As I reflect on what I am thankful for this year, it is easy to focus on the things that quickly come to mind such as the salvation the Lord has given me that I don’t deserve, the family he has given me that I don’t deserve, and the friends and church family that I don’t deserve.
But this year I am particularly drawn to the “not so easy and slow to mind” things that I am thankful for. Things that go against our natural desires and ambitions because this things are the challenges that the Lord brings into our lives to keep us humble and dependent on him.
I am drawn to a text like the Apostle Paul’s unanswered prayer in 2 Corinthians 12.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
In this context Paul has been defending his apostleship and love to the Corinthian church against false teachers and doing so he had to perceivably “boast” in how God has used him in his labors and sufferings. By all case and points Paul could have looked as his life and work and draw the conclusion that he was something special that caused God’s attention to be drawn to him. But he said that God gave him a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble.
And what is notable is that Paul cried out three times for the Lord to remove the thorn but God does not answer his request but instead says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Learning to be thankful when the Lord brings a trouble into our lives to keep us humble is hard to do but has great benefit that outweighs the circumstance and draws us near to the Lord. Our intimacy with the Lord changes dramatically because we are truly “drawing near to God” as recipients of his grace. It helps shape our prayer life for us to be about his will and not our own. It helps us to be truly dependent and not determined for our own wills to happen.
May this Thanksgiving offer to you an opportunity to reflect on the times of this past year and even your life as a whole where you can have an honest moment with God about those challenges that have caused you to rest in these words:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”