Message Highlights

• Paul pleaded with God three times to take away his thorn in the flesh, and God said no. It was no, with a promise: “My grace is sufficient for you.”
• God’s power reaches its full measure in our weakness, so Paul chose to boast about his weaknesses instead of hiding them.
• When God hasn’t removed something, we can trust Him with it and receive it as a gift with a purpose and a promise, even when the purpose isn’t clear yet.

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Conversation Starters

• What’s something small you’ve wanted to change for a long time that just hasn’t changed? (A commute, a house project, a habit you keep meaning to start.)
• Who’s someone you’ve watched handle a hard, ongoing situation well? What did you notice about them?

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Core Discussion Questions

Connection Question: What stood out to you from this week’s message about Paul’s thorn and God’s answer to his prayer?

Context Question: Where have you heard the phrase “thorn in the flesh” or the words “My grace is sufficient for you” before, and what did you understand them to mean?

Clarity Question: How did this week’s message clarify or change the way you think about prayers God answers with “Not yet” or “No”?

Application Question: Where in your life right now do you most need to hear God’s promise, “My grace is sufficient for you”? How could this group pray for you in it this week?

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Additional Questions (Optional)

• Some of us have been told that a struggle that won’t go away means we don’t have enough faith. How does Paul’s story answer that?
• Paul says he will boast about his weaknesses. What would that look like in an ordinary week, at work or at home?
• Where are you most likely to hide weakness from other people, including the people in this group?

Exploring the Scripture

Main Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7–10

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Paul wrote 2 Corinthians around AD 55 or 56 to the church he had planted in Corinth (Acts 18:1–11). By then the relationship was strained. Visiting teachers, whom Paul sarcastically calls “super-apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5), questioned his authority. They were impressive speakers with strong credentials and remarkable spiritual experiences, and next to them Paul looked weak.

In chapters 10 through 13, Paul answers them by reluctantly playing their game. He “boasts,” and he says outright that he’s speaking like a fool to do it (2 Corinthians 11:16–21). But his list of credentials is beatings, shipwrecks, hunger, sleepless nights, and daily pressure over the churches (2 Corinthians 11:23–28), and it ends with him escaping Damascus by being lowered over a wall in a basket (2 Corinthians 11:32–33). Then he describes a vision from fourteen years earlier, when he was caught up into paradise, and he tells it about himself in the third person (2 Corinthians 12:1–6).

Right after his most extraordinary experience comes the thorn. Paul never tells us what it was. Suggestions over the centuries have included an eye condition, chronic illness, and ongoing opposition, and some connect it to the illness he mentions in Galatians 4:13–15, but we don’t know. What Paul does tell us is its purpose: to keep him from exalting himself. He calls it “a messenger of Satan,” and as in the opening chapters of Job (Job 1:12; Job 2:6), Satan acts only within limits God sets, toward a purpose God owns.

God’s answer in verse 9 is the passage’s center. He doesn’t remove the thorn. He promises grace that is enough and power that reaches its full measure in weakness. This is the pattern of the cross: Jesus “was crucified in weakness, but he lives by the power of God” (2 Corinthians 13:4). Paul isn’t describing a way to feel better about hardship. He is describing how God works, and it looks the same in Paul’s life as it did at Calvary.

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Questions for Study

1. Read 2 Corinthians 11:23–33. Why do you think Paul ends his list of hardships with being lowered over a wall in a basket? What does that tell you about what he considered worth boasting about?
2. Paul’s vision of paradise (12:1–6) and his thorn (12:7) sit side by side. What does that tell you about how God cares for the people He uses?
3. Compare 2 Corinthians 12:7 with Job 1:12 and Job 2:6. In both, Satan acts, but not without limits. What do these passages show you about God’s authority over suffering?
4. Read Matthew 26:39–44. Jesus also prayed three times for something to be taken away. How does His prayer in Gethsemane shape the way you read Paul’s three pleadings?
5. Read 2 Corinthians 13:4. How does the cross show what God means by “power is perfected in weakness”?
6. What does God’s answer in 12:9 reveal about His character? What does He promise Paul, and what does He not promise?
7. Is there something in your life you’ve asked God to remove where He may be offering you grace to carry it instead? What would it take for you to receive that grace?

