There Was Given to Me a Thorn
by Murrell Ewing
Unnamed conference
Kind: conference session
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/murrell-ewing--there-was-given-to-me-a-thorn
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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hallelujah to second corinthians chapter 12 verse 7 and unless i should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelation there was given to me a thorn in the flesh the messenger of satan to buffet me lest i should be exalted above measure for this thing i besought the lord thrice that it might depart from me and he said unto me my grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness most gladly therefore will i rather glory in my infirmities that the power of christ may rest upon me therefore i take pleasure in infirmities in reproaches and necessities in persecutions in distresses for christ's sake for when i am weak then am i strong some of the greatest preaching i've ever heard i have heard and witnessed in this conference brother anthony mangan upon our conversation some weeks ago in anticipation of some of the plans for the conference he said buddy come prepared for whatever he said if it it's right to preach you'll preach if it's not right somebody else will be preaching it's no i said brother brother anthony he's like my brother i said some time ago the lord spoke to my heart a message and i said i will hold that in the deep freeze until conference if it's called on i'll preach it then if it's not i'll preach it later so for the next few moments here let me share with you what the lord spoke to me sometime back just simply if you want to refer it my title simply say call it there was given to me a thorn would you say that with me there was given to me a thorn thank god would you just simply say right now god anoint you the lips of your feeble servants unnot the ears of your people melt our hearts in the presence of god in jesus name amen thank you you may be seated of all the people that we would not want to compare ourselves some of the beautiful heroes walk across the pages of god's word but yet sometimes in satanic attacks upon us through misgivings misunderstandings frustrations we must look to some of the struggles and battles of others to give courage and faith to ourselves in our own dilemmas i feel like every one of us are here for the same reason and purpose we want to get the work of god done but we realize that there are some entities some obstructions some personal hang-ups something that is keeping us from the fulfillment of what all of us would like to see in our own lives and our own efforts and in our own ministry we're all human i don't think that we would be here if it were not for that great desire that's within us but yet we all realize that there's so much more that we feel that we should be and could be doing and i am so very happy and i wish i had time to go down the list of the speakers that have talked to me in this in this meeting and so many i thought this morning that last night brother kilgore was going to preach my message and i was almost tempted to tell brother anthony mangan brother tenney has almost already took what i the gist of what i wanted to say in his eloquence this morning but

i did not i went to the prayer room and i stayed there until i was ready to come ahead and say what the lord gave me but if it would be possible for us to compare ourselves to some of the heroes of the bible we would not want to tread on holy ground to liken ourselves but yet we must learn and of all the characters that it would not appear possible in our misguided concept of today of the confirmation of a man's ministry of all people it wouldn't look like that the apostle paul would have had problems or struggles or things to bucket him such a great hero and such a great man but yet he confesses to us that in his own life he did not share with us whether his idea or concept was that the thorn that he was speaking of was given to him by god given to him by satan given to him by individuals given to him by birth he does not share he just simply says there was given to me a thorn sometimes our hang-ups are involved in us trying to figure out where some of our thorns come from jesus did a beautiful miracle one time in the life of a young man and the question greater than the praise and the worship for the miracle that was accomplished the question at hand was what caused the condition to have to have a miracle to begin with we get caught up sometimes on where things come from rather than how to handle it and to get the victory over it you understand what i'm trying to say they asked jesus who sinned you know the main the the first idea that comes to our mind when something does not go right is somebody has sinned that was the situation with job and i'm not saying that sometime that sin is not the culprit but all the time sin is not the culprit job's comforters came to him and said something's happened you've sinned you're hiding something something's taken place in the hidden sanctums of your soul and this is the reason of the judgments of god and job said you go ahead knock on say what you will and when it's all over i'll still be here trying to find god jesus told those those inquirers he said nobody sinned neither the young man nor his nor his parents nothing that you can lay the blame for his blindness to he said some things happen just simply that god can get glory out of when it's corrected it was given to me a thorn but he said in my own mind i will not wrestle with the purpose i will not wrestle with the with the origin i will not wrestle with any of these things i will just simply equate it to this there has been a great revelation given to me there's a great anointing placed upon me and there's a great there's a great future ahead of me a great accomplishment and a great revival so i'll just write the thorn off as god's way of giving me a balance now if we don't come to grips with the idea that every one of us have to have a balance we are in trouble every one of us must have a balance the thorn to the apostle paul was what the second partner on a seesaw is to a kid the thorn in paul's experience to him was the same effect as the counter balance on the boom of a construction piece of equipment and if you don't think that those things

