Theme of this mini-series:

The apostle Paul is the New Testament’s version of an “unsinkable Molly Brown.” As was the case for the Titanic’s most famous survivor, Paul simply refused to go down with the ship … literally. Three times Paul was shipwrecked, and he once spent a full day – “a night and a day,” as he puts it – on the open sea. Other problems along the way? Try being stoned, scourged (five times), and being beaten with fists, rods and words. He’d been scored, chased, scandalized and slandered. He’d been the focus of riots and death threats, and after one harrowing, near-death experience, he was snake bitten! His focus, energy, and resilience were nearly frightening. In fact, the only thing that seemed to discourage Paul were the problems in his young churches. To read Paul’s letters to those churches, one might come away with the idea that Paul was continually frustrated, and that his work wasn’t very successful. After all, those early letters were filled with corrections, some of them quite harsh.

But in reality, Paul’s work changed the world. In places like Athens, Ephesus, and Corinth, the once powerful temples and the religion of the Greek gods that so dominated his culture are in ruins. And yet billions have and are reading Paul’s letters, memorizing passages and following the instructions as if Paul was still preaching his passionate message in our culture.

Illustration:

Upon accepting an award, the late Jack Benny once remarked, "I really don't deserve this. But I have arthritis, and I don't deserve that either."

Illustration:

The following are actual responses from comment cards given to the staff members at Bridger Wilderness Area in 1996:

Trails need to be wider so people can walk while holding hands.Trails need to be reconstructed. Please avoid building trails that go uphill.Too many bugs and leeches and spiders and spider webs. Please spray the wilderness to rid the areas of these pests.Please pave the trails so they can be snow-plowed during the winter.Chair lifts need to be in some places so that we can get to wonderful views without having to hike to them.The coyotes made too much noise last night and kept me awake. Please eradicate these annoying animals.A small deer came into my camp and stole my jar of pickles. Is there a way I can get reimbursed?Reflectors need to be placed on trees every 50 feet so people can hike at night with flashlights.Escalators would help on steep uphill sections.A MacDonald's would be nice at the trailhead.The places where trails do not exist are not well marked.Too many rocks in the mountains. (Source: Mike Neifert, Light and Life, February 1997, p. 27)

We’re not fond of pain, or even slight discomfort. We rebel at the suggestion of it, recoil at the sight of it, and reject the suggestion that it might be good for us. But the lessons of life are almost always taught in the classroom of suffering – whether you’re “suffering” through a elementary-school spelling quiz, dealing with the excruciating pain of disease, or the heartbreak of grief.

Scripture:

2 Cor. 12:7-10 To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

1. Pain happens.

From a logical point of view, it would seem that God would reward those who do good with less pain. Certainly it would seem that God would give those in Christian ministry a free pass from pain. After all, missionaries, church planters and pastors work for God! Wouldn’t it be a good idea, when it would be in your power, to take special care of those who work for you?

Paul didn’t get a pass from pain. In fact, as he set about his world planting churches, and becoming the leader of the evangelistic movement among Gentiles, he seemed to endure an incredible amount of pain. His “resume of suffering” appears near this very passage (2 Corinthians 11:23-29), and it includes multiple imprisonments, beatings, floggings, canings, life-threatening experiences, a stoning, shipwrecks, and a “night and a day” floating in the open sea. He hadn’t always had enough food, clothing, sleep, or friends. He’d been chased by bandits, and infuriated religious leaders. He battled temptation and anxiety over his young churches.

And now, there was a “thorn in the flesh.” How bad was this particular pain? It was straight-from-hell bad, if you read the passage closely enough. It was a “messenger from Satan,” sent to torment him.

Perhaps a person going through the excruciating process of cancer treatments could tell us how bad pain can become. Or perhaps it’s one who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Or arthritis. Or multiple sclerosis. Or any number of the stunning array of diseases, disabilities or discouragements that can come our way.

Paul asked God to remove the pain, whatever it might have been. Perhaps Paul explained why it would be a good idea to have the pain removed. He could plant more churches. He could write more letters. He could win more converts, raise more money or mentor more disciples. He could prove the power of God even more with the miracles that were so common in Ephesus, for instance (Acts 19:11-12)

Paul asked again. And again. On three separate occasions Paul pulled out all the stops to ask God for a miracle of his own.

“Please, God.”“Please, God.”“Please, God.”

The pain didn’t go away. Whatever the problem, it apparently stayed with Paul for quite some time, or even the rest of his life.

