From the book Quiet Talks About The Healing Christ
by S.D. Gordon, first published in 1924.
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Quiet Talks about the Healing Christ 7. God's School Of Suffering: Can We Hasten Graduation Day?Continued
Paul's Thorn -- The Man
The second of these outstanding picture stories is that of Paul, Paul's thorn. Whenever one talks rather positively about prayer, or about bodily healing, some one always remembers and asks about Paul's thorn. Well, there certainly is distinct help for us all here.
First a look at the man, then a look at his thorn. The best light on this troublesome thorn is the man. He, his character, and the great bit of work for God he was chosen to do, these throw the best light on that stinging, sticking thorn.
Paul is a great man from any point of view, and a great saint. His Hebrew blood, his aristocratic family and breeding, his inherited and acquired culture,
His university training, his breadth of out look, his inflexible conscientiousness, his passion of devotion to his Master, what a man he was among men! What a saint among saints!
What a giant he was in his will. The unflinching unfaltering insistence on his task, in spite of opposition and difficulties, all those arduous journeys in the thick of hardships of every imaginable sort up to the limit of endurance, these all tell what a giant he was in his will.
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But, speak softly, his strong will sometimes held the lines too tight. A man's weak point is pretty apt to be the swing-away of the pendulum on his strong point. Paul had the possible weakness of his strongest qualities. He was a bit set in his way.
Say it very softly, for we are talking about dear old saintly Saint Paul. Say it yet more softly, for where one speaks of one weak spot in him he quickly calls to mind a half-dozen in himself. Yet say it distinctly, to help.
God had a hard time getting Paul to go His way. God found it difficult sometimes to get Paul to fit into His plans. Paul had a plan or two of his own. Perhaps just one or two of us may have heard of such a thing before.
From the time of that never-to-be-forgotten experience on the Damascus road, with the light, and the voice, and the overwhelming sense of power, Paul knew that his errand was to the outer non-Jewish world.
The nations of the earth, the Gentiles, this was to be his field of service. The very magnitude of it must have appealed to the imagination of this giant and saint.
But, from the first, he had an intense desire to go to the Jerusalem Jews. He felt he could get them.
It was a perfectly natural thing, for Paul had been so closely associated with them. And his very sense of strategy in action suggested and emphasized it.
He felt in his bones, "I know them. I trained with that group. I know how to take them. Let me at them. If once we can get them it will mean so much.
"It's the strategic thing. They crucified Jesus. They stoned the Holy Spirit, in effect, in stoning Stephen. But, but, let me at them." This was deep down in his spirit.
Indeed the thing went rather far. Early in his Christian life Christ had given Paul a special vision about this very matter when Paul was praying in the sacred precincts of the temple in Jerusalem (Acts 22:17-21).
And the Lord gave him specific directions to get out of Jerusalem, out to the outer non-Jewish world. The Jerusalem leaders were incorrigibly set in their stubborn rejection, he was told.
Then a strange thing happened, passing strange. Paul actually begins to argue with the Lord why he was specially qualified for a Jewish mission!
This was surely taking things to great length, the soldier under orders arguing with the chief of-staff why he should not do as he was bid, but something else he preferred! Did dear saintly Paul's intensity blur his thinking?
Yet it seems to me, yes, I can recall something of that sort in modern times, and among saintly folk, too. And the temple interview closes with a clear positive command -- " Depart; for I will send thee far hence (from Jerusalem) to the outer non-Jewish peoples."
And Paul went. With all his splendid powers and devotion he went. But he never lost that early inner passionate longing. He insisted upon it, years after, against distinct intimations of the Holy Spirit in line with that temple interview (Acts 21:4, with references).
His insistence changed the whole latter part of his outstanding career. That's a little look-in at this rare saintly giant of God. It explains the thorn that came, and was not taken away.
Paul's Thorn -- Healing While Not Healed
Now, about the thorn (II Corinthians 12:7-10). There came some serious ailment in his body. No one knows what it was. The long learned discussions are so much waste breath, when time is so precious and real things so pressing, too.
It doesn't matter a grot what it was. It was there, and it stayed. It interfered. It hurt keenly.
