LeFors Tribe

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Hello. This vlog is really an elaboration of my previous vlog, “Thorn In The Flesh”. To understand this vlog, it is necessary to have already seen and understand my previous vlog. You can find the previous vlog on http://www.leforstribe.com/.

Like I mentioned in my previous vlog that the “Thorn In The Flesh” saying does not mean sickness, dieases, or any form of handicap. It means “Human Enemies”. It is an idiom used in the Bible.

Paul was clear when he mentioned what the ‘thorn’ was.

“…a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan…”-2 Corinthians 12:7

A messenger of satan. Let us remind ourselves who Paul was. Paul, formerly Saul, was a Pharisee, the best there was. A pure breed. He did not like Yahushua (Jesus). He was taught by those he worked with that Yahushua was a person who falsely clamed He was the Son of God. As a result, he killed so many believers who believed that Yahushua was the Son of God, he had a reputation for persecuting Believers in many places. Later on, Saul was on his way to Damascus when he saw Yahushua. As a result of this, he was convinced that Yahushua was the Son of God.  When he became a Believer, he changed his name to Paul, and stopped following the Pharisees. Saul, before he became a believer, was a Messenger of Satan. He was helping Satan destroy the Truth. Yahushua said the Pharisees were from a brood of Vipers. The Viper always lies.

“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” -Matthew 12:34

Also, Yahushua identified the theif as to only come to steal, kill and destroy and that Yahushua comes to give life and much more.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the fullest.” -John 10:10

Paul, now as a Believer was experiencing the same and greater persecutions by those who were against him. The Pharisees now hated Paul and started torturing him. They put him in prison. Ah, let me hold this up, IF the thorn in the flesh does means sickness, diseases, or any physical handicap, did God put Paul in prison? NO! It was the Pharises that put physical pain on Paul by putting him in prison. Did God stone Paul? NO! It was the Pharisees. All of Paul’s suffering came from HUMANS.

Also, Paul was setting up many new churches around. The Believers  were Jews and also Gentiles. The Pharisees didnt like it at all. They were “losing business” so they kept going to the Believer’s churches and tried to confuse the new Believers by disorting the Truth. We can see proof of that in the Galatians book.

“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified…” -Galatians 3:1

God would not remove the ‘thorn in the flesh’ from Paul because God’s grace is sufficent. God is not going to control the Pharisees. The Pharisees have their own freewill. They chose to go against God. God’s grace is sufficent for Paul and even for Pharisees. God’s grace for Paul is that God will take care of him and and even if the Pharisees repent, God would accept them. It’s the same way we react towards unbelievers. Once an unbeliever tells you they realize that God is real, you would recieve them with gladness. That’s God’s grace.

If God’s words “my grace is sufficent’ mean that God is telling Paul to remain sick, it would be the first and ONLY saying in the Bible that God told anyone to keep his disease. It is with great irony that Paul heals everyone else but not himself. *hits head*   Paul could do so many things, heal people, raise the dead back to life, bring thousands of people to the Messiah, establish many churches, and so on. He was a mighty apostle.

Let us read the main context of this chapter (2 Corinthians 12). In the beginning of the chapter, Paul is really talking about himself. He was the very man that saw Yahushua and was given the opportunity to hear the secrets of God and those are not permitted to be told. He was in a ‘WOW” postition. He was one of the “chosen” of all men to have this opportunity. Of course, we can get prideful about it. Paul was humble to refer himself to a 3rd person, “a man”, but we know he was talking about himself.

Please read 2 Cornithans 12: 1-6

“I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know–God knows. And I know that this man–whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows– was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say….” 2 Corinthians 12:1-6

Now keep that in mind: Paul was a chosen man who has had the opportunity to see heaven! He has had the opportunity to hear so many revelations from God. He’s one of a kind! The chapter goes on to say this,

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” -2 Corinthians 12:7-10

Do you see anywhere in this context the word sickness or diseases? No, NOTHING.

That concept is only a lie taught to us by Satan. We do not want to become Satan’s messenger. We will have to abandon that mentality.

I, myself, as a Christian have experienced perscution, some people have called me names and insulted me. I felt a moment of weakness, but in my weakess, I became strong. I am still standing. I’m sure many of you may have been in the same situation as this.

We also have to remember that Paul is not someone we should make a doctrine out of. Yahushua is the Truth. What does Yahushua say we can do in His name? Read the 4 books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Understand how Yahushua acted and then read the book of ACTS. Do you see the BOOK OF ACTS being practiced in you and in your church? If so, WONDERFUL because this shows that you are a doer of the Word.  If not, then perhaps you should reexamine. James says,

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, or you will be deceiving yourselves.” -James 1:22

Be blessed!

http://www.leforstribe.com/ 

This message is to encourage Believers to live healthy, to live in victory, not defeated. Believers have what the world does not have. We have the victory. It has been given to those who believe. For this subject, I will cover the area of sicknesses and dieases. It is very clear in the Bible that it is NOT God’s will for us to be sick. Unfortunately, I have seen a COMMON “fall-back” among most Believers who want to accept that they are sick or have dieases attacking them. They go back to point out that Paul said he had a “thorn in the flesh” which can be found in 2 Corinthians 12:7. I will show you in this vlog that “the thorn in the flesh” DOES NOT mean sickness and I strongly encourage us to abandon that misleading understanding. It is a mentality that Satan has attempted to infest God’s church.

