7 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.
Sometimes help comes in very unusually packages. Paul had the tendency to be conceited. He could lean in the direction of thinking too much of himself. The Lord used one of Satan’s messengers to help Paul. Imagine using evil in order to work good! The Lord is not limited in the tools He uses. Any and every circumstance can be used to work His will into our lives. We sometimes see bad things as things to be prayed away. Maybe we should be praying that the Lord will use the bad thing to work good in our lives. That is radical. How can the Lord do that? I don’t know, but evidently He did it in Paul’s life and ministry. Paul calls this process, “a thorn in his flesh.” It was painful to Paul. It was a constant reminder. Do you have a constant reminder of your need to stay humble? If pride gets in the way of our spiritual growth, our growth in Christ, a thorn could be a very good thing. When I was much younger than I am now, I thought I could do almost anything. Now my body won’t allow me to do everything I did when I was in my teens and twenties. My wife and I were talking the other day while driving to Nashville. It was her birthday. We both remarked that we felt much younger than our body’s chronological age. We both felt in our twenties, but our bodies speak a very different message. My body gets in the way of some of the things I would like to do. It is a thorn reminding me that I am limited, that I am weak, that I must rely on the Lord. Do I want the physical pain? No! But the physical pain reminds me that my time on this earth is limited. I only have so many days left, so I had better not waste them in non-productive folly. What do you have in your life that reminds you to not waste your time? Perhaps you could ask the Lord for just such a messenger.
The Arnold Journey 