II Corinthians 12 vs 1 thru 10 text is verse 12 Asking God to Remove Our Shortcomings

This message was written as part of a lengthy series of messages called Do You Have What It Takes To Grow?  The whole series used the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous as the skeleton of the themes each week. This sermon utilizes thoughts from the Little Engine that Could children’s book, and thoughts on Paul’s thorn in the flesh.

Over 100 years ago, a little book came out. It was designed for children. It was about the efforts that a little engine put out in order to get a stranded train over a mountain. Now this train was filled with toys and  luscious things to eat that was destined for the children on the other side of the mountain, but the engine had failed. And what happened next was one of the toys tried to find an engine to help, and there was this large engine who believed he was too good to pull a train like that over the mountain. Another engine thought I’m too pretty to pull a train like that over the mountain. But finally there they found this little blue engine that really was not meant to pull trains over mountains. But when asked, he said I can try. What happened next was that the little, little engine hooked up to the front of the train and started pulling the train up the mountain. As it went, it huffed and puffed and set said its steam engine going as hard as it could. And the little train kept saying to itself, I think I can. I think I can, I think I can. And by doing that, it finally got the train to the top of the mountain. And then as it continued to puff, I think I can. I think I can, it headed down the other side of the of the mountain to the waiting children in the valley.

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Those words echo through my mind in all sorts of situations. I remember reading that story as a little boy myself. I read it to my kids. It’s part of the folklore of our culture, the little engine that just keeps plugging along with those famous words. I think I can. I think I can, I think I can. Echoing in our minds and telling us that if we would just try harder, we’d get to the top of the mountain and we would see how happy all the children are when our train comes into the station on the other side of the mountain.

It’s a wonderful little story that has given many people the energy and the attitude they have needed to get up and try harder next time. To really believe in the power of effort as it is put into practice

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been thinking about what happened as we found our lives going out of control, however. We are the train that can’t make it to the top of the mountain. We’re looking, we’re striving for the mountaintop experience, and we just can’t get there. We are looking, we are striving to get our lives in order. But no matter how hard we try, we have some part of our lives that is dominated by the darkness and we need to have light from somewhere else. It is then that we need to recognize that the story of the little engine that could is not good for us. For so many of us, we’ll turn our efforts into a major effort to do the little engine that could thing while always falling short.

We see that our pride is out of control. We find ourselves looking down on people from other ethnic groups. We find ourselves arrogantly refusing to give of ourselves for someone else. We find ourselves scowling at someone who has a different way of approaching life than we do. And we tell ourselves that we are going to get that attitude under control once again. And it just doesn’t happen. So we start the little engine that could song. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. And no matter how hard we try, we cannot. Life is actually out of control.

Or maybe you find yourself letting your anger get out of control. You cannot seem to control how angry you get when you’re scrolling through the things on your phone. You gravitate to the things that you know you ought not to be looking at because they stir up that anger.  And then you tell yourself. These things are not going to go wrong in my life again. And no matter how often you say to yourself, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. You cannot get the better of it. You are angry. Life is out of control

You know where that darkness is in your life. You know you won’t ever have the mountaintop experience because there is that darkness that keeps you in the Valley of Shadows no matter how hard you try. No matter how hard you think about your own strength, it just isn’t going to happen.

Let me tell you about someone. He was a man who had been born with all sorts of promise. He had two wonderful parents. They raised him to fear God and to seek to honor God with his life. He had gotten married at the usual time in his culture. And he had gotten a good job in a construction trade. And then one day, he fell from the roof he was working on. He broke both of his legs. And both of them failed to heal properly. He was now a crippled man. And he could no longer work to support his family. For the next few years, they took care of him. Then his parents died. And then his wife no longer could support him by herself. And he was forced to begin to beg. For 32 years he was a crippled man. And for the last twenty of those, he was to be found every day in the shade of the colonnades around a pool called Bethesda in Jerusalem. And one day, a man they called Jesus the miracle worker came to visit him. And Jesus asked him a difficult question. Do you want to be made well? Or to put it another way. Do you want to part with your problem?

Maybe he liked what was happening at this point. After all, he had been in this condition for 32 years now. He had gotten used to the idea that he wasn’t going to get well.

Today the question we are dealing with is the same one. Do you want to get well? Do you want to part with the character defects that you have? Do you want to no longer have the anger, the gluttony, the lying? Be part of who you are. What if you’re self-centered drivenness has won you Man of the Year award? Sometimes in our crazy mixed up world, you see, our faults become the way we get ahead of others. And that the only way we know of to stand out from the crowd is to pursue those faults like lying. And so now we have lived with them for so long that to give them up would be to give up part of our own identity. But Jesus says. Do you want to get well? In the Alcoholic Anonymous 12 step program, step 7 is asking myself the real question. Now that I have identified my sins. Now that I have confessed my sins. Do I want to give them up?