Paul didn't think so much of it, at first. There was Christ to go to. He would go and ask for healing. And the healing touch would come, he felt quite sure.
All Paul's experience would lead him to expect the healing touch. He had that remarkable two years' campaign in Ephesus, where healings to a quite unusual degree were the outstanding feature (Acts 19:10-12).
Earlier there had been the man crippled from birth, never able to walk, now leaping and walking through Christ 's touch, at the word of Paul (Acts 14:8-10).
There is the yet more remarkable bit, toward the latter part, of the young man at Troas on the Aegean, actually brought back from the dead.
And Paul had taught healing. It was part of his group of teachings to the churches wherever he went. He himself had known the healing touch.
He had the best of reason for expecting healing now. Indeed he seems not to have doubted that the healing touch would come. But it didn't.
Again he prays specifically for healing. Still there is no change. The thorn stayed. Its needle-point gets sharper, and sticks persistently in. Ugh! how it hurt! A third time Paul goes to his knees, how earnestly and intensely some of us can understand.
Now, please notice keenly, there's an answer to his prayers. There are three items in the answer. First of all, the man is answered though the petition is denied. Paul is not ignored. His prayer is heard. Christ never ignores any one, nor fails to hear any honest prayer.
The second thing to note is just what Christ said in His answer. I can see dear saintly old Paul one night all alone with his thorn. The day's work is done, the stitching of tent-canvas, and talking to the crowds, and to the two's and three's.
He is tired. He has gone to bed. He would sleep but for that thorn. He turns and twists, and longs for the sleep that doesn't come. And he wonders why the healing touch hasn't come. He is just a bit perplexed, maybe a bit depressed.
Then, quietly, very quietly, a voice comes, an inner voice, quiet as Hermon's dew, clear as the tone of a bell.
And the voice said, "Paul, I know about that thorn, and how it hurts. It hurts me, too. It hurts me because it hurts you.
"But, Paul," the voice goes quietly steadily on, "it's a bit better to let the thorn stay, because, only so can I have the use of you, the full free use of you, in My plans for the world I gave My life's blood for."
And a hush comes over the dear man's spirit. There comes with the voice a look within. Instinctively Paul begins to understand better. A soft clear light breaks.
He knows, at once, yet better, how true is the word being so gently spoken. He knows that the diagnosis is accurate. And he lies quiet, with a great deep hush in his inner spirit. That's the second bit of the answer.
Then the voice comes again. When the pause has deepened the impression, more comes. The voice goes on in yet quieter gentler lingering tones,
"Paul, I'll be so near you, you will have such a sense of My presence, that you'll forget the thorn even while you feel it cutting in."
Years after I can see the blessed old service scarred saint in his own hired house in Rome. It's rather late at night.
The crowds have been thronging the house, crowds from all over the world, in this great world centre, Rome. An Egyptian had sat over there, and a dark-skinned Ethiopian yonder.
A cultured-faced man from the Euphrates, and a fair-skinned Caucasian had been standing in the corner side by side. Keen-eyed Greeks, vigorous Latins, alert courtly Spaniards, the cultured and the scholarly, the unlettered and the simple folks, gently jostled each other.
They had crowded in, listening so intently, and questioning so eagerly. And the unseen Presence had been so real. And Paul's heart was all aglow as with a pressure of the hand they had slipped out into the night. Now, they have all gone. Once again the burning Christ message has gone out to the whole world.
Paul is sitting quietly, slowing down inside before seeking bed and sleep. One arm is around young Timothy, not quite so young now. The other hand is laid caressingly upon dear faithful Doctor Luke's arm.
They're talking in subdued tones. And as you listen in you hear Paul say, "Do you know, dear old friends, I wouldn't have missed the thorn for the presence..."
And the sentence breaks off. A bit of hoarseness, the hoarseness of deep emotion, thickens his voice. And the look of deep reverence and love mingled deepens in his companions' faces.
Then he goes quietly on, "...the presence, the wondrous glory-presence of Jesus, beyond words, that has been with me through it all."
And the clearer light breaks on his listeners. The inner understanding deepens. A great silence falls on them. They know they're at the deep springs.
