In some theology of work circles, there is an emphasis on working with the power of God and the tremendous potential this represents for any and every endeavor. With this emphasis, the sky is the limit for what you can accomplish. A few loaves and fishes are able to feed thousands. Peter is able to walk on the water. Nothing is impossible for God, so dream big about what He can accomplish through you in your work when you partner with Him. This makes sense and is consistent with a teaching of Jesus on faith. “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” (Mt 21:21-2)

However, many have become disillusioned when they have experienced a lack of power and subsequent results in their efforts to accomplish things for God. What went wrong? They are not able to see where they were lacking faith or doubting. It was their faith that caused them to try to accomplish something beyond their ability, trusting in God to bless it with success. As far as they can tell, what they were working on is something that God would want to bless. And while they did not allow doubt to dissuade them from that effort, the experience of failure has now caused them to have doubt about any future efforts and the results.

How are they to navigate this experience? Those who emphasize what can be accomplished by working with the power of God tend to turn to more testimonies of success in order to deal with the experiences of disillusionment. They are in effect saying, “Do not allow those disillusioning experiences to dampen your expectations of God doing great things through you.” That is not necessarily bad counsel. We do need to guard against losing heart. But our desire to know God and enjoy relationship with Him, and not just experience success when He blesses our work, would like some sense of how God is working with us when we are not enjoying success.

Paul’s thorn in the flesh offers some insight into how God is at work in what can be disillusioning experiences. Twice Paul states that the thorn in the flesh was given to “keep me from becoming conceited.” So the thorn in the flesh, that he felt was making his ministry less effective, was actually accomplishing a work in Paul. And that is something we need to keep in mind. God is not just about accomplishing His work through us, as if we are mere channels of His work. He is working so that we become conformed to Christlike character.

As Paul was struggling with his thorn in the flesh, how much of the struggle was attributable to his own ego? He was concerned about the ministry not being as effective, but was he also concerned that he was appearing weak and ineffective? We are always looking to establish our identity and sense of self-worth through what we are able to accomplish with our work. And we are always impacted in our sense of worth when our work is not going well. It is a part of our fallen human condition that we do this. When God says, “My grace is sufficient for you.” I think he is telling Paul to find his sense of identity in God’s gracious acceptance of him and not in success in his ministry. And the only way that Paul is going to learn to do this is if there is a thorn in the flesh that causes him to struggle in his work.

This is one way that God may be working in our lives when our work is a struggle and we feel like we are failing. He is teaching us to rely on His grace rather than a successful performance of our work for our identity and sense of worth. This is not good news if your primary interest is in work success. But it is good news if your primary interest is to strengthen your love and trust in God.

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.