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Deeper Discussion Questions

1. “If you had more faith, you’d be healed.” Where have you heard some version of that? How does Paul’s experience answer it, and how would you respond to someone who believes it?
2. God can and does remove hardships, and He also sometimes says no. How do you keep asking Him boldly without treating a no as proof that He doesn’t care?
3. Paul asked three times, and so did Jesus. What does that tell you about whether it’s okay to keep bringing the same request to God?
4. The message pointed out that Paul’s experience isn’t “the American Dream.” Where has that dream shaped what you expect God to do for you?
5. Where are you tempted to separate God from what He’s allowed in your life?
6. How is receiving something as a gift from God different from pretending it doesn’t hurt? How is it different from simply giving up?
7. People kept asking why God didn’t just fix things for Paul. What makes it hard for you to let others see what you’re carrying?

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Living It Out

1. At home, with God: Write down one ongoing situation you’ve been asking God to change. Tell Him honestly what you want, and then ask Him for the grace to carry it today.
2. At work or school: Notice where you cover up a limitation to look capable. Choose one conversation this week where you can be honest about it, and trust God with how it goes.
3. In your family or friendships: If someone close to you is carrying something that isn’t going away, ask them how you can pray for them, and then pray for them that week.
4. With your group: Tell one person in your group, or one trusted friend, what your thorn is. Ask them to check in with you before next week’s message.

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Prayer Focus

Most of us are carrying something we've asked God to remove. Ask God to make His grace enough in the place where it hasn't felt like enough yet. Thank Him for the work He's doing in the circumstance you'd change if you could. Ask Him to show His strength through your weakness this week in a way the people around you can see.

Close by reading 2 Corinthians 12:9–10.

We are in part two of a series called Stuck. And if you found yourself in those places in life where you just literally feel stuck. I was talking to somebody yesterday and they were talking about their life and they were describing something. And I was like, listen, it’s great. We’re right in the middle of a series and it’s called Stuck. Shameless plug. But maybe you’ve walked in today, maybe this is your first time here and if it is, we’re in part two of a series talking about those moments in life when you want to change your circumstances, you wanna change your situation, you want to do something different. And no matter what you try and do, no matter what you plan to do, there’s nothing that you can do. Maybe it’s in your finances, maybe it’s your job, maybe it’s your health and the doctor’s giving you a report and maybe it’s not life threatening or maybe it is life threatening. But whatever it is, it’s not going to change. And what do you do when there’s nothing that you can do? Hey, today I wanna talk with you about a passage in scripture, but it’s really a truth in scripture and it’s honestly one of my favorite truths and I think it’s one of the most valuable truths that you find throughout the word of God.

But over the years as I’ve spent time pastoring and I’ve spent time with people, I’ve gotten the opportunity to sit across from a table, across from a desk, over a cup of coffee with some remarkable people who have faced extraordinary difficulty. I mean, and some of you, some of you are in this room. Like you’ve walked through pain and you’ve walked through difficulty. Maybe it’s in their family, maybe it’s with a child, maybe it’s their marriage. It’s in their finances and they don’t know how they’re gonna change it or what they’re gonna do or if it’s in some other area of life, maybe it’s your health. But I’ve seen people, throughout the years that I’ve been in ministry and I’ve seen people walk through extraordinary difficulty and they get on the other side and they say that the way that they made it through the difficulty, the way that they got to the other side, the way that they figured out how to survive it, was it the best thing that they could do? Was to picture what they were going through, was literally brought into their lives by the hand of God. And because they viewed it that way, and when I’ve heard them describe it, because they viewed it that their difficulty, their adversity, their pain, their sorrow, whatever it was came by the hands of God, they decided not to resist it. They decided not to fight it. They decided to receive it as God doing a work in their lives. And they learned. They learned that adversity and this adversity was coming from the hand of God who say, Anthony, I don’t know that I’m there. Hey, I get that. It’s a hard thing to see and to be honest with you. Sometimes we don’t see it until we look back on life. Sometimes we don’t see it until it’s in the rear view mirror that we see the hand of God working in our life, doing incredible things in our life. And we go, look, look at what God was doing back here behind me. God’s hand was all over me. But in that moment, when it seems like life is falling apart, when it seems like your family isn’t gonna be able to be repaired, when it seems like your finances are never gonna recover, when it seems like your health is never gonna get to a stable place. How do you have confidence that what you’re walking through is from the hand of God?

