Slide 1
2 Corinthians 12: 7-10
7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from 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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Slide 2
2 Corinthians 12:7
or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

Slide 3
2 Corinthians 12:8
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

Slide 4
2 Corinthians 12:9
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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

Slide 5
2 Corinthians 12:10
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Slide 6
Eudokeo
(Yoo-Duh-K-Oh)

Thank you so much. I I y’all are very gracious. I’m telling you, this is a happy group of people. I am convinced Jesus lives here because I have run into his spirit over and over today. And Gary Thomas the reason he was on my podcast is because I do think he knows how to use words well, I love his books. Now, I did wear my boots for you since we’re in Colorado. But I gotta tell you, I not just did it for fashion, I did it because I, they used, they serve as storage units for me, it really is a joy to be here on Mother’s Day. What a special day. And I get it. Some of you don’t frequently attend church in this setting, but today’s a special day for you. I love that. I’m so glad that you’re here. I left my family at home.

We live in Springfield, Missouri and our oldest son, who I’ll introduce you to in a moment, usually would come over on Mother’s Day morning and he would bring me a flat white from Starbucks. Now he’s got a lot of children and so that meant he’d have to show up at my house like at 6:30 AM And I gotta tell you, I know my son loves me. I don’t think he misses me today. I think he’s glad I’m here ’cause he didn’t have to get up quite as early and get his mama’s coffee. But I would love to introduce you to my people. So here’s what we’re gonna do. Now when I show you a picture, because I can’t see it, and you can, this is going to be interactive. So when the picture shows up, you’re gonna say, ah, so I know it’s there, <laugh>.

Thank you. Now lemme tell you who is who and by the clues you’re gonna know, okay? So there was a very handsome man who walked me on stage that is my stud husband. We have been married for almost 40 years. He is a professor in Missouri. And so that meant he had to get his PhD. And his name is Phil. So I have my very own doctor, Phil <laugh>. So you see Dr. Phil in the picture with me. Now, Phil and I have two sons and our children were born 10 years apart. In between there was infertility and miscarriage and such. And so it wasn’t our plan, but it was god’s. And so these two boys in the picture were born 10 years apart. Let me introduce you to the oldest one. The oldest one is named Clayton. Now he’s likely standing next to a very cute young woman. So when my boys were babies and they started toddling around because I couldn’t, you know, see where they were, I would pin a jingle bell on the back of their onesie. And it told me a lot about their personalities. So here’s Little Clayton, the oldest. And he would jingle himself into a room where, you know, he’d play with blocks by himself and then he would jingle himself into another room where he would read books alone for an hour.

I thought this was normal. Okay? Finally, 10 years later, Connor is born and I pin a jingle Bell on his back. Y’all, it was a virtual sleigh ride from morning till night. <Laugh>. That child was so busy. So Clayton, our oldest is married to Caroline, who you see likely near him in the picture. Now, they were best buddies in high school. They were not dating, they were like two little geriatrics, okay? They would go to Denny’s before school and drink coffee and have bible study like two old people at 17. And so finally that boy proposed to her and they now have all these children. They’re building the 12 tribes of Rothchild <laugh>. So the first one I will see if you can figure out looks just like his mama, he favors her, his eyes and his coloring. His name is Philip Clayton Rothchild iii. But that’s such a big name.

So we call him Trip. So that is Trip. Now somewhere near Trip is a young man and he’s six and his name is Lawson James. He looks a little more like his Gigi and he’s got the same coloring. And so little Lawson James was named after my dad. Now I gotta tell you what he did last year though. So last year he comes home from preschool and these boys love Legos. I know your kids probably do too. And so Little Lawson had a Lego in his pocket and his mama found it at bedtime and she pulls it out and she goes, Lawson, where’d you get this? And Lawson said, school. And so Caroline as a good mama says, now Lawson, we can’t take things from school that don’t belong to us because that is called stealing. And Lawson pondered and said, but mommy, I only steal Cool Tings <laugh>.

