The background to the incident mentioned previously, is that Paul had been called by God to be the apostle to the gentiles. And so, to enable Paul to teach the church, the Lord had decided to give Paul more revelation concerning the mysteries of the gospel, than any of His other apostles. The danger to Paul however, of receiving so much revelation from the Lord was that he could become lifted up in pride, because regarding the mysteries of the gospel, Paul would know more than anyone else. You will recall that because of the abundant beauty given him by the Lord, pride was the sin the caused Lucifer to fall (1 Timothy 3:6). So, in order to counteract the temptation of pride that Paul could be exposed to, the Lord decided to allow Satan to allocate one of his angels permanently to Paul, to persecute him as often as he desired. From the outset, the Lord told Paul that He would do this, for He told Paul how many things he must suffer for the sake of the gospel (Acts 9:16). After a while however, the persecution became a bit much for Paul to bear in the natural, and so he prayed to the Lord to remove this angel. This was when the Lord finally told Paul that He would not remove the angel, because that would be going against His will for Paul’s life. Instead, the Lord taught Paul to pray for His strength to be made manifest through Paul in his persecutions. And so, we see that in the natural, even the apostle Paul did not always have the necessary understanding to pray according to God’s perfect will. No wonder Paul thanked God that he prayed with his spirit more than all others, because praying in tongues, always prays God’s perfect will.
Michael E.B. Maher
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