So a few years ago, I went through a season of burnout. And I say it’s probably the hardest or most difficult part of my life. And every time I say it, I always say, why did I say probably? Because it just was. When I say I went through burnout, I don’t mean I was tired and exhausted and like I needed a little bit of a break. I needed a vacation. I mean, I got to the place where I was completely depleted. I was withdrawing from everyone. I couldn’t think the same. I couldn’t communicate the same. And it seemed like pieces of me and who I was were literally just falling apart. And I got to the place where I was so numb that I couldn’t receive love and I couldn’t demonstrate love. Like it just, it seemed like an abstract that I just, I couldn’t do. Probably the hardest part for me was when I heard it from my family. My wife and my daughter said that I was, I was losing myself, that I was losing my personality. And you may be like, well, Pastor Anthony, I know your personality and it’s not that great. It’s nothing to really lose. You don’t have to laugh at all my jokes, okay? But I literally thought and it felt like I was losing me. And when you’re walking through pain, you’re walking through difficulty. It’s like, sometimes you can shoulder it. And then when the people around you notice and you still don’t have a solution. And when the people around you that notice are the ones that depend on you and you really don’t have a solution, it feels like the walls are just caving in. And I remember wondering, is this who I am now? And is this who I’m always gonna be? Like am I ever gonna go back to being who I was before? I’m gonna be honest with you, I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t even know what kind of help I needed. And maybe you’re looking at me and you’re like, “Anthony, you’re a high energy person. You probably just wore yourself out. You didn’t know how to delegate. You didn’t know how to rely on other people.” Not all of that’s really true. Some of it came down to some medical stuff that we had to figure out for me.

But I can tell you this, it was painful. It was humiliating. If there’s no other word, it was literally just humiliating. And it was debilitating. And it was like I was just caving in. And I felt like there was nothing I could do. And everything I tried to do, and everything I worked towards, and all the ideas and the advice that I got from other people, and all the stuff I tried to implement into my life. Like I was ready to take advice from anyone. And everything that everyone told me to do, none of it was working.

So what do you do when there’s nothing you can do? When you don’t feel like there’s a fix, when you don’t feel like there’s a way out, when you don’t feel like there’s a way forward, and with where you are and what you’re going through, it is what it is, and it looks like it’s just gonna stay that way. You look into the future and you can’t even predict where you’re gonna end up and what it’s gonna look like.

Last week we talked about how, in the midst of stuck circumstances, we start telling ourselves some lies. And we say them all the time, we say, well, you know, I’m never gonna be happy again, because what I’m going through is so difficult, it’s so painful, it’s so debilitating and humiliating, I’m never gonna be happy again. Then we start saying, well, you know, nothing good could ever come from this. We start looking at our circumstances, we start looking at how everything is falling out, and we start saying, nothing good could ever come to this, and then we convince ourselves there’s no point in continuing on. And since life is dark and since things aren’t going well, and since things can’t be changed, and since God isn’t answering my prayer, oftentimes what we do is we conclude that God doesn’t care about us, that he’s not concerned about our lives, that somehow he is either apathetic or angry with us, and we find ourselves in a greater place of despair.

But can I tell you something? To equate difficult circumstances with a lack of God’s love or care is a mistake. Difficult circumstances don’t mean that God doesn’t love you, that his presence isn’t with you, or that he doesn’t care about you. No, to conclude that is a mistake.