They are being allowed to see a bit into the Lord's passion for His world, and the place this grayed veteran is having in it. The emergency of sin has gripped both, the unseen One and this man so great in his suffering and in his service.
Yet, yet, there's a bit to add. I am clear, and I grow yet clearer, that our Lord Jesus still prefers to take the thorn away. And He will if He may have His way, His first way.
Graduation day comes later to Paul. It came one day just outside that city, with an escort of imperial Roman soldiers. Yet, very softly, and still very distinctly, let the words be spoken, it might have come sooner.
But in the mix-up of a strong human will, not unlike other wills we know, and a world in the sore emergency of sin's havoc, and the great passion of the Heart that broke once, things were as they were.
There's something yet farther to note here of much significance. Without any question Paul was repeatedly conscious, indeed continuously conscious of Christ's healing touch on his body through all this rare difficult experience.
As one reads the whole story through the fact is plainly borne in that Christ's healing touch, in protection, in strengthening, and in actual healing, was with Paul through all those thorn years.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to fit in chronologically the beginning of this distressing ailment. But one remembers that Paul had been left for dead just outside I.ystra in Asia Minor. And the intense hatred of those Antioch Jews would make them do a thorough job of stoning. Their efficiency is beyond question.
Yet Paul gets up, rests over night, and pushes on the next day. He carried out the itinerary as planned, apparently. That would be an outstanding instance of healing under most extreme circumstances.
And no one can read Paul's own long remarkable list of the experiences he went through without a deep impression of Christ's direct touch on his body throughout.
I.isten, and think into, not merely the bodily suffering involved, but the tremendous natural breakdown of bodily strength. Five times he had been whipped on his bare back with forty stripes-save-one,
And three times with the yet more severe Roman rods save none, once stoned, three times shipwrecked, a night and a day drifting exposed out in the open sea,
The acute hardship of the crude, typical traveling of that time and of the Orient, perils of swollen rivers, of robbers not hesitating to use violence, of hunger and thirst, cold and in sufficient clothing.
Think slowly into that list. Clearly enough the experience with the thorn was the more striking to Paul because in the midst of Christ's constant healing touch upon Paul's body.
Paul experienced the threefold healing, the continual protecting restraint upon disease, the strengthening of bodily functions, and the direct positive healing. Else he could never have gone through what he did. The thorn was the more marked as an exception in the midst of such experiences.
The thing that stands out biggest in the whole story here is this: it was for service' sake that this thorn experience was allowed.
It was for the sake of a race of men, swamped by the terrific emergency of sin, and in the scarcity of men at hand available, that the thing occurred.
It was distinctly exceptional. Had it been merely Paul personally that was concerned the whole trend of Christ's dealing makes clear that this ailment would have gone like the others. But service controlled. The world's emergency gripped.
Jacob's Limp
There's one more of these pictures in this rare old gallery of honest portraits, the picture of Jacob at Jabbok (Genesis 32:24-32).
In that strange night struggle between the sturdy Hebrew herdsman and an unrecognized Assailant, Jacob fully holds his own. Then toward dawn the strange Assailant does a strange thing.
Jacob is startled to feel a slight touch on the inner side of his thigh, and at once the thigh bone goes out of joint.
Instantly Jacob knows that this is no mere man. No man could have done that. And two things at least crowd in faster than he can think.
His power as a wrestler is clean gone, at once. His native shrewdness makes him think of that. But, far deeper, comes the recognition of who this unrecognized Stranger of the dark is.
He's been fighting against God! And then, all these years he had been fighting against God! and against God's plans for his life! Unconsciously fighting? Half consciously fighting?
At least this much can be said for Jacob, not recognizing how much it meant that he had been insistently stubbornly fighting against God, and God's plan. (But then, is that so unusual? and among good people?)
It's the one instance in Scripture of God's own direct touch on a man's body, injuring, laming him. And mark keenly that it was not a disease.
It was a slowing down of the man's gait. He had been so sure of himself. Now he must go through life halting, limping.
Well, there's a purpose under this exceptional act of God's. There's always a purpose where He is concerned. And it is always a purpose of love.
