My power finds its full expression through your weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9 (TPT)

Strength and Power – Weaker/Stronger Series – Part 3

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2

“The extraordinary level of the revelations I’ve received is no reason for anyone to exalt me. For this is why a thorn in my flesh was given to me, the Adversary’s messenger sent to harass me, keeping me from becoming arrogant. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to relieve me of this. But he answered me, “My grace is always more than enough for you, and my power finds its full expression through your weakness.” 2 Cor 12:7-9 (TPT).

Paul said that he had a thorn in his flesh (other versions say “side”), to keep him from being arrogant.

There're a couple of ways you can read this:

1) Paul was so arrogant and sure of himself that he needed an excuse for his weaknesses.
2) Paul was trying to communicate a universal truth, telling a story about himself to help people identify the same situation in their own lives.

Either way, Paul had a “thorn in his flesh” – a weakness, a troublesome trait that brought him pain and agitation, and that exemplified his humanity. And he couldn’t seem to rid himself of it. Did the Devil give it to him? The Adversary’s messenger?

He’s not trying to make a point about his talents or the bestower of his “thorn.” Paul's focus is that it is his weaknesses that make room for God’s power, not his successes, achievements, wisdom, and knowledge.

It’s a counterintuitive message of power and strength.

We usually would think that these two things are found in muscle mass, intelligence, winning, qualification, capability, capacity, mastery, domination… at the top of whatever ladder we’re climbing.

But Paul asks us to think again: strength and power are not found at the top.
They’re found at the bottom. In weakness, in grace, in humility.

Paul's greatness was not in his many revelations, his eloquent speeches, or his influence far and wide. He found strength in the most unusual place, where no one would have guessed, least of all him.

Strength and power are not things we can achieve, or engineer out of our own willpower. No. Strength and power generally come through things that happen to us. They’re fostered by our response to a situation that opens up the opportunity for them.

As Fr. Richard Rohr would say, it’s the idea that one must go down before they come up.

Some call this principle the “spirituality of imperfection,” or “the way of the wound.” The way up, is the way down. Deep down into your darkest histories and moments and weaknesses. Not to indulge them, or to desecrate yourself with them, but to let the light in.

If you can learn to sit with your inadequacies and infirmities, uncertainties and sins, your weaknesses and your failings, and still love? And still, hope? And still, have faith? Well, there is no greater strength or power found than in that place of grace and freedom.

To know yourself, to be known fully and to find joy in the midst of it all. No image to uphold, no self-projection to maintain.

Thorns in flesh would be much less “taboo” if we all agreed that we all have them. What gives them more power, and more room to fester is our shame and our desperate attempts to hide them away.

True strength is found in the admission of these thorns, and in the way we tenderly care for ours, and each other's, wounds.

Go to Part 4 – Yet Stronger »

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