Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
July 3-4, 2021
“Breaking Point Or Turning Point?”
II Corinthians 12:7-10
Rev. John R. Larson
Ascension Lutheran Church Littleton, Colorado
This is one of the most well-known passages in the Bible for everyone who has asked God for help in a crisis and has received His most wonderful response. Today I want to talk about whether you have reached the breaking point or the turning point in your life.
In our text from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians it seems that Paul tells the folks there that he had reached his breaking point. “There was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.” (II Cor. 12:7b-8) Three times – over and over again.
He begged the Lord to remove this thorn in the flesh. The word thorn can also mean a sliver, like a piece of old wood that we run our hand over, only to get the slivers deep under our skin. Paul had reached the breaking point and the Lord was the only one who could help him.
A lot has been written about what this thorn was. And what is written contains a lot of guesses. Some say that it was a person or persons who stood against Paul’s message of God’s salvation in Jesus. Others speculate that it was a particular temptation that plagued his Christian walk. Some say that the thorn in the flesh was his terrible eyesight caused by malaria. I’ve even heard that it could be gastritis, lice, or Malta fever which is accompanied by loss of hair. Now, that is a thorn in the flesh!
Perhaps it is just as well that Paul never describes what his thorn was because everyone’s thorn is different. The common element is that it destroys one’s focus on the rest of life. Its pain, its anguish, its suffering, its fear, its obsession is so great that work and family, God and life, shrink into the background. Alcoholism can be one’s thorn; drug addiction another’s; cancer can be a thorn and temptation is a thorn; so is mental illness and living with great grief.
The thorn in our flesh can be the breaking point in our life. It is the pain of our soul, the loss of our hope, the darkness of life.
At 21 years of age Bruce could see no need for God. He had life figured out, everything was going just as it should go. But at 31 Bruce had a different view on things. He had experienced personality conflicts at work; his children were challenging his wisdom; his bank account was more difficult to balance; and for the first time in life he was observing the need for dieting and exercise.
Bruce became aware of his inadequacies as he tried to face life. He began to see the need for the place of God in his life, the place for a power much greater than his own, the need for divine forgiveness, the need for a connection with others with similar needs. Bruce went from the breaking point to the turning point.
Everyone here should know about the breaking point. For God’s people the breaking point leads us to the turning point. The heaviest of life’s aches, those thorns in the flesh, can be seen as a good gift from God. Martin Luther said, “Do not be worried; indeed, such a trial is the very sign of God’s grace and love for me.”
The turning point is this – when we know our weakness we will run to God’s strength. To Paul’s pleading and begging to have the thorn taken away immediately, never to return again, God gave this answer, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul stated, amazingly, that now he would boast about his weaknesses, because that is when God’s strength could finally be shown in him.
Tim Lindeman, a dear friend of mine and a pastor at Peace Lutheran in Arvada and more importantly, the father of Jenna and Christa, and the grandfather of Tobin, Jensen, Emery, Ellie and Norah, is deaf in one ear. But in college, in his preparation for the ministry God had called him to do, he had reached a turning point. Tim was deaf in one ear already and then he began to grow deaf in the other ear. This could have been the breaking point. He could have given up and lost his faith in God. But Tim has said that during this time he would take long walks and talk to God and listen to God because during that time, before his hearing in that one ear came back, he wasn’t able to hear anyone else.
What he needed he got. More grace, sufficient grace, great strength to meet his weakness. For a number of years I visited Emilie who told me of her father, a strong German who had a poor, weak heart. Her father had had a heart attack and he and his then young daughter, Emilie, were going in the ambulance to the hospital. And Emilie was crying. But her father told her not to cry and said, “Emilie, if I had not had this I wouldn’t have known how to love my Lord.”
God did not take the thorn away from this man. He had a weak heart for many years and he died of a weak heart. But the weak heart was made strong in the confidence of God’s love. To his heart God brought the riches of grace, forgiveness, life. God brought the grace of Jesus Christ to this man. Now God and His promises were not secondary, but primary.
God is always at work in brokenness. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. Paul would not have been a strong vessel in God’s use without coming to a breaking point and the turning point. We know that before we can be given forgiveness and cleansing we have to come before God with a contrite, broken heart. First, we confess before God and acknowledge before everyone what is in this heart and mind, that we are people who are unclean, sinful, not holy in what we say or do or think. We are broken. Then, we hear the news that God has buried all our sins, that we are people of a new creation, that the old is gone and past has been forgotten. God will give to us sufficient grace. He will meet all our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus. Jesus and His death brought us real life. We are whole.
If you have pleaded with God and He has not taken away that temptation in your soul, that pain in your body, that heartache that consumes your thoughts, if He has not taken away that thorn in the flesh, He may be saying to you, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” When you are weak, then you are strong because God has become your strength for salvation and life.
In Romans 5, this same man Paul says, “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us…” (Romans 5:3-5a) We normally consider suffering leading to disappointment, which leads to depression, that leads to hopelessness. It seems to be a downward line. We are ready to throw it all in. But not so here. Suffering. Unwavering perseverance. Noble character. Strong hope. All this is because God is involved with His mighty grace.
In February of 1960, Adolph Coors III was kidnapped and held for ransom. He was one of the most famous men in Colorado, and very wealthy. Seven months later his body was found. He had been shot to death. His son and namesake, Adolph #4, was only 15 years old. He had not only lost his father, he had also lost his best friend. When Joseph Corbett, the man who killed his father was found and sentenced to life in prison, Adolph hated the man. He grew in hate daily.
Then in 1975 Adolph Coors became a Christian. But he could not get rid of the hatred that he had in his heart for the man who had murdered his father. Resentment grew in the heart of this new Christian. He knew that the hatred for Corbett was alienating him from his walk with God and also from others. Coors went down to Canon City, the maximum-security prison here in Colorado and tried to talk with Corbett. Corbett refused. So Coors left a Bible inscribed with this message: “I’m here to see you today and I’m sorry that we could not meet. As a Christian I am summoned by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to forgive. I do forgive you, and I ask you to forgive me for the hatred I’ve held in my heart for you.” Later Coors confessed, “I have a love for that man that only Jesus Christ could have put in my heart.”
Coors had reached the breaking point which led him, by the goodness of God, to the turning point. Only God could turn his heart filled with weakness into a heart strong in true forgiveness. God is at work in us this day and every day to lead us to the turning point. In our struggles and pain God guides us to the turning point where we fall into the arms of our waiting God.
For our forgiveness, our righteousness, our eternity and for everyday living we fall into the arms of our God who says to us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Our breaking point wonderfully becomes our turning point! Amen!!
(This message was first preached to the saints of God at Ascension on July 23, 2006)