So I’d like to introduce you to Lawson, our most intelligent center in the family. And then there’s a little guy named John Robert who is four. And then there’s a precious little girl who is two named Charlotte. And I would like to tell you that we do have one more, but he just hasn’t made it into the picture yet. We’re not that organized. We have a four month old also. So those are those little children. And then there is our youngest son Connor. But not only is there a baby missing from this picture from the 12 tribes, but there is a young woman missing in this picture. Let me show you. The next one should be a wedding. I should hear a gushing. Thank you. Connor married Chloe last year, and we are so grateful. And she’s military and we sloot her and do whatever she says.

And I’m just so glad to have someone in charge of this crew of mine. But those are our people and it’s such a joy for me to share them with you on Mother’s Day. Thank you for letting me do that. My goal today is that we would experience the grace of the family of God. ’cause I get it, it, we’ve all got different family situations, family structures and family issues, <laugh> and sometimes Mother’s Day just has this way of accenting them all. And I want you to know this is going to be a time of rest and grace for you. Now, my daddy, who was my hero, went to heaven in 2018. And I did not know that he had left for me. His first preaching Bible, my daddy was my pastor, and he had given my mom instruction that I should receive it.

And next to his bed, he had his computer screen pulled up and he had this little note that he had written a quote in his own shaky hand. I don’t know if you can see it, but if not, I can’t either. So we’re all good. But it says, preach the word until the Lord calls you home. That’s what my daddy did. And so now it’s my honor it’s his daughter, but even more importantly, as the daughter of the Heavenly Father that I get to share with you and teach the word till the Lord calls me home. So would you pray with me, Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen. We’re gonna be in Second Corinthians chapter 12, for those of you who have a Bible with you and like to turn it up or may turn it, open it up, or sometimes we like to look at the Bible on our device, however you prefer to engage scripture.

But I will tell you in a little bit, when I go through each verse, they will show up on the screen. And here’s why I wanna make it known that the verses will be on the screen or you have it in front of you digitally or in print, is because of this. When I was a little girl, I memorized scripture and we read the King James version. So all my scripture I memorized was in the King James. And then when I got to high school, I memorized the new King James version. Well, then I got off to college and I loved the new international version. So I memorized that. And since I’ve been a grownup in studying scripture, I love the New American standard Bible. So <laugh>, when I quote scripture, you get this unique hybrid version of every version I’ve ever memorized. And so I wanna make sure you’re able to see it with your own eyes because we’re going to learn about the sufficiency of God’s grace. And on a day like today, when sometimes the angst, the inadequacies, sometimes we feel it, you know, I’m a mom, I look back, there’s things I wish I had done differently. Sometimes a grandma can look back and think, wow, if I had just, or maybe there’s a woman who’s saying, oh, but if I could just have a baby and y’all, we need grace. We need grace. Because figuring all that out, solving all of it, mitigating, that’s not sufficient. Only grace is sufficient. So I want to draw for you four word pictures today of grace.

Scene one, I’m a teenage girl. I wake up first thing in the morning and I turn on my radio and I listen to Ronnie Millsap. He’s singing, he’s gonna take the Long Way around the world. I hear Debbie Boone, this is the late seventies, and she’s starting to sing You Light of my Life. Oh, I grabbed my hairbrush and I stand in front of the mirror and I’m singing along with Debbie Boone. I loved music, but I also loved art. My favorite thing was to draw caricatures. I loved to study the faces of my friends and family and then exaggerate their facial features to, to create just these caricatures of their personalities. I loved cartooning, I loved painting, I loved all art. So word got around real quickly that I could draw. And so I was chosen to create the banner that we would hold up on field day.

