August 18, 1999

EXPLORE THE BIBLE:
Depend on God in your
weakness to find strength
___ 2 Corinthians 11:30-12:13
___By Mark Bumpus
___First Baptist Church, Mineral Wells
___Seminary student Harry Emerson Fosdick, later to become pastor of New York City's Riverside Church (1926-46), had a nervous breakdown. Of this experience, he wrote, "I learned to pray, not because I had adequately argued out prayer's rationality, but because I desperately needed help from a power greater than my own. I learned that God, much more than a theological proposition, is an immediately available resource. ... One effect of it on me was to make me want to get at folks--ordinary, everyday folks--and try to help them." In his weakness, he found God's strength.
___ Embarrassing descent (2 Corinthians 11:30,32-33). Paul cites an example of weakness, endearing him to us through his honesty. Preceding his faithful endurance of adversity (11:23-29), there was an embarrassing incident in his life.
___ Early in his Christian faith, he ran from his persecutors (11:32-33). Whereas previously he had approached Damascus as Saul of Tarsus, arrogant persecutor of Christians (Acts 9:1-3), here he meekly fled Damascus as Paul the Apostle, his first apprenticeship in persecution. Escaping in a basket at night through the city wall (11:33; Acts 9:25), Paul seems to say retrospectively, "Early on, I failed. I did not stand up to my persecutors." Romans 8:28 comes to play here. Had he been captured and executed in Damascus, his writings and missionary journeys never would have occurred.
___ Strengthening ascent (2 Corinthians 12:1-2,6). In an ironic twist, to stress how God had strengthened him in his weakness, Paul humbly reveals, for the first time, an other-worldly experience that occurred fourteen years prior to writing 2 Corinthians (12:2). Though it was not his intent to boast, he reveals he, too, had had "visions and revelations" (12:1), but far exceeding the boastful experiences of the Corinthian false teachers.
___In this experience of being "caught up to the third heaven" (12:2), Philip Hughes says Paul was "fortified to endure patiently all the severe sufferings which awaited him in the prosecution of his ministry. He was enabled to reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall at last be revealed to every 'man in Christ'" (Romans 8:18; 2 Timothy 4:8).
___ Although he "heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak" (12:4 and 1 Corinthians 2:9), his theology of the Christian after-life was shaped (5:8; Colossians 1:12; Philippians 1:21,23) in part by this experience.
___ Purpose of difficulty (2 Corinthians 12:7,8). Lest such a glorious experience with God lead to pride, Paul was given "a thorn in the flesh" to keep him humble (v.7). The exact nature of this affliction is unknown, enabling any Christian struggling in their particular weakness to gain strength, knowing that "my grace is sufficient for you" (12:9).
___ Sufficient answer to prayer (2 Corinthians 12:9,10). God's answer to our prayer is not always what we want, but what we need. Depend on God in your weakness and find God's strength (v.10). God takes an ordinary man and makes him extraordinary (v.12) by his power--turning a "nobody" (v.11) into a "somebody" for his purposes.

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