Thorn in Your Side

Series on “I am Joe’s Favorite Verses”
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
2 Corinthians 12:1-10 

[Many years ago, there used to be articles in the Reader’s Digest titled “I am Joe’s ___” with the blank being filled with a body part or organ. Over the years, I’ve written down verses that are meaningful to me on 3x5 cards. In this series we’ll be looking at some of my favorite verses. In other words, “I am Joe’s Favorite Verses”.]

  

My best friend in high school was everything that I wanted to be but wasn’t. He was confident; could talk easily with girls; and was good at sports. In fact, some classmates thought he was a braggart. But for me, I wanted to be just like him.

 

In some ways, he was a mentor to me. One Saturday night we were at my house, when I must have told him that I didn’t know how to dance. The next thing that I knew I’d put a slow song on the record player and my best friend was dancing with me while giving me instructions. It must have looked strangely funny.

 

The world tells us that if you are weak, then you’ll get run over; people will take advantage of you; you won’t get anywhere in the world. But God has a different set of values. He doesn’t work that way.

 

Throughout the Bible, you can see how God works in people’s lives who are down and out; people with character flaws; people with weaknesses. Moses who was a murderer; Gideon who was hiding in a winepress; Rahab who was a prostitute; Peter who denied Christ – played major roles in God’s plan of redemption.

 

In the final four chapters of his letter to Corinth, Paul is defending himself against some men who have infiltrated the church. They claimed to be apostles and that Paul was not. Being an apostle meant that you were sent, or commissioned, by Jesus just like the original apostles who had walked “in the dust of the rabbi”.

 

When these men claimed that Paul wasn’t an apostle, they were attacking not only the things that he wrote and said, but also his character. It was critical for Paul to defend himself, not because he needed the title of “Apostle”, but to validate who he was and what he said.

 

With no other choice, Paul defended his ministry in many different ways, including bragging about all the suffering he had gone through by following Jesus. But he also bragged about the visions and revelations from the Lord that he’d had.

 

² I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows.          NLT

 

Paul was likely a type A personality – very driven. It would’ve been easy for him to do everything that God had called him to do, but to do it on his own… without God. He had the skills, the motivation and the confidence to do it.

 

Therefore, God gave him a thorn in the flesh – a weakness if you will. That thorn kept Paul humble, but it also enabled him to trust the Lord and live by His power. When Paul begged the Lord three times to take it away, here is His response.

 

⁹ 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. ¹⁰ 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.           NIV

 

This is Good News for a teenage boy who lacked confidence. But it’s also Good News for anyone at any age who is painfully aware of the thorn in your side. Whatever your thorn might be, God’s strength “is made perfect” in your weakness.

 

Copyright 2026 Joseph B Williams

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