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A Thorn in My Flesh

Here’s Roger Salter’s article for Sunday 1/4/04

Every spiritual condition has its hazards. Trials can bring us to the point of despair and seasons of rare blessing can raise us to vanity and self-absorption. The craving for ecstatic experiences among believers may not be so much a hungering for God but a greed for emotional gratification. The super-spirituality in pursuit of a constant sense of elation and wellbeing is often nothing more than base selfishness. There is much danger in spiritual knowledge and experience and our tendency to pride is so great, which is why the Lord may keep many of us on short ration. We have an addiction to ?highs? and seek them avidly. Exalted experiences can breed exalted egos. Even the apostle Paul had to be kept in check. Spiritual uplifts are hard to handle and can quickly descend to sinful conceit. ?To keep me from becoming conceited?, confesses Paul, ?because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh? (2 Cor 12:7). Such a thorn is not what the Christian desires or expects, especially from the plethora of self- esteem and personal happiness books emerging from the Christian press, but such thorns are given to believers as suppressants to keep our egos low and to bridle our arrogance. William Grimshaw?s blunt Yorkshire advice was good: ?Keep the proud chit (child) down?.