If God Says “No”                                                                    9/18/49

 

Scripture:  II Corinthians 12: 6-12

 

Text:  II Corinthians 12: 8;  “For this thing I besought God thrice, that it might depart from me.”

 

Paul was probably the greatest of all Christian missionaries.  One very significant observation about him is one discovery that he bore some kind of affliction all his days.  He had what he referred to as a “thorn in the flesh.”  We are not told what it was.  One great Jewish scholar thinks that Paul was an epileptic.  Other scholars have decided that he suffered from persistent malaria; still others that he had arthritis.  Whatever may have been his malady, Paul was a chronic sufferer, and he was troubled.  He was spending his life for his Lord and he saw no reason why he should not ask for, and expect, deliverance from his “thorn in the flesh.”  He wrote to the Christians at Corinth: “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.”

 

Since Paul was never cured but carried his affliction to his grave, the answer to that prayer of his own desire was clearly “No.”  There is a positive aspect to the answer which Paul was a good enough man to understand.  But it is the sort of thing that is not decided by man but rather is ordained of God.

 

Paul’s experience was one which is perfectly familiar to countless of us Christians ever since his time.  We beseech the Father for deliverance from suffering or other trouble.  We pray earnestly for escape from some impending calamity.  We ask for the healing of a loved one.  Some of our most fervent and frightened prayers are uttered for the life and health of our loved ones.  Probably all of us in this room have poured out such prayers.  Certainly I have.  Sometimes the answer has been a merciful “Yes.”  Sometimes it has clearly been “No.”

 

Some years ago, in an early pastorate, I talked for some time with a man who had lost his wife, the still-young mother of his five children.  She had died as the result, I am convinced, of a surgical error, following an operation not usually regarded as dangerous.  As I remember it, she had lived a week or so following the operation, at first very cheerfully; then, realizing she was not to recover, soberly helping him to plan moves for the care of their family after she should be gone.  She reassured him of her love, threw her arms about his neck, smiled, and said with her characteristic gaiety, “Gee, you’ve been a grand guy!  And then, a little while later she was gone.  As he told me about it later (for his wife had died in a hospital away from our community) he said: “I have never prayed so hard in all my life as I did for her life.”  But the answer had been, “No.”

 

King David had the same experience.  His precious son lay desperately ill.  David laid aside all of the splendor of his kingly role, dressed himself in the coarse clothes of Hebrew humility, lay all night on the earth, fasted and prayed continuously through the days of the child’s illness that his son’s life might be spared.  When the boy died at the end of a week, the royal servants were afraid to tell the king.  He guessed it by their whispering and asked them directly for the news.  Then, when told of the sorrowful end, he surprised them by getting up, washing, changing his clothes, going to the chapel to worship, and then asking for and eating food.  He had pleaded for something he wanted with all his being.  The answer had been a clear “No.”  And David was accepting the answer, as indeed we must all do when we are denied the way of our own wish.

[II Samuel 12: 15-23]

 

Paul was no spiritual beginner.  He was a mature spiritual giant.  He wrote more of the New Testament than any other, and part of it earlier than any other writer.  He had started more churches than any other single man before or since.  He endured persecution and risked death numerous times for the sake of the gospel of Christ.  But despite all of this that seems to us so distinguished and deserving a record, God said “No” when Paul asked repeatedly to be relieved of his affliction.  And Paul went right on suffering and serving to the end of his days.  A lesser man would have complained that it was unfair or that he had not prayed aright, or perhaps that he hadn’t yet prayed enough.

 

If God says “No” to the desires of our heart, desires that we think are virtuous and rightly expressed and reasonable, how shall we take it?  Paul took his pain in his stride:  “Most gladly ---- will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

 

We take the wrong direction when we complain: “I don’t see why God has permitted this hardship to come to me.  I’ve tried all my life to do what is right, and it seems to me I deserve a better fate,” or when we say, “I don’t see why Mr. So-and-so should have been afflicted with such terrible trouble.  He has been a good man, useful, righteous, a fine church man.  Honestly, you sometimes wonder about the justice of it all, don’t you!”  Actually it only gets us into spiritual despondency, it seems to me, to brood over what we conceive to be the justice or injustice of suffering; becoming sorry for ourselves, rebellious over a turn of fate for our friends.  The mark of such spiritual maturity as Paul had is to take the answer “No” in quite a different spirit.

 

When, in the mercy and purpose of the Creator, rains come to refresh the earth, they fall on the just and the unjust alike.  [Matthew 5: 45].  They fall on gardener and picnicker alike.  If they reach flood proportions they fall alike on jungle areas or on the soil exposed to erosion by man’s carelessness in cultivation.  Disease and disaster are not particular respecters of persons.  Even Jesus, pleading in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup of man’s hatred and torture might pass from him, found no escape from that agony.  God said “No.”  Jesus said, “Thy will be done.”  Without that terrible “No” there would have been no Easter to stir our dull souls.  God used that awful “no” in Gethsemane to bring a great light beyond our darkness.

