OVERCOMING HANDICAPS
2 CORINTHIANS 12:1-10
S-1648
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER?
•SLIDE: Daisy?
•SLIDE: Hibiscus?
•SLIDE: Orchid?
•SLIDE: Tulip?
•SLIDE: How about a Rose? 7 in 10 Americans choose the Rose as their favorite.
•SLIDE: Perhaps we like the rose because it is so beautiful. Perhaps we love it because deep down we recognize that life is more like the rose than any other flower. It is exquisitely beautiful; but when you pick it up,
•SLIDE: You have to look out for the thorns.
Glenn and I have finished the birth of the church in Acts. We will take a break and return later to the life and teachings of Paul which cover the 2nd half of Acts.
But, I want to preach today on one of my favorite Pauline passages: We are going to discuss Overcoming Handicapped Lives.
Turn to 2 Corinthians 12. We will see
•SLIDE: 1. The ROSE
•SLIDE: 2. The THORNS, and
•SLIDE: 3. The GRACE
Electric dynamo to represent grace? Because Grace=Strength and power
•SLIDE: Let’s read our passage. READ 2 CORINTHIANS 12:1.
•SLIDES: See the ROSES. What an experience Paul had! READ 2 CORINTHIANS 12:2-6.
Describes vision he had fourteen years ago (not conversion – this was over twenty years after conversion). Paul had many visions.
A spiritual highlight of Paul’s life.
But notice, in the moment of Paul’s greatest exaltation came also his greatest humiliation.
•SLIDE: Now we see the THORNS: READ 2 CORINTHIANS 12:7-8.
•SLIDE: Now we see the GRACE: READ 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9-10.
•SLIDE: The subject of Handicapped Lives is one which takes us all in. There is maybe one, young superman here who has never been aware of his limitations, but I suspect not.
•SLIDE: And by the way, even Superman has his kryptonite.
I have never known a person whom did not turn out to be dealing with a handicap. But they need not incapacitate us.
Life is filled with handicapped heroes who jumped the hurdles and finished the race victoriously.
•SLIDE: That’s why I admire so much track star Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. Overcoming poverty and premature birth, and double pneumonia at the age of four, and scarlet fever, and debilitating polio at the age of nine, leaving her left leg paralyzed, and learning to walk with the aid of a metal brace, and then how to rhythmically run at 13—finally winning three gold medals in the 1960 Olympic games in Rome.
•SLIDE: We find Beethoven writing music though deaf.
•SLIDE: And Winston Churchill inspiring nations and winning wars while fighting crippling, debilitating depression.
•SLIDE: And Stephen Hawking unlocking the secrets of the universe while crippled with multiple sclerosis, confined to a wheelchair, talking through a metallic sounding synthesizer, able to move only one finger.
We discover that in general, the great work of the world has been done by handicapped people.
How do they do it? What was the inward technique with which they handled limitations?
Is there any one of us who does not need to learn that?
We have seen the rose; now he sets up the thorn. READ 2 CORINTHIANS 12:7
•SLIDE: This is not just a little nuisance like the cholla cactus thorns that pricks your finger.
The word here for “Thorn” is the same word as
•SLIDE: “Steak:” No, not the kind of Not steak we eat.
•SLIDE: “Stake” like a tent stake you drive in the ground. From Babylonians – sharpen trees and impale people on stake. Paul had stake twisting in his body to keep him humble.
•SLIDE: Boxers: “Torment” means “to beat, to strike with the fist.” He suffered mercilessly with it.
What was that thorn? No one really knows!
Several guesses:
•SLIDE: 1. Ugly -1 Corinthians 10:10 – “Letters weighty but bodily appearance is weak. “Beaten with rods.”
•SLIDE: 2. Malaria – prevalent and incapacitating in Asia Minor. Trouble on first journey.
•SLIDE: 3. Epilepsy. In Galatians 4:13-14 – “reject” = “to spit at”. Ancient world believed epilepsy caused by demons. Spit to ward off demons.
•SLIDE: 4. Eye trouble. Most probable. Blind at conversion, scales –
Galatians 6:11 – “Large letters with my own hand.
Galatians 4:15 – “Pluck out eyes.”
Acts 23 – Trials, chided high priest, slapped. “Didn’t you know you were speaking to the high priest?” “No, I didn’t see that.”