For those who are not familiar who Paul was: He was a pure Jew, a pharisee, who was anti-Messiah. He murdered a lot of Believers but one day he saw Yahushua (Jesus) in a vision and believed in Him. He became a Believer of the Messiah and established many churches and was inspired by God to write 2/3 of the New Testament. He was one of the powerful apostles of Yahushua. He said in one of his letter that he had a ‘thorn in the flesh’ and many Christians today view it as sickness and as a result, many accept the fact of being sick….because Paul was said to be sick, too. Some assume that Paul’s sicknesses are: earaches, headaches, eye afflictions, epislepsy, hysteria, malaria, speech impediment, or sexual lust.

Praise God for the TRUTH. Gosh, if there were no such thing as Truth, I’d be a mess.  The “thorn in the flesh” DOES NOT mean sickness. I will show you some pointers where we can see that it does not mean sickness.

Paul preached ‘big-time’ on healing. Never do you see in the Bible where a sick person has healed sick people. Did not Yahushua say that a kingdom divided against itself would fall? You can read that in Matthew 12:25-30. Sickness vs. Health? We can see this is not so.

The truth is: In the Bible, God wants His children to be healed, well, and strong! Yahushua suffered beatings so that we could be healed. 

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” -Isaiah 53:5

Notice the verse says, “By his wounds, we ARE healed.” This means healing is possible and will happen. Satan wants you to be sick– he wants the opposite of this verse. He wants to limit us of what we are capable of doing. He wants to snap us away from God’s plans for us. What good are we if we are sick. We cannot do anything if we have to stay in bed and try to recover.Unfortunately, we as Christians, agree with Satan in this view. We think that the thorn in the flesh is a sickness put upon us.

Now, let’s get to the bottom of the “thorn in the flesh”. That  mentality must be destroyed. It is a false teaching or ”concept” that Satan has infested in the Chruch today and caused us to believe a misconception of the Bible. Knowledge is power. God has said:

 ”My people are destroyed because of lack of knowledge…” Hosea 4:6

 And later in that verse, he blames it on preachers. Preachers are supposed to be shepards– taking GOOD care of God’s flock but instead, many just take care of their flock allowing them to be sick and get worse.

Let’s see what kind of attitude did Jesus’s own brother, James, have when he wrote a letter to a church:

“Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;”-James 5:14

This clearly tells me that James is expecting to hear that there is no one sick. He asked if there was ANYONE among you that is sick…He expects that no one is to be sick.

Now back to Paul, himself, healed people and performed healing. He raised the dead back to life! It would be truly an ironic if he was dead-sick but healing everyone else.

“The thorn in the flesh” really means HUMAN ENEMIES.

‘Thorn of the flesh’ is an Old Testament idiom. That’s something the Bible uses. It’s a Hebrew idiom not used among us, Americans. If you mentioned that idiom to a Jewish person, they would know that it means someone is being a bothersome to you. Unfortunately, to Americans or to those who are not familiar with the customs of Israel, they think this idiom means sickness. 

 Joshua used that phrase and so did David. Let’s see the CONTEXT of what that idiom was used in the Bible. Joshua said:

“But they shall be snares and traps to you, and scourges on your sides and **thorns in your eyes**, until you perish from this good land which the Lord your God has given you.” -Joshua 23:13

Joshua was not talking about sickness. The ‘thorn’ in that verse was regarding to the heathen nations in Caanan. We see that ’scourges on your sides’ and ‘thorns in your eyes’ are not sore eyes or sore body. It is human enemies.

.Again, David said:

“But the godless are like thorns to be thrown away, for they tear the hand that touches them.” -2 Samuel 23:6

In this verse, thorns means personalities from a human. A godless person. A human enemy.

Paul was clear when he mentioned what the ‘thorn’ was.

“…a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan…”-1 Corinthians 12:7 

A messenger of satan = human enemy and is also angels of satan. It’s a CLEAR reference to what “thorn in the flesh” means but unfortunately many people do not get it. It’s a MESSENGER from satan.

First of all, if ‘thorn in the flesh’ were really sickness, then boy, the people were really stupid when they took Paul’s handerchief which was filled with mucus, booger, snots, from his sickness. The handerchief would be filled with g-e-r-m-s of his eye infection and all the boils and other infection and dieases Paul had, but interesting, the handerchief was used to heal many OTHER people, but not Paul?!?!

 We can see the lie in the meaning of ‘thorn in the flesh’ being a sickness.Secondly, If Paul, “the sickest of men” was one of the mightest apostle accomplishing more work than a well man, then let us all pray for sickness in order that we also may do more work for God.

it’s not sickness. It’s a messenger of satan, which means human enemies.

Now, if some of the people say that Paul had the “thorn in the flesh” to prevent him from being boastful– and they have the same thing. Then in my perspective, they are SO arrogant to think they are so righteous, so like Paul, and so wonderful and that they have their thorn in the flesh to keep them humble. This is an issue of pride.  that’s an arrogant mentality.

I want to close this with encouragement. Beloved I pray that you may prosper in all things and be healthy, even as your soul prospers.” -3 John 2:1

We can see here that the apostles wish for their beloved brothers and sisters to prosper in everything and to be in good health just the same way as their soul prospers. When you are saved, you have a new creature– in this verse, John is saying he wants you to have it all.

Be blessed!