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Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good
<page 152>This had been His plan from the beginning, and He had woven my life together to lead me into it. Everything that had happened, no matter how much grief it had caused, had been orchestrated to make me into a person who could carry His Spirit for His glory.
A man's steps are of the LORD; how then can a man understand his own way?
God doesn’t let us know all of the details of His plan for us, and we couldn’t understand them even if He did. Nevertheless, I believe He shows us enough of His plan so we can work with Him in it. This is how Jesus lived, and He is our example:
Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.”
The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way…
At the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, I believed I had seen enough of the details of God’s plan for me to identify a significant piece of what it was. My problems hadn’t been random occurrences on a meaningless planet. He had been calling the shots from the beginning, and I was recognizing a pattern to those shots. It led to some surprising conclusions, but those conclusions made enough sense that I was willing to tentatively accept them.
The family I grew up in had been damaged by alcoholism and sexual sin for generations. There was a string of drunkenness, adultery, molestation, and divorce that stretched as far back as I knew. Under these and many other influences, I had fallen into a bizarre sexual fetish that caused perplexing problems in my life. …What my ancestors and I meant for evil, God meant for good.
It seemed that the timing of my sin was significant. At an early age, it had forced me to deal with many issues that would not become widespread in American society until well into my adult years. As western culture has become so sexualized that erotic images are just about unavoidable, others now face the sorts of temptations I once faced. I concluded that God had known about this and had set me apart to minister to some of those who would be hurt. He allowed me to experience what they would in order to prepare me to share with them.
In addition, God had seen to it that I would grow up in an epicenter of a growing spiritual earthquake. In Woodstock, NY, I had been exposed to philosophies and demonic influences that would later take root across the country. Through it all, He had in mind that I would learn about these influences so I would be able to help others. …My society and the demons meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
<page 153>The locust swarm that came against my soul drove me, a fun-loving kid, to my knees where for decades Jesus had revealed Himself to me. By His providence, I had never found other Christians who could tell me much about my problems. This was because He had given me the gifts and calling to learn on my own, and He wanted to develop them within me. He inspired me to memorize many parts of the Bible, to study, and to listen to the voice of His Spirit. Slowly, I found the grace to deal with the warfare, pulling down stronghold after stronghold, gradually finding freedom.
This had been His plan from the beginning, and He had woven my life together to lead me into it. Everything that had happened, no matter how much grief it had caused, had been orchestrated to make me into a person who could carry His Spirit for His glory.
Even then God had designs on me. Why, when I was still in my mother's womb he chose and called me out of sheer generosity!
(Galatians 1:15, The Message)
The struggles had been tools to humble and prepare me. Every time I wanted to become independent of Jesus or to sit back and rest in my own abilities, temptations drove me back to His throne for grace.
When I started to get selfish in my spirituality, seeking to minimize my pain, He knew the ministry He had called me to would involve the ache of dealing with people who were hopeless and despised by society. He didn’t want me to selfishly isolate myself from them, so He used the typical adolescent influences that came against my children to wake me up. In order to remain a part of their lives, I had to overcome my desire to run from evil. This led me to a place of Brokenness in which I learned to engage the world rather than fleeing from it.
In the process, God showed me how much He loved His prodigal children. He wanted to do for them what He had done for me – to weave the tapestry of their lives into something beautiful. Though they had different gifts, callings, and challenges than I did, and though their journey would not exactly match mine, the same basic message of His desire to meet them in their uniqueness applied. He loved them and was working everything (even their rebellion) together for good. He wanted me to encourage them to turn to Him and learn to cooperate with Him so they could experience the benefits of His plan.
I wasn’t sure what to do about these sorts of conclusions. I hardly knew anyone who admitted to having sexual problems. In fact, Christians rarely talked about the subject. It was as if God had prepared me with a message and there was no one to listen. But I knew that if indeed I was seeing what He was doing, He would take care of the details of getting the message out. He would open the right doors at the right time.
I also knew that He could have ended my sexual struggles at any time. In fact, with some changes in my childhood He could have kept me from them altogether. Yet He chose to allow me to take a different path, and though this was tough for me to accept, I believed He had made this decision for my sake and for the sake of others.
<page 154> My struggles had forced me to face a large number of issues I would have otherwise been too frightened to consider. They left me with no good choice but His daily strength and helped me find answers where I didn’t even know there were questions. He had allowed me to have a thorn in my flesh so He could meet me with His grace.
