Daily EncouragementSample

Undoubtedly Paul is speaking about himself here. His fourteen year silence about his third heaven experience is surely significant. Special “visions and revelations” are not to be sought after. They are given by the Lord to any “man in Christ” he chooses. Their genuineness is seen in the reluctance of those involved to speak about them. “I believe that men still have visions and revelations,” said Campbell Morgan, “but I am always suspicious that a man who is anxious to talk of visions is suffering from nightmare. The true vision and revelation cannot be talked about.” Special “visions and revelations” do not leave those who experience them enjoying a continual mountain-top experience. They are most likely to face the constant discipline of “a thorn in the flesh,” so that they will not yield to any temptation to pride. How different is the man constantly troubled with an affliction of the eyes (if this is what the “thorn” entailed) from what we might have imagined a man who had been “caught up to paradise” would be! Saints of God are to live their daily lives by the grace of God, not by seeking “visions and revelations.” That grace is sufficient; it is “made perfect in weakness.”