Jesus knew pain, of course, weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, and over unrepentant Jerusalem. He knew the physical pain of the cross, and the personal pain of betrayal. He had seen rejection and disappointment as surely as you have.

It seems silly to make the case that pain is a part of life. Life starts with a good slap to a baby’s bottom, and in some aspects, goes downhill from there. We already know that “pain happens.”

Here’s the really important question: Will you find the positives in your pain? Paul did, and you can. Perhaps you already have.

2. Pain has a purpose.

This point of theology is really tough. There’s a fine line here that must not be crossed, lest we cause even more pain to someone who suffers. We must never glibly explain someone’s pain as a work of God. It is not wise, or even biblical, to tell someone in pain that God “won’t give them more than they can bear.” After all, that passage (1 Corinthians 10:13) is clearly about avoiding temptation, not overcoming pain.

Instead, this idea is best used as a self-study. In the midst of pain that will not leave, you might be able to discover at least part of the purpose your pain has. That kind of process leads to a maturity found through no other process. These are lessons that can be learned only in the classroom of suffering, and only the student enrolled there is allowed to make the discovery.

Look at the passage we just read. Paul concluded for himself that his “thorn” was meant to keep him from becoming conceited about his miraculous life and ministry.

Since we know so much about this man’s work and suffering, I’d suggest some more positive purposes from Paul’s pain.

In Philippi, Paul and Silas were beaten in public and taken away to the town dungeon. The men were that day’s leading headline, and all of Philippi was talking about them. Surely it became known that they had come to town speaking of a Jewish messiah! Imagine the headlines from the next morning, when details of the midnight song, earthquake, and jailer’s conversion became known! During the beating the day before, Paul and Silas must have been screaming their prayers to God, begging for relief. The relief didn’t come, but the message of Christ exploded in that city, in a large part because of the unfair suffering they’d known.

In Ephesus, Paul’s had what might be his most successful ministry anywhere, preaching there fore more than two years until all who lived in the province of Asia heard the Gospel. (Acts 19:10) Suddenly, in as little time as it takes to incite a riot, 25,000 people packed the local theater and screamed their disapproval of the message that was threatening the worship of Artemis, one of the most important economic engines of the city. In that riot, most of the people weren’t sure of what the fuss was all about (Acts 19:32). What would you do in the hours that followed such an event? Wouldn’t you want to know what caused such a fury? Though Paul never got to preach to the crowd, as he wanted to do, you can bet thousands of people heard details of the Gospel that day, perhaps more hearing, in a single day than had heard in the past two years combined. But at the moment, Paul only knew the pain of having to leave his home and ministry in a hurry.

Like Paul, perhaps most of us can’t see the purpose of our pain right at first. If someone you love gets orders to deploy to a war, you’ll know the truth of the old saying, that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” If you’re the one forced to leave, the pain of separation will greatly increase the intensity of training, preparation, and work.

Only the pain of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 mobilized an entire nation to take the actions it needed to take, first in World War II, and now, in a global war against terror. And in both of those cases, the pain of great loss clouds the vision of pain’s purpose.

The same is true for our personal pain. In the midst of the suffering, it is extremely difficult to find the purpose of our pain, and to celebrate that purpose.

Unless, of course, faith plays a role. In the midst of pain, there is an opportunity faith maturity that could accelerate your Christian growth like nothing else possibly could. It takes a tremendous step of faith to pray to a God who allows the suffering and say, “God, I don’t know the purpose of this pain, but I trust you to have a purpose in it.”

Illustration:

Pastor and author Ron Mehl, who battled leukemia for more than 20 years before dying in 2003, brought first-hand insight to pain’s purpose in the life of Joseph (Meeting God at a Dead End). From Joseph’s point of view, there was a time in his life when every angle of life showed nothing but pain. Sold by his own brothers, betrayed by an employer’s wife, forgotten by friends in a prison, and ignored by the God who once had promised him a position of leadership and power. If Joseph had been 16 or 17 when he was captured, how many years of suffering passed before he understood God’s hand in the process? We can tell the story in a minute or two. But for Joseph, time was moving in agonizing, painful slowness. Perhaps 10, 15 years pass.

That's a long time to spend in a waiting room, Mehl wrote.

That's a long time to spend parked on a dead end.

As it turned out, God was very much at work, right in the middle of the pain. God was working in the courts of Egypt. God was working in the weather patterns that circled the globe. God was working in his brothers’ lives. And most importantly, God was working on Joseph’s own heart, testing and probing and forming a young man who simply would not waver from his faith in God, even if life took him to the bottom of the dungeon, or the height of power and prosperity.