This man Jacob was hindering, actually holding back, and threatening to block completely, God 's world plan. It wasn't merely Jacob 's own life that was concerned. God 's plan for the race hinges on this man.
A man may hinder or break God's plan for his own life, if he will. All God's plans wait on our consent. The sovereign God waits on the sovereignty of man's choice.
But no man can break God's broad plan for the world. He may slow it up. He does that so much. God 's sovereignty simply means that, ultimately, through the intricate network of human wills, His great plan will work out, and always in some way through man's choice, freely given.
Even now, Jacob could have balked still further. It wasn't merely the touch of power on his thigh that won. It was that, plus something more, far deeper and tenderer, the touch of love upon his heart.
Jacob could have fought against the power. But the love, the patient waiting, and putting up with his wayward conduct, all these long years, the gracious wooing, in so many ways -- !
He could see it all now. It was this that bent his will at last, from within, to this strong, waiting, loving will of his great God.
Note keenly, that this is a crisis. Most reverently it can be said it was God's crisis. God's plan was in danger. A world's salvation hung in the balance, hung on this one man's consent to be used, in God's way, in God's plan.
It is a threefold crisis. It was a crisis of available material. Jacob was the son of Isaac, the grandson of Abraham, through whom the world plan must be worked out.
He was the twin son, it is true. But the other, Esau, was plainly disqualified by temperament. Impulsive, hot-headed, wholly unreliable, bartering his most sacred possession for something to eat, as unstable as water; he was wholly unfitted for leadership in carrying forward God's plan. God was narrowed down to Jacob.
Jacob was a cool, steady, calculating man of method and habit. He was a thinker and a hard worker. He was a man to do things. But he had the mean moral strain in him. He was intensely selfish. He was forever grasping, cunningly taking advantage of the other fellow. He was unscrupulous. He never hesitated at the most underhanded move to gain his point. Jacob was morally contemptible.
But his failings were moral. Esau's were mental. The moral could be changed by grace, if once Jacob's consent could be gotten.
It was not really that Jacob was the better man, he was the less-poor of the two. It was a crisis of available material. God needs the best. Jacob must be used, but first he must be changed. So the exceptional thing was done.
It was a crisis of time. Long years Abraham and Sarah had been wooed, graciously wooed, patiently put up with Isaac was the child of the changed Abraham and Sarah. He took on their later traits.
And now, for many long years, a full quarter of a century at least, God had been calling Jacob up to the higher level. But Jacob's firmness and strength teetered over into stubbornness. He gets more set.
And he grows more stubborn, more uglily obstinate, more set than ever. Time pressed. It grew less. The stubbornness grew more, and then yet more. In a crisis of time God did the exceptional thing.
It was a world crisis. God's plan concerned a world. A Babel, a Flood, a Sodom-and-Gomorrah, tremendous moral catastrophes, these told plainly the moral outcome threatening.
Through Jacob and Jacob's line was to come the little messenger-nation, the Saviour-nation, the Saviour Himself. All unknown, unsuspected by any but God, it was the world crisis. For the sake of the race, to save His great plan for saving a world, God did the exceptional thing.
And, so, by the fords of the Jabbok, under that gentle touch of supernatural power, at the break of a new day, Jacob surrendered his proud stubborn will.
The touch on Jacob's thigh was meant for his heart, like the later touch on the disciples' feet. Jacob felt it there. His heart broke. He had actually been fighting God! He never really meant that.
That heart-breaking touch on the thigh reached into the will, the citadel. The will bent. With all its disciplined strength it bent, and bent clean over.
He quit wrestling. He had to. The disabled thigh settled the wrestling. He took to clinging. And he became the prince, the Israel, prince with God, pleading for forgiveness and blessing, and prevailing.
And God yielded to that penitent clinging plea. God had saved two, the man and the world-plan. So only could it be. The world plan was saved through the man. No one ever knows how much hangs on his saying "yes" to God.
Jacob learned to walk with God, by limping. God tried to get him to walk without the limp. He preferred that. He still does.
Jacob got along faster now because he's been slowed down. He never walked so fast in his life in the true path as now when he goes slowly limping, limping along in his body.
