In the Meantime: The Purposes and Promises

[podcast]http:/www.revkwon.com/podcast/meantime-purpose.mp3[/podcast] Every once in a while, we run into people stuck in unchangeable, unalterable, in-the-meantime circumstances who get to the place where they’re able and willing to receive their circumstances, their afflictions, their illnesses, their losses, and their disabilities as coming from the hand of their heavenly Father. How do these people maintain extraordinary faith despite extraordinarily difficult circumstances? Where do they find the peace that characterizes their lives? That is the question we will be answering today. Last week, we left with the conclusion that our lives may be marooned in a circumstance that begs the question: what do we do in the meantime? That circumstance is the new normal that we have to deal with when being an artist and while creating the lives Jesus instruct us to create because it is in this space that we find our greatest opportunities. This morning I want to go to the book of 2 Corinthians, we’ll open to chapter 11 and about midway through the chapter to verse 16.

¹⁶ I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. ¹⁷ What I am saying with this boastful confidence, I say not as the Lord would but as a fool. ¹⁸ Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast. ¹⁹ For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! ²⁰ For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. ²¹ To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that! But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. ²² Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. ²³ Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. ²⁴ Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; ²⁶ on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; ²⁷ in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. ²⁸ And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. ²⁹ Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? ³⁰ If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. ³¹ The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. ³² At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, ³³ but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands. (2 Corinthians 12:16-33)

I want you to see what the Apostle Paul is recounting here about his mission trips: they were not exactly as Luke said in the Book of Acts. In fact, Paul recounts his mission trips as a constant, in the meantime, circumstance that just wouldn’t end. Verse 29 sums up how he felt about the whole journey as he experienced it: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? If God was silent after sending a man like that on a mission, what would you have felt? I mean, you understand that, after all. People after countless people have told you that you were great, that you were going to be awesome and then it strikes you—life does—you’re not that great, nor are you that awesome. You’re stuck in the meantime—until you get to the glory that was promised you. God has been silent! God put you on a mission and told you that your purpose feels like a losing cause and the make things better, God doesn’t say anything at all. You’re praying and you’re talking to God, but He isn’t talking back or saying anything. It would make anybody indignant. It would make everybody feel like they’re the fall guy in a plot line of a heist movie. I can be certain that if God has been silent in your life, as I’m sure He is silent in a lot of your circumstances, it will affect our faith and we will be left wondering why. If you were not compelled to ask why, then you need start asking for yourself. Look at what Paul says in verse 16: I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. Paul knows exactly what everybody is thinking—every is thinking that this guy who is suffering, who is sitting in the meantime, well, he’s curse from God, there is nothing promised to him. Paul says, then accept me as a fool for thinking that I have this purpose to do the will of God. It is foolish. It’s like telling people that you’re going to be a model when you never went on a diet to fit into the pieces of cotton you call clothes. Not that being a model means you need to diet, but being a model requires you to actually look like somebody enviable and you just look average. How can you be called by God be a model? This is exactly what Paul is saying to the church in Corinth. Paul is working as a teacher, but it hasn’t gone right for him. Yet, he is certain he has been called to be a teacher. People are questioning and asking him, “are you sure?” Unlike the lot of us, Paul’s faith and resolve in his purpose and the promises God made to him became more firmly rooted as God became quieter. We’re going to explore why in a few minutes, but I want to go back to verse 24 where Paul wants to start giving us reasons to believe when it seems like we shouldn’t believe at all. ²⁴ Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; ²⁶ on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; ²⁷ in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. ²⁸ And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. All these things were evidence that God actually put him on mission and gave him a promise that would be fulfilled. Lashed 39 times, beaten with rods 3 times, stoned 1 time, shipwrecked 3 times, and then there’s the constant, “what’s going to happen next?” Lastly, all the churches that I planted were in constant turmoil. There was nothing that was going right. These are the reasons for Paul’s confidence. But let me continue to verse 30 because this statement is important to see Paul’s confidence: If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. When our lives seem to be hanging out in the meantime, where there is nothing that we can do but be weak, this is the point whereby God can do the most in us. This is where God gives us a purpose and promises His grace upon us. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul is teaching us. I want you to see that your moment in the meantime should be reason for you to boast in everything you can’t do because the greater the impossibility, the greater the promise and purpose you have in the meantime. Let’s keep reading 2 Corinthians 12:1.

¹I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. ² I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. ³ And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— ⁴ and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. ⁵ On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses—⁶ though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. 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. (2 Corinthians 12:1-10)

I want to make it clear, if God has given you a mission for your life, and I am sure He has, because your mission is the reason you were born, to fill a role with your life that only can fill, to make it a masterpiece of art that should be clear to you. That should be the reason for confidence in Jesus. You know that you were born for something because if you weren’t born for something, you wouldn’t have been born at all. Paul knew he was born for something. He has visions that can’t be uttered. He saw things that shouldn’t have been seen by people without purpose. But his confidence is not in those things that make him special. I think we put so much stock sometimes in our lives about what God created us to do that when the paradigm of what God created us to do doesn’t quite match up with what we envisioned we begin to slump and begin to believe that the visions we had, the masterpiece we were created to make wasn’t real. It is sad that when we think that, but that is the reality when we are stuck “in the meantime.” I would be a liar if I told you that I didn’t get disheartened when things in my mind don’t line up with what’s happening in my life. Paul’s rationale for believing that he has a purpose and a promise in the midst of the meantime, that in fact that the meantime was purposefully and had a promising fulfilment came from knowing that he was in the meantime to stop him from being conceited. Being conceited for him meant that relying on his own abilities and things that were going well for him—positive circumstances. He says in verse 7, “he was given a thorn in the flesh… to keep me from being conceited.” What’s more interesting is that Paul asked God to remove the thorn in his flesh. How many times have you asked God to take you out of the “in the meantime” circumstance you find yourself in and He didn’t? I’m sure that you were never shipwrecked or anything like that, but I am sure that you and I both sat in a place where you need to accepted God’s grace as the in the meantime circumstance so that you could move forward. I want you see this and write it into your hearts: God’s grace is sufficient for you, for God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. If you believe God can change your circumstances but chooses not to, you have the option to receive those circumstances from him as a gift with a purpose and a promise: grace. If that sounds absurd, remember your salvation and the salvation of the world, hung in the balance of a similar decision made by your Savior the night before his crucifixion. It was in weakness that Jesus died for us on the cross. He didn’t have a choice in the matter, it was the will of the Father. When Jesus accepted that, He became glorified above all else as king of kings in his resurrection. Our purpose in life is clear but may be hindered or altered by the in the meantime moment that we are in, but God’s promise will not change—when we are weak, then we are the strongest. Our time in the meantime is designed to bring the best out of the power of God and when we accept God’s grace, we will see why we had to spend time in the meantime. Let’s pray.