So I remember my mother went to Kmart and she bought a brand new white bedsheet. I took it to school. And when lunch was over and that cafeteria gym had emptied a friend of mine and I met in the cafeteria. And I remember removing the plastic from the sheet. I remember unfurling that sheet on the floor of the gym, and I knelt before it and I began to sketch a lion. And as I sketch this lion focusing on the, the the lion, I, I realized that over the top left hand part of the sheet, it was like someone had taken an eraser and just there was eraser dust left everywhere. So I remembered trying to wipe it away and it, it remained. And the more I focused on this lion, then I began to notice, well, over on the right side of the sheet, it was like someone had taken a sharpie and mashed it against the sheet, and there were just black dots everywhere.

And I tried to wipe them away and they remained. I was so confused. And I remember looking to my friend and and asking her, why is this sheet so dirty? I just took it outta the package. It was perfectly clean. And she says to me, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jennifer. This sheet is perfectly white. It was the first time I realized something might be wrong with my eyes. It resulted in a visit to an eye doctor and quickly following an eye hospital. And after several days of testing in this eye hospital, the doctors told me I had a disease in both of my eyes called retinitis pigmentosa. It was degenerative. My retinas were literally deteriorating. And that is why I was seeing what appeared to be eraser dust and sharpie marks. It was just my retinas. I was declared legally blind. But what the doctors also told us that day is that the same kind of deterioration that had caused this legal blindness would continue to occur until eventually the remainder of my retinas. And that meant the entirety of my retinas would be gone. And the prognosis was total blindness.

That bright future <laugh>, I was gonna be an artist, was suddenly draped in shadows. That smooth certain path that was laid out before me with finishing high school and going to college, it, it suddenly was riddled with thorns. And I wonder some of the ways that I felt that day echo what the apostle Paul must have been feeling in second Corinthians 12. Because in second Corinthians 12, he talks about receiving a thorn in the flesh. So he says in verse seven that in order to keep him from being conceited, he received a thorn in the flesh. This, this messenger from Satan that just tormented him. Now before he tells us that he had this thorn, he says this in verse seven, because of the exceeding greatness of the revelation, here’s what he’s talking about. If you read from the beginning of second Corinthians 12, you find out that Paul had this experience where he was caught up to what he calls the third heaven.

And it was as if God just downloaded into him the revelation of Christ. And so he says, because that was so extraordinary, in order to keep me from being conceited, I was granted a thorn in the flesh. In other words, God in his mercy allowed me to experience a thorn in the flesh so that I wouldn’t self-sabotage. There’s purpose in thorns, but, but we don’t know exactly what Paul’s thorn was. We know it hurt. We know it was tormenting. But scholars believe that that thorn could have been one of several things. It could have been that the Apostle Paul dealt with some failing eyesight that he couldn’t see as well. Boy, that’s a thorn. It could have been that, that he had a, a physical ailment that caused him to be shaky, almost like a seizure or an epilepsy kind of situation. That’s a thorn.

It could have been that Paul’s thorn was relational. Boy, nothing hurts as bad as those kind of thorns. It could have been that he missed his wife, longed for a wife no longer. We don’t know what his marriage situation was always, but we do know that. Oh, did he experience betrayal? Persecution? Man betrayal. It’s a thorn. We feel it. We know what thorns feel like. You’ve got a thorn, I got a thorn. All God’s children, we got thorns. But here’s the thing, some of us, you came in here with an entire bush of thorns and they’re all different. But what they have in common is that they hurt and we would rather God remove them. And that’s what the apostle Paul did. He asked God to remove his thorn. In verse eight, he says to the Lord, would you please remove my thorn? The King James version says it this way.

I beseeched the Lord three times. I love that language because it sounds so desperate. And when he is saying three times, he doesn’t just mean 1, 2, 3, and he’s done. It’s the figurative way. The Bible communicates over and over and over. Lord, please remove my thorn. Lord, my thorn hurts. Lord, if you would just heal, Lord, if you would just deliver, Lord, if you would just make this go away, would you please remove my thorn? I’ve prayed it. You’ve prayed it. And we should, because God is capable to remove of removing thorns. He is a healer. He is a deliverer. And we should ask yet, the apostle Paul, when he asked for his thorn to be removed, he didn’t maybe get the answer he expected, but he got the answer he needed.