And part of that mistake is because of our Western way of thinking. I mean, we live in a world where we just assume that everything ought to work out, that every story ought to have a happy ending, that every conclusion ought to bring some kind of harmony. But I’m gonna be honest, here’s the thing that helped me realize that that is a facade, that it’s not necessarily true. Because when I open up the word of God and I start reading about the people who brought us the story of Jesus, when I start reading about the people that God used to pen his word through his inspiration, through his Holy Spirit, I start seeing people whose lives, whose lives were entrenched with pain and sorrow and difficulty. I mean, they faced all kinds of things, but they continued to believe, they continued to steadily move forward in their faith. They concluded that they could have confidence in God in who he is and what he did. And here’s the important part, they weren’t put off by adversity or by the seeming absence of God. Instead, it fueled them to make sure that the gospel made it out of their culture and into our culture.

So the idea that everything has to work out the way that we want, the idea that everything has to somehow harmonize with the stories of life that excite us or give us hope and peace. It’s not the way that God always works.

And one of the best examples of this is the Apostle Paul. And the reason that he’s one of the best examples is because Paul never met the pre-crucified Jesus. I mean, he was not in the ministry of Jesus before his crucifixion, before he was put in the tomb or even after he rose again. He wasn’t one of the 12 disciples. In fact, he didn’t come to faith until after the crucifixion, after the resurrection and after the ascension of Jesus. And in fact, Paul, when we start reading about him, he steps onto the pages of history as a Christian hater, as a Christian persecutor called Saul of Tarsus. And he gets permission from the government to go and arrest Christians, torture them into blaspheming the name of Jesus or even revealing where other Christians, other believers are actually hiding. And he actually thought he was doing God’s work, that he was doing somehow God’s will. And he thought somehow in what he was doing, like he was being a good follower of God, even though he was literally persecuting believers and persecuting Christians. And Paul, who was a Jesus hater, becomes a Jesus follower. It becomes the greatest evangelist of his time. He’s planting churches all throughout the major Greek cities and he’s seeing God use him in an incredible way. You don’t know about the apostle Paul and how God used him in his journeys and where he planted churches and how he poured into churches. It’s an incredible, incredible account. And you ought to study it, you ought to read it.

But it was during that time when God is using Paul in an incredible way to plant churches, to do his will, to do what God called Paul to do.

Paul finds that he has some difficulty. There was some kind of an ailment. The Bible says that he was stricken with something, some kind of an ailment. And we don’t know exactly what it was. But we know it wasn’t going away. We know it was a hindrance to what he believed God had called him to do. It was humiliating. It was debilitating. It was hard. There have been a lot of people that read into what Paul’s life was and they try and figure out like what was this ailment and what was it that stopped Paul from being able to accomplish what he felt like God wanted him to do. And I love this, scripture doesn’t tell us. And I love that scripture doesn’t tell us because if it did tell us, we would fixate on whatever Paul was going through and not the solution that the apostle Paul points us to. So imagine the apostle Paul, right? The Damascus road experience, the bright light comes out, God speaks. Why are you persecuting me? He’s converted in that moment. He gives his life to Jesus. And then this illness, this ailment, this thing keeps Paul from accomplishing the very thing that he felt like God had called him to do to go change the world.

And here’s what we’re gonna see today. In his turmoil and in his wrestling with God, Paul learned something valuable, a key insight for the rest of us who find ourselves, will find ourselves in moments of time in difficulty in places where we feel stuck.