Saint Paul asked himself that question. We don’t know what it was that he called his thorn in the flesh a messenger from Satan, as he describes it in our text this morning  from Second Corinthians. But what he says is it was meant to keep him humble. There came a point in his life that he decided he really did not want to have to deal with that thorn anymore. He had done a cost benefit study and decided the cost was just too much to keep that thorn. He had learned his humility lesson. And now he could live without it.

How about you? Could you learn to live without your thorn in the flesh? The weakness that keeps you from the mountaintop. The dark shadow which lurks in your heart and you have finally turned the spotlight on it. And now you tell yourself, I can live without it. At least I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. How could it be that you might be able to get by with this. Let me ask you this, could your family and would your friends still want you around without your thorn in the flesh? What many of us find is that when we stop to try to ask ourselves what benefits we get from our own messenger of Satan, it really clouds the way we would think of answering why we would want to give it up.

See this part of the 12 step process is the letting go step. It’s letting go of the, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can in the lives of living with this thorn. And instead it is turning to God, and in all sincerity asking God to take it away from us. But here I have to warn you of something. What passes too often for humble surrender to God is just people renewing their own efforts at I think I can, I think I can, I think I can

These steps that we learned from Alcoholics Anonymous are for those who know they’re powerless and who need God to work a miracle in their lives. They need God to take their thorn away.

The interesting thing here is that there are times when God will answer that prayer for God to take away that thorn with a no. Paul found that out. The thorn was never taken from him. He lived the rest of his life with that messenger there in his side. But what he found was that God answered his prayer in a way he never would have thought possible. Where Paul discovered that God began to work in him through his weaknesses and so turned his weaknesses into assets. God turned the weaknesses of Paul into centers of power for him. So Paul no longer was interested in being proud of his strengths. He was now more focused on his weaknesses. And Paul found God working in him in ways both profound and glorious. For what Paul discovered and what he writes of. Is that when he was weak he was strong?

Today, I invite you to do what Paul did. To ask God to remove your weaknesses. But consider this, if the weakness remains, how do we stop using it for our advantage? We have to fully surrender to God and his power so that my weakness becomes a channel of God’s blessing for others around me. Now give the weakness over to God and let him deal with it. For then you will find that God will channel your whole being into finding that you may not be getting to this mountaintop that you thought you were headed for with the I think I can I think I can effort, but instead God has an even better one in mind for you, and He will give you the strength to get there. And there to find his power made perfect in your weakness

When you see that God is working in your life, celebrate it. Even if it is a small thing. Paul could see that now he could boast about his weaknesses. He had some fun doing it. For he knew what he really was doing was giving God the praise for what was happening in his life

So look at yourself. And every time you can go for a day without having your weakness drive a wedge between you and someone else, or between you and God celebrate that day. When you see God working in you to not only keep your weakness from doing you harm, but that now because of that weakness,  you can help someone else with that same weakness, celebrate that

This step in the Alcoholic Anonymous process is where we begin to find God at work in us. This step is where God becomes very real in our lives as He turns us into His servants. Not new and perfect people, but people who know our weaknesses and who find God is the one who gives us the power to make the grade. No more I think I can. I think I can. Now it’s I know God can. I know God can. I know God can. And then  in the momentum of the Lord we can build our lives in His way and for His glory.

Scripture reading II Corinthians 6

What makes a house a home?

Context for this message is a congregation which includes several young families. This is intended to give a glimpse into the plan of God for families.

If you go online to the Grand Rapids Association of Realtors real estate site, you will find that there are no houses for sale. That’s correct. There are no houses for sale. No, there are homes for sale.  One of the things I have learned over the last few years is that one does not refer to a building as a house in the hearing of a client. It is only to be referred to as a home. I find that interesting.  

What makes a house a home? There are any number of clever sayings that define home for us.

 Robert Frost says, Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

 A national museum of the home says that a home is where your heart is.  Of course, that defines things just fine, right?

Better Homes and Gardens, a magazine that has been around for a long time, has many, many photos of better homes. What is better about them? The way they are decorated. They look like no one lives there. So they’re implication is that for a better home than you have ever had, you just need a great decorator and the cash to buy all the neat stuff.

Rachel Ray, the TV chef, says, that Good food and a warm kitchen are what make a house a home.

