Sermon Tone Analysis

! Crisis—Why Me?

Faith is its own reward.

We cannot expect a rose garden bonus for believing.

In reality, we will know many of the same problems as non-Christians and maybe some that non-Christians will never know.

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.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

A fine Christian woman found herself suddenly in the hospital.

The doctors had discovered that she had a very serious case of cancer.

An active member of her church, she soon found herself deluged with visitors.

And with those visitors, she also found herself deluged with quite a myriad of different theories on why she was going through this crisis and how to cope with the crisis as a Christian.

The people who came to visit were good, well-intentioned people, just like you and I. But, she remembered five distinct categories.

One was the well-meaning deacon who told her that there was a reason she was sick.

Either she must have done something displeasing in her life, or at the very least there must be something that God wanted to teach her through it.

The second was a somewhat scatterbrained lady who swooped in bringing flowers and singing hymns.

She was sort of a cheerleader for the sick.

As they visited, every time the cancer victim brought up her illness, the woman would not let her talk.

The woman simply voiced one platitude after another and then breezed out.

The third visitor was a woman who told her that healing was the answer.

The visitor's message was that God doesn't want anybody to be sick—ever—and that her only hope was for God to heal her.

And then the visitor said that God would definitely do just that if the woman's faith was strong enough.

Later that day, the woman remembered this visitor's words while she was lying on a cold table undergoing a cobalt treatment.

So she concentrated, trying to muster up a stronger faith.

But her mind stopped.

Something about the situation caused her to realize what she was doing was wrong.

Faith isn't like a muscle—more supple and resilient when exercised, she realized.

It's just /there./

Then the most "spiritual" person in her congregation visited her.

"If you'll praise God in everything, everything, you'll soon be able to thank God for what has happened to you!" the man said.

Suddenly, she had this grotesque image of God pop into her head: He wasn't a heavenly Father, but a gigantic troll, a monster, holding her by one foot, and squeezing her until she finally gasped, "Thank You!"

She grimaced at the thought, closing her eyes in exasperation.

Finally, the pastor entered her room.

He told her that God had chosen her to share in the suffering of Christ, in the koinonia of His fellowship because He knew in His infinite wisdom that she could bear this with integrity and be a blessing to others.

After he left, though, she wondered, /If that's so, why did He pick me?

There are millions of Christians stronger than I am.

Couldn't He have found someone else to be a better example?/

!! Job's False Friend

This woman's well-wishers remind me of Job's friends.

As soon as they heard about Job's troubles, they came to him.

They found him sitting in the ashes, having lost everything.

And what did they do?

They began spouting reasons about why it all had happened.

Job's friends, it seems, came not so much to comfort Job as to uncover some logical reason for his troubles.

And so do we.

We can't stand the idea of not knowing /why./

And so we give advice, speculate, and worry.

We even cajole God to explain the universe to us.

Why do bad things happen to us? Philosophers have tried to discover the answer to that question for centuries.

There are scores of ponderous volumes concerning that one question.

But we still don't know the answer, and it would be presumptuous to say we did.

Yet, we must consider it.

Sometimes such crises are avenues for amazing spurts of growth.

But sometimes they are "faith-busters."

What's the difference?

The difference seems to lie in the person—how he or she responds.

Not how he or she understands.

We all know about Paul's "thorn" in the flesh, as it is called.

But "thorn" may not be a strong enough word.

The Greek word used here means a "stake," a great "nail," more often than it does a tiny thorn.

In fact, the word was sometimes used to mean "impaled," to run someone through.

It could mean the cross itself.

But Paul tells us he was "given" this thorn, this spike through his flesh.

It could even be translated, "for" his flesh.

And we are left to wonder what that thorn was.

Some have said it was a form of malaria; others say it was some kind of hysteria or painful eye disease.

And some people believe strongly that Paul had epileptic seizures.

Whatever it was, we know from Paul's words that it was painful enough for him to call it a "stake" in his flesh.

What sort of cue can we take from Paul about how to respond to our own great thorns?

!! It's Okay to Ask Why?

First, we don't have to feel guilty about questioning, about asking God for a reason for our crisis.

Very "spiritual" types may give you the idea that it is wrong to wonder why things are happening.

But often, asking such a question will be the beginning of a way through, if not a way out—even if answers aren't forthcoming.

So, it's okay to ask.

That's what Paul did

Twice in this letter he says that God allowed him to have this "thorn" to keep him from becoming conceited from "great revelations."

Evidently, from the first verses of this chapter, we can read that Paul had been given these supernatural, uplifting visions.

Then, when he asked God why he had such pain, God said, "Paul, to keep you from being conceited."

And then he repeats it, in case we missed it.

There are several kinds of pride.

There is the pride of "face," the pride of "race," and the pride of "grace."

Some of us don't have much to be proud of when it comes to the pride of "face," but quite a number of us have a kind of insidious pride of "race," feeling we are better than others.

But I believe the worst form of pride is the pride of "grace," being proud about the spiritual grace that has come into our lives—through no act of our own.

And that could easily have been Paul's temptation.

He needed to keep himself from conceit, from arrogance, from spiritual pride.

Paul, then, was beginning to see reasons for his crisis.

But we know all too well that God doesn't normally give reasons.

Most of the time He doesn't.

And it can drive us crazy.

A friend of mine, a professor at a Christian college, is a wonderful Christian lady.

One day a car ran a red light, plowed into her car, and almost killed her.

As she rested in the hospital, coping with the pain from her awful injuries, she said that she had a whole series of visitors and everyone of them wanted to speculate about the reason why God had permitted this to happen to her.

She told me, "As I went in and out of consciousness, I simply wanted to be conscious of resting in the arms of Jesus whom I knew loved me.

But all these people wanted to talk about was why would God allow this to happen to such a 'good lady' as I was.

I felt so bad that I wasn't the least bit interested."

When we begin to try to put reasons into God's mouth for what happens to us, they always sound forced.

I think of one young man who, when his father suddenly died, had to fit it into the grand scheme of God's design.