So 2 Corinthians chapter number 12 verse seven says this, “Because of the surpassing greatness of revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me.” I wanna pause right there because there’s a couple of phrases I wanna explain for us. This little phrase, “For this reason,” it means in order that. It’s a Greek phrase that’s called a purpose statement. And Paul is telling us, “Hey, there was a purpose behind what God was doing. There was a purpose behind what was happening to him.” He says, “For this reason or in order that.” And there’s another word I want you to see. There’s the Greek word, but we see it given. This is the most common word for a positive gift. And if you know the verse that we’re actually gonna be looking at today and breaking apart today, you know that what Paul is walking through, if you haven’t already picked it up in my description, it’s not a positive thing. But there’s this word that he was given, this positive word, he was given something. And it’s not a curse, it’s not something bad, it’s not for his punishment. There’s a purpose that he was given this thing and it’s to keep him from becoming conceited. The Bible says, “I was given.” Now look at the rest of it. What was he given? A thorn. That doesn’t seem like the kind of gift that I want. Doesn’t seem like the kind of gift that you want. “He was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself.” Now notice the contrast, this word given and this word thorn, it’s negative. The word thorn simply means a constant irritating problem. This word torment literally means like for someone to beat you with their fists over and over and over again.

Now with all these definitions, let me kind of paraphrase the entire verse and I want you to see this with some definitions. It would sound something like this. “To keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn that kept beating me up day after day.”

And he calls it a messenger of Satan. Now a lot of translators and commentators and theologians have wrestled with this phrase, a messenger of Satan. And some people think it’s a figure of speech. Like it really hurt like the devil. I lean towards believing it was actually Satan literally involved with what Paul was going through and God was using the work of Satan for his own purpose. And so what could Paul have been going through for it to be that bad? Some people think it was epilepsy. There are other people that think it was severe depression and honestly, if you start reading into the book of Acts, there was a lot of things that believers were going through and there’s a lot of reason to be depressed. Some people thought it was headaches and some people took the fact that Paul later on writes about his eye trouble to think that it was his eye trouble.

But whatever it was that Paul was going through, whatever the pain, whatever the difficulty, the truth is is we don’t know exactly what it was, but what we do know is it was painful. It was humiliating. It was debilitating. And here’s the part I love. Paul tells us what he did once he realized that what he was feeling, what he was going through, whatever the circumstances were, once he realized they weren’t going away, he tells us exactly what he did and it’s exactly what you and I ought to do.

Look at verse number eight, concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. This is Paul praying. Now this isn’t Paul like adding it to his prayer list. This isn’t Paul like, you know, I’m gonna pray three times. I’ve heard so many believers come to me and they’re like, well, if Paul prayed three times, then I can pray three times and God has to answer me on the third time. No, he doesn’t. He’s God, he can do what he wants to. So we get all caught up on this. And while we’re at it, this isn’t like Paul praying the way that you and I pray. Like when we pray, it’s like over our breakfast and it’s like, okay, Lord, by the way, this thing I don’t like in my life, would you take it away? And we pray that on Monday and by Wednesday, we’re ready for a result from the Lord. No, this is different than that. This is Paul begging, pleading with God. And this tells us that there were probably three distinct seasons when this thorn became so unbearable that Paul fell on his knees and said, God, I can’t keep doing what you’ve called me to do if you don’t remove this. God, I can’t go on. I can’t stand in front of people. I can’t write. I can’t be faithful. I can’t go on unless you take this from me.

I want you to catch this because this is where we struggle. Paul prays the first time. You know what he hears? Nothing. And what most commentators and theologians believe is that Paul went as far as he possibly could. And when he fell down and he could not go any further because this thing was tormenting him and beating on him and keeping him from doing the will of God and he couldn’t take it anymore. Then he prayed and said, God, would you take this thing from me? And he hears nothing. And eventually Paul continues forward and keeps doing what God called him to do. And after he goes and he can’t do it anymore, and he eventually falls and he’s not able to continue anymore at all. He prays a second time. What does he hear? Nothing.