 

We are naive, mundane, and spiritually childish when we resent God’s firm “No.”  Like Martin Luther we shout our rage: “My God, art thou dead?”  We may even turn away with the comment that we don’t believe in God any more.  A man said to his minister, “My wife and I have been praying incessantly for God to heal our sick son.  If the boy doesn’t get well soon, we’ll likely lose our faith in God.”  You see, our unbelief, under such circumstances, is largely a matter of psychological frustration.

 

We nurse along the feeling that by the way of Christian faith our loved ones should be more favored from death and surely we should be healthy, wealthy and popular.  It isn’t necessarily so!  Some of the saints may have been robust.  Others were not. Francis of Assisi apparently had tuberculosis.  Most of the saints of history have been without worldly wealth.  I can’t think of any who were very rich in material goods.   Many of them were in what might be called severe poverty.  And certainly they have had no assurance of popularity.  Savanarola, John Huss, and John Wycliffe, were all burned at the stake.  There seems nothing in the New Testament or in Christian history to suggest that Christian prayer should necessarily make one healthy, wealthy or popular.  Some enjoy robust vigor, comfortable possessions, and the high regard of many friends.  Others are not so fortunate.

 

1)  When God said “No” to Paul, the great apostle came up with the idea that he could use his continuing affliction to minister to his humility; - as he said, “lest I be exalted above measure.”  Paul had been a proud and stubborn man.  He was eloquent; he was brilliant; he had been an unbending Pharisee whose pride got in the way of his insight.  When neither Dr. Luke nor the prayers of his own lips brought relief from his affliction, Paul decided to use it as a continuing reminder against his haughty pride, keeping him decently humble.

 

2)  He did feel that he had received this kind of answer: “My grace is sufficient for thee.”  In his weakness, God’s strength became clear.  In humility, he could hear that answer.  God’s “No” is not that of a petulant parent who wishes that the kids would shut up and leave him alone.  It is the “No” of a considerate parent who has a correlating “Yes” opening a new road beside the one that is closed.  Paul had this compensating spiritual gift, the knowledge that where his own endurance ran low, the power of God would make him adequate.

 

The author, Katherine Mansfield, who died in 1922 at the age of only 34, after a long struggle with disease, had written in her journal:

 

            “I should like this to be accepted as my confession.  There is no limit to human suffering.  When one thinks, “Now I have touched the bottom of the sea - now I can go no deeper,’ one does go deeper.  I do not want to die without leaving a record of my belief that suffering can be overcome.  For I do believe it.  what must one do?  Do not resist. Take it.  Be overwhelmed.  Accept it fully.  Make it a part of life.  Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.  So suffering must become love --- I must pass from personal love to greater love.”

 

Her acceptance of suffering and its transformation into love became something clear for the light of God to shine through.  By way of that light, her husband, John Middleton-Murry, an agnostic, saw so much of God that he decided to serve God as a priest of the church of England.

 

Though there may be no healing following some of our earnest petitions, there is always help and power to use suffering creatively for the purposes of God’s grace and light.

 

“Prayer is not the overcoming of God’s reluctance; it is laying hold of God’s willingness,” looking for the “Yes” that goes along with the “No.”  [The “Yes” is not always apparent unless one is prepared to see it.  One is not prepared by last minute rushes.  (Sprinter down village street missed train.  Stationmaster, unhelpfully, “Son, you just didn’t start soon enough!”)]

 

We got along rather nicely, we feel when all’s fair, prosperous, healthy, and reasonably pleasant.  We act as though we could get along optionally without God.  We learn our need of God when we meet sickness, shattering sorrow, desperate failure.  The one who meets these best is the one who has consistently “practiced the presence of God” and knows that there is help of which he knows not, sustenance for the soul not of his own making, a way where he saw no road before.

 

3)  Paul testified about his persistent thorn in the flesh:  “When I am weak, then am I strong.”  His physical weakness became the occasion of his spiritual strength.  [Toyohiko Kagawa - had spoken 3 or 4 times that day - spent after English practice - spoke ably to full house in Japanese for one and one-half hours.  Such power doesn’t just happen.  It comes from confident roots grown habitually deep in the love of God.]

 

When God says “No” to what you or I want, remember that what we really need is not so much what we ask, but God himself, his grace in our disappointment, his strength in our weakness.

 

The more we lay hold on God’s willingness, the less we are disturbed by his reluctance.  The more we claim his strength, the less we are worried by our weakness.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 18, 1949.