 I have often wondered why it is that the place one begins and ends in a softball or baseball game is home plate. Every time someone goes up to bat, the point is to leave home and then to return home after you make your way around the various points that the rules say you have to go to. You have to make a journey from home, to get back to home. If you simply stay at home and do not attempt the journey, you are called out and then you cannot even stay at home. You have to leave. It’s all very philosophical, you see.

 So what is it about home that so intrigues us? As one person put it, a home without people is just a building with a dog. It’s the people who make us feel like a place is home. It is who we are privileged to live with there that makes a house a home.

It is where one belongs. It is where one can live without pretense. It is where we are who we are for better or for worse. 

What I think is so great about the idea of home is that God is the one who first created the idea of home. He is the one who created the family and gave Adam and Eve a place to be at home.

Ever since the fall, we have been on that journey like a baseball game. We know we are not at home in this world. We long for a place we can feel at home again. At home with our Father.  We are moving from that home which was a garden to a city where a garden is central to what the city is all about. We are heading for home in glory.

But in the meantime, we are given the opportunity to taste a little bit of that heavenly home in our own homes. The problem is that our homes are in this broken world. We live with sin affecting all we are and do. Our hearts are hard toward most of the people in the world. We don’t want our privacy invaded by people we feel uncomfortable with.

But God knows we need some coaching for building this thing called a home. So as we read the Scriptures, we discover that there are several places where, embedded in the train of thoughts are some great bits of advice on being a home with a solid family as God intended us to experience.

So, in the Scripture we read today, we have Paul telling the Corinthians about how difficult of a time he has had in being an apostle. It has not been a cushy life. No, it has been rather difficult. But the Corinthians were thinking of Paul as kind of a strange man who they no longer had to pay any attention to.

 Which reminds me of another cynical definition of home:  Home is where you can say anything you want because no one is paying any attention to you anyway.

That was how it was getting for Paul with his church in Corinth. So he says, I speak as a father to his children. Notice that. I speak as father to his children. How is that? He says, We have spoken freely and we have opened wide our hearts to you. He says, I speak as to my children, make it fair by opening your hearts to us.

That is how a house becomes a home. When the people in the house can speak freely with each other and open their hearts to one another. That means that when I am at home, I can just be myself.  I do not have to put on any pretenses. My heart is open when I am with my family. That is how we can be loving to one another:  Speaking freely and openly to each other.  And having the other pay attention and then we ourselves are willing to speak freely and open our hearts to the others as well.

 Until you can know that you can speak freely, you have people in a house. You do not have a home.  So, what makes a house a home? The residents there can speak freely and openly to each other.

Paul goes on, do not be yoked together with unbelievers. What we have often taken that to say is something negative about how we are to relate to others in the world around us. When Van Raalte  brought the first Dutch settlers over to the Holland area in the 1840’s, he made it clear that what they were doing was establishing a city that would be set apart from  the world around them.

The colony would be free from being yoked unequally with unbelievers.  What that part of our heritage has done is to make those of us who are the spiritual heirs of that original group suspicious of being integrated into the communities in which we live. We are to be separate from them as much as possible.

But I want to look at this differently. I see this as actually calling us to be yoked with others who are pulling in the same direction as we are. Too often our homes are not places where we are all pulling together for the common good. We are not integrating into the surrounding society, but we sure aren’t integrating with each other either. You find homes where the husband and wife simply find themselves pulling in differing ways. Not that they are opposite ways, they just are not going in the same direction.

But we need to learn to be yoked together so that in our homes we learn how to be matched up with the person who is our partner.  A yoke was used to bring a pair of animals together to provide much more power than one could by itself.

So, I hear Paul calling us in our families to be yoked together so that we will do so much more than we ever could by ourselves

. Then he says, We are the temple of the living God. That is a communal thing. In Corinth, a breathtaking sight was the temple of Apollo that everyone passed on the way to the marketplace. You were to stop there and be cleansed before you could enter the marketplace. Each citizen knew that the temple had many pillars, it had many stones all fit together and taken as a whole, those stones were the temple of Apollo.

Paul says to the church, when we are all taken together we are the temple of the living God. That is a communal thing. Each of us is the place where God’s holy Spirit lives in this world. But it is when we are all together, all linked together, all yoked together  that we become the temple of the living God.

 Just think of what that means for your families. And your homes. You are together  the temple of the living God.  What makes a house a home? When the people who live there are fit together in such a way that they demonstrate what it is to be the temple of the living God.

So what makes a house a home: It is a place where the residents are all working together to be open to each other. It is a place where we are yoked so we can harness the power that God gives us to move in the same direction. It is a place where God lives among the living stones who are his temple. That is what makes a house a home.