It’s good to make mistakes; it keeps you humble. I make lots of them. If we did not make some mistakes, we’d probably get really proud of our sanctimonious holiness. But it seems that the Lord allows us to make mistakes to keep us humble.
Even the apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh, which he said he figured was to keep him humble.1 He was a pretty proud guy to begin with, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a rabbi. After his tremendous conversion, which helped to humble him, even being blind for a while, then he became a Christian and a powerhouse for the Lord and such an evangelist and a missionary. He even had revelations. He might have gotten pretty proud about being such an outstanding Christian, undoubtedly the greatest of the apostles.
The Catholic Church tries to make Peter the greatest, and he was wonderful. He was always bold, but he was also brash, impulsive, and impetuous. Peter always reminded me of King David—they made mistakes, but that’s one thing the Lord uses to help keep you humble. That always gave me a lot of hope for myself.
Paul said he figured that’s why he had that thorn in the flesh. We’re not exactly told what it was, but we assume from other scriptures about, “Behold with what large characters I write unto you” and “Some of you would have given me your own eyes,” that he had very poor eyesight, and that could have been a part of his thorn in the flesh.2
Paul had to admit he was being plagued by a demon, “buffeted about by a messenger of Satan.” Here he was, the greatest leader of the Christian faith, greatest missionary, evangelist, teacher, and rabbi; it seemed like he had it all. He’d had all kinds of revelations, he was a lawyer of the Word, he was brilliant, he had everything! And yet he had this thorn in the flesh. The Bible says he was buffeted by a messenger of Satan. A messenger of Satan, an evil spirit plagued Paul.3 He was pestered by it; it just kept bothering him.
Christ has promised He will never leave nor forsake us. He will never allow us to fall; we will always be His. All kinds of promises guarantee that you belong to Jesus and that the Devil cannot have you. But he sure as hell can pester you, tempt you, and test you, just as he did Job.
Look at all the trouble he caused poor old Job! He destroyed his home, he destroyed his cattle, all his wealth, he killed all his children, and then he made him so sick his wife wished he’d curse God and die.4 But it finally humbled him. He thought he was pretty good up until that time; he thought he was pretty righteous, and he goes on arguing with his so-called “comforters.” They weren’t very comforting; they were constantly accusing him of some kind of sin. “You must have done something wrong or you wouldn’t be in this shape.”
Even God was bragging about Job, how good he was! But the Devil, he’s the prosecutor; he’s the Accuser of the Saints. He’s the detective, he is a snoop, and he noses around and finds what your weakness is and what your problem is, and he does his best to aggravate it. And what was dear Job’s problem? Self-righteousness.
One of his accusers really hit the nail on the head when he said, “Job, can a man be found to be righteous with God?”5 Job was contending and arguing that he was righteous and saying, “How come? Why me, Lord? Why did You do this to me when I’m so good?” He had been thinking he was pretty good, pretty righteous, and that in itself was a sin. Job seemed to be thinking: “God, if I were You, I wouldn’t do this to me. How come You’renot as righteous as I am? How come You’re doing these things to me when I’m so good?”
I’ve had people say, “Why don’t you just pray and ask the Lord to heal your eyes? He could give you perfect vision! Why don’t you just pray the Lord will give you perfect health and heal you so you’ll never get sick?” There are Christians who believe that you should never be poor, you should never be sick, you should never have any troubles, you should always be on top of everything. They preach abundance and affluence—they practice it too—perfect health and perfect wealth. I used to kind of annoy some of those preachers a little bit because I was always asking questions.
I said, “If poverty is a sin and sickness is a sign of sin, how come it says about Jesus that ‘though he was rich, yet he became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich’?6 You mean Jesus was a sinful, wicked man to become poor and take on poverty so we could be rich? And suffered in all these things as we do?”
Just think, the Lord of heaven, King of kings, Master of the universe, had to come down to earth and put on this ridiculous flesh, human flesh, subject to temptations in all points like as we are.7 It was like a king putting on a clown's suit! I like the way they portrayed that in that movie, “The Parable.” It was like the great King had come down and put on a clown's suit; ridiculous, to put on human flesh. And they made fun of Him, called Him all kinds of names, even jeered at Him when He was on the cross, while they were killing Him.
Being a human being is pretty humbling! You’re pretty dependent. I haven’t found one yet that didn’t have to have food. I never found any human being yet that didn’t have to eat and sleep to stay alive. Some people pride themselves on how long they can fast. There was quite a craze going in the United States for a while. Atomic Power with God Through Fasting and Prayer was the name of the book. You were supposed to earn gifts of the Spirit and power with God by how long you fasted. If you fasted five days you got this, and ten days you got that, and 30 days you got so-and-so, and after 40 days you became a prophet of God!
