To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations: As you learn and pray for more and more Biblical principles, you can get to feeling like YOU are a better, mature, advanced, and superior Christian. This attitude is called, pride. James 4:6 (NIV) But He gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Being opposed by God is NOT a good thing. So, sometimes God has to allow us to experience something that just won’t go away easily.

There was given me a thorn in my flesh: Almost everyone has one thing that presents a real challenge to them. Some people try to handle this issue by themselves; others try various programs of the world; there are those who try to just work around the problem; and, there are those who turn to Jesus. You are one of those who are looking to Jesus for the solution to this problem with divorce.

A messenger of Satan, to torment me: The characteristics of your issue with divorce is, the source of it isn’t normal or natural. Your issue with divorce is a spiritual attack against you. Satan is trying to take you down; but, Jesus wants to help you learn how to respond with mighty spiritual power.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me: Prayer is definitely a powerful weapon for getting healing, deliverance, miracles, and results from God. BUT, what do you do when such a powerful tool fails to bring results? JESUS said in Matthew 7:7 (NIV) “ASK and it will be given to you; SEEK and you will find; KNOCK and the door will be opened to you.” When Jesus says: “ASK and it will be given to you.” and you ask and nothing happens, that is a real problem.

If The Three Keys To All Of Christianity, ASK, SEEK, and KNOCK fail to produce results like it did with Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9, this gets your attention. ASK is the bottom of the tools that you can look to for anything you need. Even if you are having problems remembering to ASK, there is nothing you can do but ASK Jesus to help you remember to ASK. If ASK fails, you can’t find some principle that is below the ASK key.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me: ASKING is definitely the way to get all those things you need from Jesus. When you ASK, you are taking your eyes off of EVERYTHING ELSE and putting them on Jesus. If you start looking for some other procedure, you will be making a mistake. Just because the ASK key didn’t seem to work doesn’t mean you used the wrong tool. Paul asked three times; he included the SEEK key which brought intensity, passion, and pleading into his asking three times. A lot of the time it is just a matter of adding the SEEK or the KNOCK key to the ASK key. But, not this time for Paul.