See, here’s the interesting thing. Some of you have been told that the reason that you’re not getting better, the reason that your life isn’t changing, the reason that things aren’t working out the way that you want them to is because you don’t have enough faith. There are some preachers that are gonna preach that and they’re gonna be like, listen, the reason why you don’t have in your life what you want in your life, the reason you don’t have the success, the reason you don’t have the health, the reason that you don’t have all the things that you’ve always hoped for and wished for and wanted, the reason you don’t have those is because you don’t have enough faith. There’s a lot of reasons why I believe that’s not true. But hey, one of the most practical reasons is I would believe and I would assume that the Apostle Paul had more faith than all of us in this room. And God still doesn’t do it in his life. The Apostle Paul who had more faith, who by far was a better believer and a better Christian than I am, a better follower of Jesus than I am, and God says, no, I’m not gonna do that thing in your life. In fact, the first two times that you ask for it, I’m not even gonna answer. And there’s a lot of people that they preach this idea that if you just have enough faith and if you just do enough, that somehow God will give you the thing that you’ve always wanted and here’s where the tag always gets you, they’ll go, and you know what? And if you want more faith, then you need to step out and do something for God and that’s where the hook is. And let me just tell you right now, that’s bad theology. But listen to me, we do the same thing, we just do it a different way. We go, oh Lord, I want this thing and so God, I’m gonna believe for you to do this thing in my life because I really want you to do this thing in my life and we try and faith God into doing things that we want him to do for us. Listen to me, faith in God is trusting him, his way, his plan, and his work in our life. It’s not believing that I want something so bad that I speak it into reality and that somehow God then has to do this thing for me because I’ve had enough faith. There’s a lot of people wishing for their best day and wishing for their thing and they say, well, you know what? I’m just gonna really believe it and if I really believe it, it’ll all happen for me. Listen, you can’t faith upon a star, you can wish upon a star, but at the end of the day, faith and Jiminy Cricket theology are not the same thing. And too often what we do is we go, if I just really believe it, God will do it for me.

And the apostle Paul didn’t make that mistake. The apostle Paul pleaded with God and begged God and asked God to do for him, but Paul, a man of extraordinary faith, he pled with God and begged God and God still didn’t answer twice.

And look what God does when he actually answers. Look at number nine. And he said unto me, stop right there, because for some of you, this will be a major breakthrough. Come on, for some of you, I actually know what you’re walking through and I know what you’re walking through is painful. And I know what you’re walking through is humiliating and debilitating. And I know how you just feel like the walls of your life are just caving in. And for some of you, hey, and God said to me, if God would just speak into your life, you would just be like, this is the greatest breakthrough, but I don’t want you to miss what happens. And what happened here to Paul? The first time Paul asked, he heard nothing. The second time he asked, he heard nothing. And finally, during this third season of begging God, he finally hears from God and hears what he gets from God. Here’s the answer. My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Hey, what God said to Paul is exactly what some of us need to hear today. Hey, the answer is no. I’m not gonna remove this from your life, but I am gonna give you strength and I am gonna give you grace to press on even though this isn’t going the way that you want it to go.

So now Paul has four things. He’s got four things. He’s got one to add to his list. Hey, what he’s going through is painful. What he’s going through is humiliating. It’s debilitating. And now what Paul is going through is permanent. This phrase is perfected. It means my power reaches its full measure in your weakness. And God is saying, my grace is sufficient for you. And my power reaches its full measure in your weakness. It’s as if God said to Paul, I’m gonna show off my power through you because of your weakness.

And I want you to catch this. God loves Paul. Hey, if God’s brought something into your life right now and you’re like, it’s painful, it’s humiliating, it’s debilitating, and Pastor Anthony, you don’t even know it. It’s permanent in my life and I haven’t even told anyone. Hey, God still loves you. He’s not angry or apathetic with you. Listen to me. The chastening of God comes with the conviction of God. And if God is chastening you, he is going to chasten you to bring you back to himself, not to pay you back for the things that you’ve done. This all too often, God has brought things into my life that he’s wanted me to walk through and he wasn’t chastening me. And the consequences of what he brought into my life were rough. God loves Paul. He hasn’t forgotten about Paul. Paul is still in the center of God’s will.

But here’s God’s answer to Paul. No, no, I’m not gonna remove this. But this no comes with a promise. So what’s the promise? Because I need that promise right now. I’m walking through pain, I’m walking through difficulty, and I would just love a promise from God in my pain, in my stuck moment. What’s the promise? Here’s the promise. My grace is sufficient for you. That’s his promise. That whatever he brings into your life, whatever you walk through, whatever he takes you through, whatever you feel like comes into your life by the hand of God, that may be adversity and it may be painful and humiliating and debilitating and it may just rock your world. And you don’t know which way is up and you don’t know what to do. Listen, the promise is still the same. My grace is sufficient for you. His grace will be sufficient for you.

