Thursday, February 13, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: 2 Corinthians 12-13
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 19
Key Verse
2 Corinthians 12:18 — “I desired Titus, and with him I sent a brother. Did Titus make a gain of you? walked we not in the same spirit? walked we not in the same steps?”
Devotional Thought
Paul writes to the church at Corinth as a man who has been caught up into paradise and yet still carries a thorn in his flesh. He describes being taken to the third heaven fourteen years earlier, hearing words no tongue may utter, and then he turns immediately to the humbling counterweight God gave him: a messenger of Satan to buffet him, a thorn he begged three times to have removed. The risen Christ answered not with deliverance but with a sentence that has steadied believers for two thousand years: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Paul does not resent this. He takes pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, for Christ’s sake, because when he is weak, then he is strong.
That paradox is the heart of these closing chapters. Paul is not writing theory. He is defending his ministry against teachers who measured apostleship in eloquence and signs, while he measured it in patience, in shipwrecks, in sleepless nights, in a heart that would “very gladly spend and be spent” for a congregation that loved him less the more he loved them. He plans a third visit to Corinth and warns that he will not spare those who have persisted in uncleanness and fornication. Yet even his sharpness bends toward edification, not destruction.
Then comes the summons of chapter thirteen: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.” This is not morbid introspection but honest spiritual audit. And Psalm 19 supplies the mirror for that audit. The same heavens that declare God’s glory declare it in every language, and the same law that is perfect, converting the soul, warns the servant and reveals secret faults. “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.”
We read this on a February Thursday, in the long gray stretch between Christmas and Easter, when resolutions have cooled and the soul can feel as bare as the trees. Winter is a good season for thorns. It is a good season to stop pretending we are strong and to discover again that grace is not a reward for the healthy but a supply for the weak. Paul’s thorn did not leave. Neither may ours. But the sufficiency of Christ does not depend on the removal of the thorn; it rests on the One who said His strength is perfected precisely there.
Reflection
- What “thorn” in your life have you begged God to remove, and have you asked Him instead to show you His sufficiency within it?
- If you examined yourself honestly today, what secret fault would Psalm 19’s prayer bring into the light?
Prayer
Lord, You who spoke the heavens into declaring Your glory, speak also into the quiet places of our hearts. We come as Paul came—weak, buffeted, sometimes proud of what we should grieve. We have asked You to remove our thorns, and You have answered with grace. Teach us to stop despising our weakness and to rest in Your strength made perfect there. Cleanse us from secret faults; keep back Your servants from presumptuous sins. Examine us, prove us, and let the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 19:1 — “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”