And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. … And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness…”
Paul’s thorn is controversial, so please bear with me while I explain what I mean when I refer to it. Some people treat it as if it were the sort of weakness in which Paul had little choice but to roll over and passively accept what was happening. I don’t see it that way at all.
First, like a real-life thorn, a spiritual thorn has a limited effect. It doesn’t totally disable a person; it just makes life uncomfortable. It also has a purpose. In Paul’s case, the thorn kept him from being exalted above measure. This could mean that it kept him from exalting himself, but it could also mean it kept others from exalting him. If that is the case, the thorn was designed to remind everyone that Paul was a man like any other.
Also, the phrase “a thorn in the flesh” doesn’t necessarily refer to a problem in Paul’s physical flesh, like a sickness. In Numbers 33:55, God speaks of the Canaanites as thorns in the Israelite’s sides. Obviously this didn’t mean that an Israelite could get a Canaanite in his physical side. A thorn was a metaphor for limited suffering. Thorns don’t kill people; they cause pain and make it tougher to get work done. This is what the Canaanites did to Israel, and it is what Paul’s thorn did to him.
What was Paul’s limited suffering? I don’t believe the Bible tells us, but I do believe it gives us some hints. First, he called it a messenger of Satan. The Greek word ‘aggelos’, which is translated messenger, could just as easily be translated ‘angel’ – so this could mean that it was a demonic being of some sort.[72] Another hint is that the context of 2 Corinthians 11 and 12 describes persecution against Paul. For example:
…I've worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death's door time after time. I've been flogged five times with the Jews' thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. …If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity.
(2 Corinthians 11:23-25; 30, The Message)
Although Paul doesn’t say that this persecution resulted from the work of the messenger of Satan, it matches what we would expect from a satanic thorn. The devil was obviously inspiring the trouble, and it hurt Paul without stopping Him (like a painful thorn). Also, the word ‘infirmity’ in 2 Corinthians 11:30 is the same Greek word that is translated ‘weakness’ in 2 Corinthians 12:9. In 2 Corinthians 11:30 it clearly refers to Paul’s persecution and hardship, so the thorn in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 might refer to the same thing.
<page 155>At the very least, we can say that although persecution may not have been the thorn Paul spoke of, it was an example of what a thorn is like. And based on that, a look at how Paul handled persecution can teach us a great deal about how to handle any spiritual thorn. Did he simply roll over and give up because of it? How could he? He was commanded to resist the devil:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.
…Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
It is a mistake to think that because God allows a demonic attack, we shouldn’t resist it. And it is downright dangerous to say, “Since this messenger of Satan is part of God’s plan for me, I have to passively accept it or I will be resisting God.” This misses the possibility that God has allowed the messenger specifically because He wants to teach us faith and action against it. He wants to make us stronger through warfare. Faith believes and pursues the promises of God even when we feel that God has given us a thorn in the flesh that makes doing so more difficult.
Ironically, a misguided surrender might prolong our suffering at the hands of a messenger of Satan. It could keep us from developing the character that would give us the inner strength to overcome the messenger and end the suffering. Thorns are not always permanent.
We see Paul resisting Satan’s persecution in many ways. For example, when Satan prevented him from visiting the church in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 2:18), he wrote letters to the believers there. He did what he could, and we have two books of the Bible as a result. This is an example of the sort of overcoming Paul mentioned in 2 Corinthians 12. God’s strength was perfected in his weakness:
Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Finally, we need to consider one more question concerning Paul’s thorn. James 4:7 says that Satan should flee when we resist, yet 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 says that the messenger of Satan did not depart from Paul. Did God’s promise fail?
I believe the apparent contradiction can be avoided by making a distinction between ‘fleeing’ (James 4:7) and ‘departing’ (2 Corinthians 12:8). Two different Greek words are used: ‘pheugo’ (from James 4:7) means to run away or flee; ‘aphistemi’ (from 2 Corinthians 12:8) means to remove, draw away, or depart.[73] Paul prayed that the messenger of Satan would ‘aphistemi’ <page 156>(depart) from him rather than that it would ‘pheugo’ (flee). Why? I believe it was because the messenger of Satan was already fleeing. It fled in the sense that it could not affect Paul enough to keep Paul from preaching the gospel with power. It fled in the sense that it was able to have only a limited impact on his life, rather than the fuller impact a messenger of Satan would like to have. At the same time, it didn’t ‘aphistemi’ (depart) in the sense that it continued to bother Paul. He was able to overcome, but he wasn’t able to free himself from ongoing harassment.