Now, why is it that we ask? Well, because we know God can heal and we really want him to. But I’ll be honest with you, the reason that I most often ask for God to remove my thorn and heal my blindness is because I think deep down, if you would just do that, God, that would be sufficient for me. That would be enough. I could drive, I could read, I could be independent. I wouldn’t feel like a burden. That would be enough. That would be sufficient for me. Do you know how much more effective for you I could be if you would just remove this thorn, that would be sufficient.

But is it? Is thorn removal sufficient? Scene two, I’m in the guest room several years ago. It’s Easter time. We’re having company guest room hasn’t been used for a while. So I go downstairs and I clean it up. I’m vacuuming, I dust, I got it all ready and prepared. And the last thing I wanted to do was to turn on the lamps on the dresser so that it would be inviting to our company. So I turn on the light on the right side of the dresser and I can tell that it’s on the thing about my disease. I, I don’t, I do not have the ability to have useful light perception, but I have what I call a few angry strands of retina just holding on in my eye. And they like to grab light, which means therefore I can perceive light sometimes. So when I’m standing right in front of this lamp on the right side of the dresser, I could tell it was on.

I moved to the left side of the dresser and I turned on that lamp and it didn’t come on, but I remembered I’d been vacuuming. So I traced the cable down to the outlet to see if perhaps I had forgotten to plug it back in, but it was plugged in. So I decided I would check the bulb because perhaps it had become loose. And when I went to tighten it, it was warm and I realized the light was on. I remember standing in front of that lamp and covering each eye and trying to determine and realized I have no retina in the left, in my left eye. It’s completely gone. And something within me broke that day. I remember getting down under that freshly vacuumed carpet and just calling out to the Lord, not my left eye. I mean, it didn’t gimme much, but it just had enough life perception that it kind of just held back that claustrophobic stifling effect of total blackness, not my left eye. And quite honestly, what I was terrified of is that if this happened to my left eye, how long until it happened to my right eye? And I remember as I called out to the Lord and just felt so desperate, I heard the words echo in my heart that the apostle Paul must have heard in response to his plea, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

I remember that began for me a journey of understanding the sufficiency of grace and the kindness of God. Because if thorn removal were the absolute best gift he could have given me, he would’ve given me because he does not give lesser gifts to his children. But he gave me grace instead. Why? Because essentially thorn removal in and of itself is not sufficient. Only grace is sufficient. And I’ve been able to walk with this true through his grace, recognizing the sufficiency in every step I take in the dark. Yet I gotta be honest, especially on a day like today, I’m so mindful of my children, my mom, my grandkids, and when I see them suffer, I I, I wonder. But is it really sufficient for them?

Is your grace really sufficient for them? Scene three, I’m sitting on the back deck and it’s a beautiful fall day and I can hear the leaves rustling in the wind. And I’m on the phone with a magazine interviewer and she is writing a story about my blindness. And we get to the end of the conversation and she asks me a question, do you think your mom would be willing to talk to me? And I told her I wasn’t sure that she would, but I would certainly ask her. Now, the reason I wasn’t sure my mom would want to speak to her is because my mom is, is pretty private, which is absolutely her prerogative. And I honor that. But even so, I called my mom and I said, Hey mom, I just had a fantastic conversation, this lady. She’s got it going on. It’s gonna be a good story. And she wanted to know if you’d be willing to talk to her. And my mom hesitated, but it wasn’t for the reason I expected for. She said, I can’t because to that magazine, interviewer, your blindness is a story. But to me, as your mom, your blindness is a wound that still hurts.

Some of you know exactly how she felt. I was in my forties, I had published books, I had children. Life was so good, yet my blindness for my mother was a wound. That still hurts. And some of you have people in your life, a child born on the spectrum, a parent who you are watching diminish because of Alzheimer’s or dementia, a loved one who is fighting for their life with cancer. And you look at their lives and you cry out to you, to the Lord, is your grace really sufficient for them? May I be the voice of that one you love?