Why didn’t Paul tell us what his thorn was? So all of us could IDENTIFY WITH IT.
•SLIDE: What’s your thorn? Alcoholic father? Debilitating illness? problem child? Sexual abuse?
We know nothing about Paul’s trouble except that behind the scenes, just like the rest of us, Paul had to handle a limitation that he prayed to escape, that he could not evade, that he had to settle down and live with.
•SLIDE: IT IS A CRUCIAL MOMENT WHEN WE STAND OPEN-EYED BEFORE OUR HANDICAPS.
Every garden has its weeds; every rose has its thorns; every life has its strife.
Here is a young boy who is crippled in early infancy. He has grown up with no idea what happened to him—but sometime in childhood it will dawn on him that he is not like the other children. And his whole life will depend on how he handles it.
Think of a woman who in her youth had all the natural ambitions for success but who now recognizes that she’ll never write poetry or compose music or hold the business positions about which she dreamed. How will she handle it?
Think of the one who has expectations of a normal, well-adjusted, happy life, but like a beast from ambush, an accident, or sickness leaped and now he must work with crippled machinery.
How many of us have stepped on the gas but we have to admit again and again that the power just isn’t in us. God didn’t equip us with 8 cylinders or with 6 – only three – and those none too good.
Maybe yours is a life that wanted love and missed it.
Maybe yours is a home where marriage might have been a thing of beauty, but was tragedy instead.
Maybe yours is a family where a child created as a blessing became an inward agony.
Maybe yours is a household where death has severed the tie that binds.
How can we deal with handicaps? How do we harness the grace that is sufficient for us?
•SLIDE: FIVE LESSONS FLOW OUT OF THIS CLASSIC PASSAGE.
•SLIDE: 1. TRUST THAT HANDICAPS ARE NO ACCIDENT. GOD’S PLAN IS IN PLACE.
God’s plan includes refining. In terms of God’s processing one of the main reasons He allows handicaps is to refine us into better people. Suffering produces perfection.
2 Corinthians 12:7 – “To keep me from becoming conceited.”
•SLIDE: C.S. Lewis picture
“I walked a mile with Pleasure, she chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser for all she had to say.
•SLIDE: C.S. Lewis picture
I walked a mile with Sorrow and ne’r a word said she.
But, oh, the things I learned that day when Sorrow walked with me.”
•SLIDE: 2. LOOK FOR AN OPPORTUNITY INSTEAD OF SLIDING INTO DEPRESSED DEFEAT.
2 Corinthians 12:10: “That us why I delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, and persecutions.
How often we stroke our wounded spirits and cry, “If I had not this handicap, what a person I would have been.” We dream of what we could have been and what a glorious paradise we could have if only we had not this handicap.
We must realize that very few of us are able to live life through with no limitations. Who among us has the chance to live out life under the ideal conditions? I know of no one.
•SLIDE: Have you noticed that violins have four strings? The strings correspond to the notes G-D-A-E. Once when Ole’ Bull, the great violinist, was giving a concert in Paris, his A string snapped and he transposed the composition and finished it on three strings! Now that’s life – to have you’re a string snap and to have to finish on 3 strings.
How many of us have had to test that out? It seems that so much of life lies in the ability to victoriously handle handicaps. As much as I should have liked to hear Ole’ Bull with a perfect instrument at his command, if I could have heard him only once, I should have liked to hear him when the A string snapped and, without self-pity or surrender, he finished on 3 strings.
I’m certain that Paul would rather not have had this thorn in his flesh. But I suspect that there are qualities of understanding and sympathy in Paul and a moving music in the great passages of his epistles that never would have been there if he had not had to finish on 3 strings.
•SLIDE: 3. STOP WINDOW SHOPPING IN OTHER’S LIVES AND LIVE WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT.
2 CORINTHIANS 10:12 – “We do not compare ourselves… When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, then are not wise.”
You see what we do; Born to be berry bushes and produce good berries, we lift envious eyes to apple trees with larger size fruit, OR, born to be apple trees and produce apples, we look with jealousy at maple trees with their greater shade, OR, born to be maple trees, we are anxious because elm trees are taller and more graceful.
