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Sometimes God allows us to experience adversity, to keep us from being too elated!
I am not a pastor who believes that when you become a Christian your life will be so wonderful that you will not be able to contain yourself. In fact, my experience has been the opposite. I have found that if I live a Christian life the way I am called to live it, my life becomes more difficult, and the challenges at times seem to be overwhelming.
Some people call this "the Lord putting you to the test." I do not believe that a loving God who sent his son to die for my sins would ever deliberately inflict pain on anyone.
The Apostle Paul knew that better than most people. Everything was going well, when on the way to Damascus, he literally was knocked off his high horse and was blinded for three days. Then he had to go to the very people he was persecuting to be healed. In 2 Corinthians 12, he had to contend with church leaders who were challenging him. He was not accepted as an apostle by the original Apostles because he was not one of them. People did not trust him because of the way he had treated Christians before his conversion. These are only a few of about 13 challenges that he went through. Paul saw many revelations from God, including what we call the Rapture. He wrote more books of the Bible than others and tried to live as an example for others to follow, despite his own problems.
In 2 Corinthians, he begins to speak in the third person, about things he experienced, saying whether he was "in the body or out of the body" he did not know (12:2 NIV). But he spoke about being in paradise or the third heaven and how God revealed things to him. It is believed that, when Paul was in Lystra, he was stoned and then dragged through the streets and the city gate by a mob who thought he was dead (Acts 14:19). Perhaps it was at this time that Paul experienced being "in the body or out of the body" when he was given revelations from God, things he could not speak about (2 Corinthians 12:2 NIV).
It is possible that when Paul went through all these experiences to keep him from being too proud of what he learned and overcame, that God allowed a messenger from Satan to go ahead of him and cause trouble even before Paul arrived at various places.
Paul said that three times he appealed to the Lord to take the demon away from him. But the Lord reminded him that his Grace was "sufficient" for him and that it was "made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). So Paul boasted not about what he did, but what the Lord did with and through him. Paul concludes that he is therefore content in "weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10 ESV).
We live in a world that is becoming more hostile to Christians every day. You may never go through the challenges Paul did, but if or when you do, remember that when you are weak, then you are strong.
Pastor Katherine A. Behrens, Picture Rocks and Tivoli United Methodist Churches.