One can well understand that God did what He did reluctantly. It was an emergency transaction. And all the world is in an emergency just now. And God is still needing men.
These are the three pictures in this old gallery, Job's ulcerous boils and the ash heap schoolhouse, Paul's needle-pointed thorn, and Jacob's halting limp.
These are three scholars in God's school of suffering. Job graduated early. He learned quickly. It was an intense session but a short one, intensive school work.
Paul's graduation came later, as did Jacob's. Have they had a reunion up there, these three, in the Teacher's own presence, and praised Him out of full hearts? I think likely. But I am quite sure it pleases the Teacher most when we work for early graduation.
One notes keenly that in each case the man concerned was a leader. That makes a great difference. The Devil lays special siege to the leaders. Leaders need more schooling because they touch the lives of so many.
Yet no one lives to himself. None of us can tell what plan of service of Christ's may centre in our glad consent to His personal plan for the life.
In each case it was a crisis, the meeting place of dismal failure and glorious victory. And the man was always the decisive factor.
One recognizes crises best backwards. We are so much wiser, afterwards. If only we might be quick and true to obey, for Christ's sake, before we know it may be a crisis for some one or some plan.
For service' sake, in a crisis, the leader may find things happening. Because so much is hinging, of which he is unaware. If, ah! yes, if, one might only obey gladly and fully and quickly, what Christ asks, because He asks, regardless of all else.
Keep Your Hand Out
And so there may be a waiting time. Bodily healing may be needed, desperately needed perhaps. And we may be in real touch of heart with Christ. And we may pray for the healing touch. And yet, it may not come. There may be a waiting time.
If so, it means simply this: we're needing some schooling. There's some plan involved. And the thing is to be good scholars. Cultivate the keen inner ear and the quiet inner spirit, so we can hear the Teacher's voice. For He is speaking. If we are still enough we'll hear.
But no one expects to stay in school all his days. We should look forward to a glad graduation day. We should plan early graduation. Our hands should be stretched out, stretched expectantly out, till they grasp what has been promised.
I can never forget my mother's very brief paraphrase of that long verse in the Third of Malachi (3:10) The verse begins, you remember, "bring ye the whole tithe in," and it ends up with "I will pour" the blessing out till you'll be embarrassed for space.
My mother's brief paraphrase was this: Give all He asks; take all He promises....
I heard a homely story of a New York City newsboy from the slums. He was in a batch of slumboys sent into the country for two weeks by the Fresh Air Fund.
He found himself, at the end of the journey, in a large, comfortable farmhouse. A motherly woman received him cordially. When bedtime came she took him to a bedroom.
And she talked to him, as she turned down the bed covers. This had been her own son's room when he was a boy, she explained. She hoped he would enjoy a good sleep, and be down early in the morning, and so she bade him "good night."
Morning came, and breakfast time, but the boy didn't appear. She called up the stairs but there was no response.
She went up-stairs, found the room door open, and looked in. But there was no boy to be seen. Where was the boy?
Perplexed and wondering, her eye caught sight of a ragged shoe on the floor at the edge of the bed. Stooping down she saw the boy sound asleep on the floor under the bed.
She called to him: "Time to get up, my boy, breakfast ready." He came crawling out, rubbing his eyes, "Yes 'm, yes 'm."
And as she turned to leave she said quietly pointing to the bed, "Why didn't you sleep in the bed?"
The boy turned a surprised look, following the line of her pointing finger, toward the bed. "Bed!" he said simply. "Is that a bed?"
He had never slept in a bed. A door-stoop, a box, a barrel, or the like, had been the only bed the boy had ever known. Ah! yes, there are hundreds of them in the heathen slum fringe of all our great cities.
Are you sleeping under the bed, taking less than Christ has provided?
VIII. The Devil's Healing: Imitations And Counterfeits
It is Christ's first will for us that we should be pure in heart, strong in purpose, quick and accurate in discerning evil under any disguise, poised and mature in judgment, gentle in our contacts, with an inner song ringing, content in circumstances, and healed of all our bodily, ills and ailments, according to His Word, through glad surrender of habit and life to His Spirit's touch.
  
This page Copyright © 1999 Peter Wade. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://www.peterwade.com/
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