God has given all of us a special field to till. Accept it. If the soil is thinner and the rocks more numerous and the prospects less promising than another’s field, that is simply life’s problem which we all must face.
We must stop looking over the fence and day-dreaming about what we could do with someone else’s field.
Wendy Stoker is a freshman at the University of Florida. She placed third, just 2.5 points out of first place in the Iowa Girl’s State diving championship. She worked two hours a day for four years to get there.
Now she is at the university of Florida working twice as hard and has earned the number two position on the varsity diving squad. She is aiming for the national finals.
Wendy carries a full academic load, finds time for bowling, and is an accomplished water skier. But perhaps most remarkable is her typing. She bangs out 45 words per minute on her typewriter with her toes!
Oh, I forgot to tell you, Wendy was born without arms.
•SLIDE: 4. LET Your THORNS SET THE STAGE FOR USEFULNESS IN THE KINGDOM
2 CORINTHIANS 12:10 – “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
We live in an age of excuses – my headache, my arthritis, my dysfunctional family background, my alcoholic wife, my fill-in-the-blank.
If Paul hadn’t had that thorn, he’d never have been Paul. Thorns set the stage for spiritual service.
Parable of The cracked pot and flowers Nelson’s complete p.774
•SLIDE: 5. FIND STRENGTH IN GOD’S GRACE WHICH IS ENERGY ENOUGH WHEN THINGS GET TOUGH.
READ 2 CORINTHIANS 12:8-10.
“Lord, take it away.” God didn’t give him what he asked for. Notice, God did answer his need. God’s grace was sufficient for every situation.
God’s grace is enough. Electric dynamo: pour in the power.
Lady Friday afternoon at Bookmans. How are you? Feeling a little tired. “Thin blood to prevent clots when they do my procedure.”
“I have a disease, mini-strokes. I pray it will take me quickly—not just cripple me or incapacitate me: I know where I am going. It is going to be great.”
That is grace.
Several years ago the producer for a television docudrama obtained permission from a cancer specialist to place cameras in his clinic.
With approval from three patients, he captured on film the moment each of them learned they were afflicted with a malignancy in its later stages.
Afterward, the documentary team followed these three families through the treatment process with its ups and downs, hopes and disappointments, pain and terror. The drama of life and death unfolded on the screen. Eventually, all three patients died.
What stood out were the different ways these people dealt with their frightening circumstances. The two who apparently had no faith reacted with anger and bitterness. They not only fought their disease, but seemed to be at war with everyone else. Their personal relationships, and even their marriages, were shaken – especially as the end drew near.
•SLIDE: That’s what made the third individual so inspiring.
He was a humble, black pastor of a small inner-city Baptist church in his late 60’s. His love for the Lord was reflected in everything he said.
When he and his wife were told that he only had a few months to live, they revealed no panic. They quietly asked the doctor what it all meant. When he had explained the treatment program and what they could anticipate, they politely thanked him for his concern and departed. The cameras followed this little couple to their old car and eavesdropped as they bowed their heads and recommitted themselves to the Lord.
The cameras were present in his final Sunday in his church. He preached the sermon that morning and talked openly about his impending death:
“Some of you have asked me if I’m mad at God for this disease that has taken over my body. I’ll tell you honestly that I have nothing but love in my heart for my Lord. He didn’t do this to me. We live in a sinful world where sickness and death are the curse man has brought upon himself. And I’m going to a better place where there will be no more tears, no suffering and no heartache. So don’t feel bad for me.
“Besides, our Lord suffered and died for our sins. Why should I not share in his suffering?” Then he began to sing, without accompaniment, in an old broken voice:
•SLIDE: Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for everyone
And there’s a cross for me.
•SLIDE: How happy are the saints above,
Who once went sorr’wing here;
But now they taste unmingled love
And joy without a tear.
•SLIDE: The consecrated cross I’ll bear,
Till death shall set me free,
And then go home my crown to wear,
For there’s a crown for me.
He slipped into eternity a few days later, where he met the Lord he had served for a lifetime.
Many of you have a thorn today – God’s word is: None of them are wasted.
Psalm 56:8 – “Put all my tears in your bottle.”
Crystal sea.
•SLIDE: Remember Jesus Christ: He who sent Paul a thorn for his own good once wore a crown of thorns for the good and salvation of all sinners.