I never found a human being yet who could go without air. You’re dependent every minute on breathing. The New Testament uses the word “pneuma,” which we use for air. When you talk about pneumatic tires, pneumatic pumps, you’re saying air tires, air pumps. The Greek word is pneuma, and that’s the word the New Testament uses for spirit. Just as you can’t last very long without air, you wouldn’t last very long without your spirit either, and as a Christian, you’re not going to last very long without the Holy Spirit. You need air, you need your spirit, and you need the Holy Spirit. Some people have been known to have their spirits leave their bodies temporarily; the body was only dead for a little while and then they came back to life. But let me tell you, if the spirit hadn’t come back, the body would have stayed dead.
How do we know we’re not righteous? “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”8 “There is none righteous, no, not one.”9 Poor old Job had to finally confess that he wasn’t righteous. And he finally confessed that he had to just trust the Lord, not his own righteousness. When his wife told him to curse God and die, he said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”10 In other words, he was attesting to the righteousness of God. “Even if God kills me, I will trust that He knew best and that He was righteous in so doing.”
We’re all a mess! We’re all sinners! We’re all evil in our hearts except for the Lord. “The heart of man is desperately wicked; who can know it?”11 God’s Word says you’re even born in sin. It says, “And in sin did my mother conceive me.”12
If we didn’t have human frailty, human weaknesses to make wrong decisions and to fail, then there would not be the freedom of choice, the majesty of free will that God implanted in every heart, including, apparently, in the hearts of the angels, to make a choice, to voluntarily love and serve Him.
Jesus said, “I have not called you servants, but friends. For the Master doesn’t tell everything to His servants, His slaves.”13 He wanted us as friends. He wanted us as His beloved; not only friends, but His Bride.
Life is a learning process. And you don’t learn it by snapping your fingers or suddenly getting an injection. Or like you’ve seen in some of these science fiction movies where they put a skull cap on one guy and drain his brain and put all of his knowledge in someone else’s head. Wouldn’t that be nice? It would be so easy! But look what you would miss—this trial-and-error process, this trying-and-learning process.
Don’t you think God enjoys watching you learn things? Even by mistakes, trial and error? Don’t you learn things better that way? Isn’t experience really the best teacher? The learning process is a marvelous thing. That’s what we’re here for. Actually the Christian life is a constant learning process. I don’t mean you learn to be saved; you’re saved the minute you believe and Jesus comes into your heart. When you believe the Word and you receive Christ, you’re saved then and there! That’s a gift; you had nothing to do with learning it or earning it!
It’s a miracle of God. He does it all for you, He’s already done it, and it’s finished. But that is just the beginning of learning how to be a Christian and live a Christian life, to love others, and even how to love God and how to be faithful and how to be loyal, how to be diligent.
And oh my, then you have to die, and you’ve got a thousand years and all eternity to learn all the things you didn’t learn while you were a flesh-and-blood human being. I think God has an awful lot of things to teach us, all the things we didn’t learn in this life.
Not only life, but the Millennium and eternity are a constant learning process, another grade, another step. How could we possibly think we could just somehow get a shot in the head the minute we die and go to heaven and suddenly know it all? If it were that way we’d be God Himself. He’s the only one who is omniscient; that means He knows it all.He’s the only one that’s omnipresent; that means everywhere. He’s the only one that’somnipotent; that means all-powerful!
There are a lot of things there aren’t going to be any more of: pain, death, sickness and sorrow.14 He doesn’t say there’s not going to be any more tears, but He says He’s going towipe away our tears. Thank God, we’ve got a lot to be thankful for; there are going to be a lot of things done and finished that we’ll never have to worry about again. We’ll have so many new things to do and new things to learn that we can’t be weighed down with all those things we used to have.
So be thankful for the past, that it’s behind you. Be thankful for the present, that you’re learning, even if you’re not always successful. And thank God for the future, when you can finish the job, we hope, or at least keep on with the job and do even better.
Lord, thank You for the past, the present, and the future. Thank You for all Your blessings. Thank You for both the good and the bad, the bad that taught us things in the past, and all the good things, and for the present, Lord, the better things, and for the future, the best things.
Originally published June 1985. Adapted and republished February 2014 by TFI.
1 2 Corinthians 12:7.
2 Galatians 6:11; 4:15.
3 2 Corinthians 12:7.
4 Job 2:9.
5 Job 4:17.
6 2 Corinthians 8:9.
7 Hebrews 4:15.
8 Romans 3:23.
9 Romans 3:10.
10 Job 13:15.
11 Jeremiah 17:9.
12 Psalm 51:5.
13 John 15:15.
14 Revelation 21:4.
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