Like Paul, you’ve asked it be removed three or more times. While there has not been a “No” there has neither been a “Yes.”

 

These are likely the hardest moments, especially when your life with Jesus is intimate and full.

 

You see, I know who He is and what He is able to do, yet He doesn’t do “it,” -yet.

 

In moments like this, I find myself having to surrender again to His sovereignty.

 

The fact that His thoughts are not my thoughts and His ways are not mine, well, can be frustrating. For I know that His hem alone carries healing power. Yet in some places my heart is still broken and not yet healed.

 

Then the whisper comes. The one you don’t really want to hear.

 

Today I might be speaking to some Kingdom writers who have a prophetic gift.

 

Your pen is pushed by personal pain that is first felt and experienced, then released with the wind as a healing balm.

 

You could never put to words what is necessary for other hearts sore and bruised if first you had not also fallen prey to it.

 

Thus, the thorn remains.

 

There were a million emotions Jesus had to feel to show us that He knew all we’d been through because He, too, experienced them.

 

He knew rejection, character assignation, slander, betrayal, abandonment, being misunderstood, and being put to death while He was all the time coming to heal us.

 

There were just as many deaths that took place while He was fulfilling His ordained mission for us all.

 

He died to comfort.

He died to being seen.

He died to His own will and the will of others.

He died to the possibility of extorting His God power.

He died to the pain He knew was coming.

 

But all of this He did for me and you and since it is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me….I do it for you and “we” do it for “them.”

 

The “them” who need your words to be laced with anointing that breaks yokes instead of empty platitudes.

 

The “them” holding on by a thin thread, wanting it to just be over.

 

The “them” who need a word from God that lets them know they are seen by Him.

 

All because of the thorn…

 

The one you keep pleading for Him to remove.

 

That one.

 

The one that pricks, still, places so deep in your heart that you scream through your prayers. The one that still draws blood if it’s touched and you shrink back into a dark cave of self protection.

 

That thorn.

 

But here’s the thing.

 

You became the messenger with the message. It was worked in you like a crocheted blanket. It can’t be separated from you because it has become part of who you are. It is pointing others to the One who helped you in your pain, so He can now help “them” in theirs.

 

You won’t need to look for a sermon. You are the sermon. Just like the prophet Ezekiel who had to lie on his side to act out God’s own divine message. Your thorn does the same for you and those God has called you to serve in this hour. You have become an example of His grace.

 

You carry things differently than others, and it was meant to be that way.

 

You don’t mess around and mince words. You tell it like it is because the thorn won’t allow you to do it any differently. It keeps you honest and true and obedient to the King whom you serve.

 

Maybe one day that thorn will be fully removed. But until then, saints, buy up the time and use it as a tool in the Kingdom of God.