The apostle Paul writes next. It comes from a heart that’s in tune with the will of God where he goes, okay, God, if you’ve brought this into my life and this is what you want from my life and your grace is gonna be sufficient for me, then here is Paul’s response and this has got to be our response. Look at what he says. Most gladly therefore, because your grace is sufficient, because your power is perfected in weakness, most gladly therefore I will rather boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. And here’s another purpose statement. So that Christ’s power may rest, may dwell in me. And Paul is saying, since this isn’t going away, since this is going to keep getting in my way, since people are gonna keep asking me, Paul, you’re God’s man and God’s using you in incredible ways and look at how God is doing through you and look at all the churches being planted, look at the letters that you’re writing and look at the people that are following after Jesus because of you. God, Paul, why won’t God take this out of your life? Since people are gonna ask that, here’s what I’m gonna do. Paul says, I’m gonna glory in it. I’m gonna boast in it. I’m going to own it. I’m going to praise God for it.

And you might be thinking, how do I do that? You don’t know what I’m walking through, Anthony. You don’t know what I’m feeling. You don’t know my pain. You don’t know my sorrow. You don’t know my difficulty. You’re right for some of you, I do. For others of you, I might not know at all. And I don’t say it in light of your pain. And I don’t say it because your pain or your difficulty or your stuck moment isn’t heavy. I say it because the promise is so true. My grace is sufficient for you. The power is perfected in weakness. We have this thing that we do. We wanna hide from these moments. These moments that God brings into our lives. We wanna hide from them. We wanna pretend like it isn’t happening. We wanna act like everything is okay. We wanna make all the excuses. Paul says, if this is what God has chosen, then I’m gonna embrace it. I’m gonna own it. I’m gonna boast about it. I’m gonna praise God for it. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness. Why? How can Paul do that? Because there’s a purpose. There’s a result. There’s an outcome. So what’s the outcome? Because Anthony, if I knew what the outcome was, then I would be okay. Can I be honest with you? We wanna know the details of the outcome. When God gives us the part that He wants us to know. And what He wants us to know is right in the verse, that the power of Christ may rest, may dwell in me. That’s the outcome.

So what did Paul do when he felt stuck? Accepted it. It becomes the very thing that he praises his heavenly Father for. To the point where he says this, look at the next verse, “Therefore, because of everything we just read, I am well content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecution, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake. For when I’m weak, then I’m strong.”

To which we wanna argue and go, well, that’s not the American way. That’s not how it goes in 2026. “Life should be fair, and it should work out with some harmony, that when my story is done, that it all makes sense.” See, we hold onto these abstract things. That we wanna see a result, and we wanna see the answer, and we wanna see the thing that brings us hope. And we fix our eyes on all of that. Rather than fixing our eyes on Jesus, and walking by faith, and saying, if you said that your grace is sufficient for me, then it’s sufficient for me. And if you said, God, that you’re gonna use it, that I’m gonna trust that you’re gonna use it, and I’m gonna keep my eyes fixed on you, and I’m not gonna look for my life to end in such a way where the harmony works out, where the story is just perfect, and it’s gonna be a picture that everyone can see. I don’t need to look at everyone’s life around me and measure it up to theirs. I’m just gonna trust you.

That’s what Paul does. He just goes, “Okay, God, I’m gonna trust you. So then I’m gonna be okay with it. I’m gonna be well content.” He could have just said content, but he said, “Well content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong.” Well, he’d say, “Well, that’s not what I had planned,” to which Paul would say, and that’s exactly why you’re not experiencing the grace of God in the area where you struggle the most. Because there’s this thing in our heart, and we know it, and it just comes out at different times, where we say, “Lord, whatever you wanna do with me, just that your power would shine through me. Lord, whatever you wanna do in me, as long as people would just see you,” and we say this idea like it’s a fleeting thought, and then it crashes with our reality, and fear drags us backwards. What if we just said, “Lord, whatever you want with my life, whatever you want me to walk through, Lord, I’m gonna be well content.”