But make no mistake about it. As God worked, the waiting was hard for Joseph … bitterly hard.

There are no guarantees for any of us, even those called into ministry. Pain happens. For those who will dare search for pain’s purpose, there is one more thing.

3. Pain has a power.

In this particular passage, Paul receives a special message from the Lord. If you’ve got a red-letter Bible, more than likely, you’ve already spotted the red-letter moment. Jesus told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The message, and the messenger, gave Paul a tremendous boost.

Perhaps we should note that Paul didn’t hear from the Lord very often.

According to most scholars’ time-lines, Jesus was crucified about A.D. 30. Paul was saved about five years later, on the road to Damascus. It was a miraculous salvation experience, complete with a blinding light and the thunderous voice of Jesus, sending Paul into three days of repentant fasting. In just a few weeks, Paul had another supernatural experience in Jerusalem, when he “saw the Lord speaking” while in a trance (Acts 22:17). There, Jesus told Paul to take the message of the gospel to the Gentiles, an instruction that represented a major shift in missions and in Paul’s personal life. Before this moment, he wouldn’t have shared left-over bread with a Gentile, much less a message of hope and love.

But sixteen years, at least, passed before Paul had another such recorded experience. Two miraculously-personal encounters occurred in maybe sixteen weeks, and not another one for sixteen years! After that next miraculous message, it would be another six years, at least, before the next, and according to the record of Acts, there was never another one. Paul also had a vision, however, of a man from Macedonia (Acts 16:9) and an angel of the Lord (Acts 27:23–24). And perhaps he had other such encounters, but Luke only tells us of these.

I think it’s fair to say that for most of Paul’s pain, Jesus didn’t show up. Peter, the natural leader of the post-Pentecost church, had only two such experiences, according to Luke’s history. Stephen also had a miraculous appearance from the Lord, but only at the last moment, as he prepared to die.

None of those New Testament heroes had a personal appearance from the Lord at every beating, scourging, or arrest. They must have suffered a great deal in relative silence, and they must have wondered many times why God would allow it.

When Paul kept asking for his “thorn” to be removed, he got a direct lesson in pain’s power from the Lord himself.

Read 2 Cor. 12:7-10 again.

In other words, Paul decided he was fine with the pain. If Christ’s power was upon him in the pain, then he would rather have the strength of Christ than his own weakness.

“When I am weak, then I am strong,” Paul said. And that’s the power of pain.

Have you noticed how people listen to people in pain with a special intensity? People watch those who are hurting to see what matters most to them. If the pain is great enough, you’ll find out where the strength of a person really lies. You’ll see the character on the inside that inspires all of us.

It’s a prime-time witness, when all eyes are on the person who hurts.

In the world of sports, it might be John Elway limping back to the huddle before taking his team to a Super Bowl title. In the movies, it’s Rocky, getting up off the mat, one more time. In real life, it’s a wounded soldier coming home, still proud of the uniform and the duty that cost him so much. And in the New Testament, it’s Paul crawling out from underneath a pile of rocks in Lystra, dusting himself off, and heading to Derbe.

When we see such passion in the midst of such pain, we applaud it, follow it, and find inspiration for our own lives through the example of others.

There is some pain so great, it seems impossible to bear. In that place, only God can meet the need, or heal the heart. Unfortunately, it is in that place of greatest pain, and there alone, that the discovery can be made. The power of pain? Like nothing else, it can introduce us to the power of God. But the lesson is so difficult, the only way any of us would discover it is that God allows pain to be a part of our lives.

Pain happens. Pain has a purpose. And pain has a power.

Conclusion

Illustration: The beauty of a single pearl, or a string of the precious stones, is unmistakable. Few Jewels capture the eye quite like a perfect pearl. Know how the pearl came to be? In the beginning, it’s only a grain of sand. That tiny little irritant slips inside the tight seal of an oyster’s shell, and immediately causes discomfort. With no way to expel the grain of sand, with no way to ease the pain, the oyster coats the sand with a layer of the inner lining of its shell to make the sand smooth. This still does not ease the oyster's suffering. Again and again the oyster coats the sand, but all the attempts to get rid of the irritant have little effect. As far as an oyster is concerned, what we call a “pearl” is nothing more than great suffering. But one day the oyster is fished from the water and opened. The gem inside has amazing beauty and holds great value – all because the oyster had great suffering.

Maybe it’s no accident that the 12 gates of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:21) are made of pearls. It’s the suffering of our Savior that allows the gate to be there in the first place … and more than likely, all who enter those priceless gates will have also known the personal cost of great suffering.