, with all of our eyes closed, if you prayed that prayer, can you just slip up your hand so I could pray for you one more time?

Awesome, I see your hands.

Great.

Anyone over here?

I see yours.

Awesome.

You can put your hands down.

I'm gonna pray for you.

Father, for those men and women who said yes to Jesus, Holy Spirit, would you come upon them in power right now?

Would you give them everything they need for a life of godliness, God?

Would you draw near to them in their struggles, in their pain, in their trauma?

God, would you be a very real and near God to them?

Jesus, forgive them.

Jesus, cleanse them.

Holy Spirit, empower them now to live for you.

In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of the Spirit, we pray.

And all God's people said, Amen.

Hey church, what do we do when lots of people come to faith?

We celebrate that, we honor that, we're thankful for that.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

Hey, if you raise your hand, this is the first time you would say, Man, I'm a I became a Christian.

Like I mean it.

A couple quick things.

I want to encourage you to come up for prayer at the end of the service.

We also have a free gift for you on your way out at our Orange Tent called the Hub.

We want to give you a Bible that's just for you.

I want to encourage you to start reading that in the New Testament.

Start on what's called the Gospel of Matthew and just keep reading.

Read one chapter a day.

And then lastly, your next act of obedience is to get baptized.

Baptism is really the entrance, the membership into the life of the church.

And in a couple weeks, we're going to have baptisms right here.

You can sign up on the connection card, sign up by the hub, and we will get you in the waters of baptism and explain that for you.

Alright, would you just grab those communion cups as the band comes up and it's going to lead us in a second?

I want you to hold that in your hand.

And here's what I want you to do.

As you look at that little piece of bread and that cup of juice, I want you to consider everything Jesus did for you and everything He is.

See, the good news is that Jesus, just like Paul, prayed three times for the cup of suffering to pass.

He prayed and he begged God for another way other than the cross.

But God said no to his son because he loved the world too much to say yes.

And Jesus went to the cross where he suffered and died for you.

But the story was not over.

After three days, he rose from the grave, defeating sin, Satan, and death once and for all.

Through the prayer of Jesus, that God answered differently than he wanted, through the thorn of the cross, you and I can now receive forgiveness and be welcomed into the family of God.

Through the blood of Jesus, you can experience his grace and walk in his power even in your pain and your suffering and your thorn and your weakness.

And we want to stay connected.

So don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, and that way you'll be notified the moment we have new content go live.

And if you'd like more resources or to donate to our ministry, just simply go to new north.church.

Thanks again for joining us.

God bless you, and we'll see you right here next time.