God’s grace is sufficient for me. And here’s why. Because I was granted the difficult burden of blindness. I was also granted sufficient grace to carry the burden of blindness. I call it participant grace. It’s enough grace to participate with that which God has allowed and not be crushed by it or consumed by it. But my mom, oh, she received God’s grace also and God’s grace is sufficient for her. But you know what? This is not in second Corinthians 12. I’m just telling you how my take on it. I feel like in some ways she experiences it differently than I do. I call it spectator grace. It’s, it’s just enough grace to watch. It’s just enough grace to watch my struggle and and realize that, oh, she can’t fix it. No matter how many tears she cries. It’s not gonna change, but it’s just enough grace to watch.

Some of you in this room are experiencing the sufficiency of God’s grace as you are a spectator of his work in someone else’s life. And may I say this to you, I get it. You feel despair, you feel concerned, you feel worry, but do not assign your sense of despair for the person you love, to the person you love. Because God’s grace is sufficient for them. He’s taking care of them. So my sisters, my brothers rest in that grace, rest in the sufficiency. Charles Spurgeon once wrote that all God’s blessings go together like links in a golden chain. And if he gives converting grace, he will also give comforting grace to receive his comforting grace.

Scene four, this room your life because God’s grace is sufficient for you. How are you gonna live out this scene well with joy, with the reminder and reality that you don’t have to be enough because God’s grace is enough for you? I believe Paul shows us in the second half of verse nine, and then in verse 10, in the second half of verse nine of second Corinthians, chapter 12, you remember Paul has already heard the voice of God saying to him, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. And then Paul says this, therefore, because that’s true, I would rather boast in my weakness that the power of Christ would rest on me.

Now, as I have studied the sufficiency of grace in my life, when I got to this verse, it made me stumble a little. ’cause I thought, you know, I don’t think boasting is a natural response to weakness. It just seems counterintuitive and almost like it’s a misfit. And so why is it that Paul would say, I’m gonna boast in my weakness? Well, because there’s a, the, the New Testament was written in Greek. I thought, there’s gotta be a word in Greek that’ll help me understand this. So I looked it up. And when I looked up the Greek word for the word boast in two Corinthians, chapter 12, verse nine, I found that that word actually means to boast. It means exactly what you think it means. It means to take pride in, to have almost this chin up sense of boasting and pride about something.

Now, why is it that Paul is saying, because God’s grace is sufficient, I’m gonna boast in what he’s allowed because he understands that in that confident acceptance of what God has allowed, there is an experience of God’s power that rests on you there. When we don’t boast in our weakness, you know what we tend to do? We tend to micromanage it, be embarrassed by it, be ashamed by it. Try to fix it. Try to explain it away. I mean, for years with blindness, I didn’t have a chin up. I chin down. Oh man, I’m so sorry. I’m a burden. No, I wish I didn’t have to ask you to do this. It just, no boasting in my weakness. But as God has taught me the sufficiency of his grace and where it shows up, I have learned to have a chin up to accept what God has allowed and not just accept it, but to embrace it and to have confidence in it.

So literally, here’s what it means to boast. Okay? I would love it if y’all could come to my house someday. Now, we would use, we get takeout ’cause I don’t wanna cook anymore, but I would make for you the best frozen yogurt you have ever had in your life. It’ll be good for you. You will like it. It, it tastes like pinkberry. I mean it is the best. Now I’m just showing you what it looks like to boast. And then you’re sitting at my table, I have turned off the yogurt making machine. I have scooped it into a dish for you. I put it in front of you and I am like beaming. And my chin is up. I’m like, mm-hmm <affirmative> go ahead. Go ahead. Prove me right? And you take your first bite and you’re like, is what? And I’m like, yes, it is wonderful right there.