And this whole message, it hinges on one phrase that shows up at the very beginning of these verses. It’s in verse number seven, because of the surpassing greatness of revelations, for this reason. Hey, in order to keep me from exalting myself, there was, look at this word, given. This is a positive thing. There was given, this thorn in the flesh. You might be living this right now. You say, “Well, how do I live this thing? I don’t know what the purpose is, but there’s this reason, and God wants to do this thing for a reason, but He’s given me this thing, and I know it’s supposed to be positive, but it really feels negative.” Hey, can I tell you, He’s giving you a gift with a purpose and a promise. We might not always know what the purpose is, but we know what the promise is, that His grace is sufficient.

And so Paul, Paul had to see this as a gift, and not an enemy. You and I, we have to see this work of God that enters our lives sometimes as a gift, and not an enemy. There’s something really important. You gotta see Paul never separated the Lord from the Lord’s work in his life. See, we get this idea of a loving, heavenly Father who is good and only does good, and then sometimes we see God’s work in our life, and we see it as negative, and we allow these two things to conflict with each other. Listen to me. Your heavenly Father loves you, and He is good, and He only does good, and sometimes the good that He does doesn’t always look good to us. And this is where we struggle. We wanna see everything work out the way that we want it to work out.

But listen to me, accepting the work of God in your life, sometimes it’s lifting up the name of Jesus and worshiping in the midst of some of the most difficult, hard circumstances. I feel like they’re gonna break you. It feels like the walls of your life are just caving in. I’m telling you right now, if somehow you can just believe that God could change your circumstance, but that perhaps He’s chosen not to. And if that’s what you’re walking through right now, and that’s your life right now, listen to me. Trust Him in any way. Keep looking to Him.

See, well, what’s the purpose? Sometimes you won’t see the purpose in this life. Sometimes it doesn’t happen like that. But every once in a while, I get to see in the rear view mirror, how God is working all along.

It personally, in my pain, in my burnout, I had to get to the point where I went, “Okay, God, I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t know why you brought this into my life.” “I don’t know why you brought this pain into my life.” And you’re like, “Well, you know what? You never told yourself the lies that I tell myself.” “Oh, you mean like I’ll never be happy again?” “No good could ever come through this.” There’s no point in continuing. Where do you think that list came from? Hey, I get it. When you start telling yourself those things.

But let me tell you who God is and what God does. Because I’ve spent years counseling people. I spent years traveling and preaching in churches and I don’t travel and preach as much as I used to. And I don’t leave this place and do counseling as much as I used to. I promise you, I’m great with that. Hey, can I tell you what I get to do now? I spend most of my time outside of this place in ministry, pouring into pastors who are broken. Pouring into pastors who are saying, “I’m never gonna be happy again.” I can’t continue on. I feel like the walls of my life are caving in and I get this small little glimpse to see what God was doing. How he was working.

For you, it might be just stepping out and going, “Okay, God, you’ve brought this into my life and I don’t know why you brought it into my life and I don’t know what you’re doing with this in my life. But Lord, I’m gonna just take all my feelings and push them aside and I’m gonna trust you anyway because you’re sovereign and you’re in control and you do good and you only do good. And so God, I’m gonna trust that what you’re doing is good and I know you’ve given me a promise that your grace is sufficient for me and I know you’ve got purpose. So God, I’m gonna trust you anyway.”

Listen, the purpose, you might not see it right now, but you can experience the promise today. His grace is sufficient for you.

And you may need to talk to the Lord today and just go, “God, instead of surviving and instead of struggling, I’m gonna choose, I’m gonna choose to view what you’re doing in my life as a gift with purpose and with a promise. Heavenly Father, you’re so good. Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for your work and what you do and how you do it. Lord, I ask you to have your will in your way in the service I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.”

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