My thorn was my ongoing emotional attachment to the smoking fetish. I could resist and overcome in my actions, but I couldn’t keep it from harassing me. Unlike Paul, I wasn’t sure exactly what purpose it served; there was little danger of me being “exalted above measure.” Nevertheless, I trusted that God had a good reason for allowing it.
I had spent decades “hoping against hope” (Romans 4:18) that He would remove it, yet it had remained. The phrase “hoping against hope” speaks volumes. It is based on the idea that human hope has a limit. If our hope springs from only our own desires rather than God’s, we have no assurance that it is realistic. Holding on to that sort of expectation after it becomes apparent that it will not come to pass could lead to crushing disappointment, so God has given us an instinct to protect ourselves by letting go of unrealistic dreams. This keeps us from blindly investing in a fantasy.
This same natural protection mechanism, however, often shows up when we try to believe God. In this case our hope is based on something ultimately real, the word and Spirit of God, but we are still tempted to shrink back. God calls us to hope against hope by standing against this natural tendency. We continue to believe His promises long after our natural instincts have told us to give up. We decide to risk being crushed and hurt because we consider God trustworthy.
In my case, the pain of holding onto the hope of emotional freedom from the fetish had contributed to many of the intense emotions I have described in this book. A sense of betrayal had come over me from the decades of denying driving emotions that refused to leave. I wondered what was wrong with me that God wasn’t setting me free on the inside. Was I somehow defective? Was I rejected by Him? My hope had been deferred, and my heart felt sick (Proverbs 13:12)!
After learning about the Pain Drain, however, I was slowly finding ways to work through my Anger and Sorrow. God met me as I grieved the fact that the struggle was more than I knew how to handle. He drew near and sustained me as I expressed what it felt like to be a fragile human being facing the difficulty of hoping against hope. The place in my heart that was wounded by the battle was being healed by His touch.
I began to have confidence that God was birthing in me the next step in His journey. I trusted that His strength was being made perfect even while I experienced ongoing emotional weakness. He was meeting me where I was and loving me there. I was finding Contentment in the thought that this was the path He had chosen for me at this time. I shouldn’t judge myself for my situation. Though I considered the fetish to be a form of indwelling sin that I repented of in every <page 157>way I knew how, He wanted to use the long fight to overcome it for good. And to the extent it remained in my heart, I should be grateful for His daily supernatural intervention in the middle of that.
Accepting this was difficult, especially since I knew my battle might be far from over. In fact, death might be the only release for me. Yet if God chose to delay, even if it was for a lifetime, I knew I had to be willing to walk with Him in whatever He thought was best. I had just studied the book of Job, and I knew it would be a mistake to try to selfishly manipulate Him into helping in the way I wanted. I needed to humbly and gratefully accept whatever He chose to give.
Still, I didn’t think that my emotional attachment to the fetish would continue until death. I knew that the only reason God would allow a thorn like this, especially one related to sin, was for my good and the good of others – and I believed it was ultimately best for everyone if it was removed. It was serving a purpose for a time, and once that purpose was fulfilled, He would drive it away.
I hoped that this would be the case, and I dedicated myself to doing whatever I could to make sure it was. But I had to accept that I was not in control. I could seek total freedom all I wanted, but until the Lord brought about the right circumstances, insights, and power to change me, I would have to patiently wait. I needed to trust His love and power, believing that He must have a good reason for delaying.
This allowed me to see my sexual struggles in a much more positive light. Though their presence showed that the world was not under my control, it was still under God’s control. It wasn’t a place where evil forces were simply beating me up in spite of my best attempts to avoid them. Instead, it was a place in which God was weaving together the worst the devil could throw at me into the best outcome for His people.
The emotional impact of this was huge. It tore down yet another piece of the Unprotected Heart Stronghold. My Heavenly Father was teaching me how to parent myself through the continuing emotional harassment of the fetish. He was telling me that He wasn’t neglecting me, and my struggles weren’t the result of some willful sin on my part. Instead, they were the path to healing that He had chosen. I was on a journey in which I was growing to know Him and was finding priceless treasures in what appeared to be a garbage dump. I needed to trust His intentions and timing in that.
I was excited by these conclusions, although still tentative. I looked for Him to continue to meet me and take me into the next step in the fulfillment of His plan.
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