That’s boasting. It’s having an appropriate confidence because you know something is right. That’s what it means to boast in our weakness because God has allowed it. It may not be feel good, but God has allowed it. And therefore we can boast in it. Instead of resisting, we can rest. But the second way we can live out this scene well is in verse 10. In verse 10, Paul says, for this reason, meaning, because God’s grace is sufficient for Christ’s sake, I will delight in weakness, in insult, in hardship, in persecution and difficulty. Why? Because when I am weak, then I am strong Again. When I read that I, I was a psychology major, and I thought, Uhuh, that is not a smart res. That’s very maladaptive. We don’t delight in weakness. Like when is the last time someone insulted you and you broke out in, in, in delight.

It just doesn’t happen. It’s not a natural response. But I knew the word is perfect. So I, I looked again to the original Greek and this time, oh, what I found helped me so much. The Greek word for that English word delight is U. Now, let me tell you how you’re gonna remember that word today. There was a little boy named Parker who used to come to our house when he was just a little man, you know, five, six years old. And he was just learning to pray. And so I’ll never forget the time he is praying for our lunch. And he said, dear God, thank you for our food. You the man <laugh>.

That’s how you’re gonna remember Uo say, you the man, you the man say you to again, you the man, the man you toyo. Now you need to know how to say u toyo because you might need it later. And here’s why. To U means that you’re going to see something as as good. It seems good to one or for one’s good pleasure. Now, what Utica does not mean is that weakness, insult, hardship, persecution and difficulty are good. It does not mean that the thorn is good and it doesn’t mean that the thorn feels good. But what Utica means is that we are going to perceive it as for our good, that there is some good that is because of it. And therefore we’re going to experience that good because we have seen the good. Now as I’m learning this, what it means to dic cao, I find myself in my kitchen.

And this particular day I was walking way too fast, which is what I do at home. And unfortunately I had forgotten to close my pantry door, nor was it wide open. It was just halfway open. And so walking too fast, I walked straight into the pantry and therefore right there, and I’ve broken my nose before and I felt it. I felt the crack. And of course, if you’ve ever done anything like that, you know, it’s very painful. And I stood before that pantry door and I just felt so done. Like done with having a good attitude, <laugh> done with saying and doing the right thing. I was just mad and spent and I was ready to say some words, okay, that were in the Bible, but I would’ve highly used them out of contact. You know what I’m saying?

I, and so I just walked over to the freezer, which was just a few steps away. I opened it and I pulled out a SpongeBob ice pack. I stuck it on my nose and I just stood there. And finally I said, UU blindness, U disorientation, U aging, U feeling limited U, I’m going to see the good in this. This is gonna be for my good pleasure. It may not feel good right now, but there will be good because God is good and he only allows good. And so therefore, you Toko, and some of you in this room, you need to look at those thorns in your life and you need to see them blanketed by the sufficiency of grace. And you need to speak to those thorns and say, Alzheimer’s, Utica, autism, Ude, singleness, Utica, loneliness, Utica, cancer, Utica. It is not good. Oh, but it will be for my good pleasure.

I will see it as good. I will you to Koko. Now here’s the thing. I get it. I felt that way in front of the pantry. Like I didn’t have it in me. Like I just was mad and tired and spent. But the reason I was able to say you to Ko eventually is because of how verse 10 begins. Second Corinthians chapter 12, verse 10, Paul says, for Christ’s sake, for Christ’s sake, IU Toyo, brothers and sisters, it’s gonna be good for your mental health if you u to, but that’s not why we do it. We do it for Christ’s sake. Is it an act of worship because he has been so good to us and done so much for us? So may the grace of Jesus, may the grace of Jesus buoy your heart today and settle your mind and truly allow you to rest in your weakness.

Will you pray with me? Jesus, I do marvel at your word. It’s beautiful, but it’s so true and it gives us life and it rescues us from ourselves. So I pray you really will take the words of my mouth, the meditations of my heart, and most importantly the words of your word. And you’ll sink them deeply into people’s lives today, that you will give them the grace that they will experience, the grace that you die to give them. We honor you with everything in our lives, including our thorns. And all the brothers and sisters said, amen.