have to have counter balances you should have been with us during our building program one day somebody got that boom stretched out too far and there was not enough counterbalance to counter the thing was trying to pick up and we turned the whole machine over if you're gonna go far this way and if you're going to pick up anything over there you're going to have to have something on the other end of that rig counterbalancing it every one of us know the beauty of the revelation of god in our lives and the power of the holy ghost but if we're to ever use that power to its ultimate and achieve the things that god wants us to have the fact that we're operating out of human flesh the weakness of that flesh demands that we have a counterbalance to keep us level something has got to hold us aesthetic with that revelation and with that anointing and with that respect and with the power of god working in our ministries if we didn't have something to balance us every once in a while we've become egotistical somebodies that you couldn't touch with a 10-foot pole god has got it all worked out so where you're gonna have a battle you're gonna have a thorn you're gonna have an affliction you're gonna have a struggle you're gonna have it because that's the thing that keeps us in tow and in balance to be used of god the way we want to be used of god there was given to me a thorn you go ahead and kick against your thorn you go ahead and kick against it you go ahead and mess with it and pick at it get it festered get it infected and you have other complications beside the thorn go ahead go ahead and the first thing you know all of your energies will be stepped up because of the thorn where if you'll have the right attitude about the porn you can say god has got it here for a reason let me use it for a balance and go on and get the work of god god there was given to me a thorn who shalt allah does anybody feel the presence of the holy ghost in this house today we all dream we all have visions we all anticipate we all we look at the beautiful things and the possibilities of the future and sometimes in lower moments we almost think that we were hallucinating in some of our dreaming because the devil is always there to buffet he's always there to doubt or make doubt and discouragement a part of your everyday lifestyle but i've got news for you everything that's ever dreamed has been buffeted everything that was ever used of god in this in the word of god was buffeted by things that came against him to stop him from accomplishing the things that he was sent out and god's purpose was for him to accomplish joseph joseph was a prime example of what i share and what i'm trying to get across here today in thought joseph of course as you know was a dreamer he was tagged the dreamer joseph was the beloved of his dad being next to the youngest boy the youngest for quite a while but then being the love of his dad and being the apple of course of his dad's eye and then it looked like that perhaps he was going to turn out to be the apple of god's eye dreams visions the anointing of god placed upon him to dream of things that were were to be foretelling the future the future experience nobody knew in the embryo state of that young man's experience with god that it was going to wind up being the salvation of a lineage nobody understood that so human ideas and and human human reasoning took over and it went rampant young men brothers

of the boy became jealous of the attention of the of the anointing they became jealous of the of their dad's affection and attention to the young man it was all more than they could stand and when in his immaturity he shared some of these dreams it was more than they could take them carnality drove them to horrendous acts of jealousy the plan to take his life first of all the plan for the pit the cloak that was dipped in animal blood sent back to dad as human reasoning of what might have happened then the compassion of one brother that said maybe we shouldn't leave him to die in the pit there's a way here that we can make a little money off of him let's sell him to the egyptian band sell him as a slave all of these things were a part of the puppeting the thorn in the flesh the thorn in the experience the thorn in the plan of god for joseph's life the rattling wagon of the egyptian caravan and then finally there was a while that he was received into the household of the authorities but then from there being betrayed by potiphar's wife turned us to where it looked that he was the aggressor finally the dungeon fell everything against him it was just it was a sad decline into a horrendous valley the stair steps steadily one by one into that deep trauma but in a dungeon cell hold on joseph it ain't over son don't lose your faith your dream is still as real today as it was when you first dreamed it the plan of god is just as real now as it was when you ever realized it just hanging there i want to tell you something today human reasoning and pets and caravans of enemy and the dungeon's hell does not stop the purpose of god it does not stop the purpose of god just hang in there hang in there hang tough don't let nothing stop you in the midst of the junk dungeon cell there was an attitude that was kept right there was a heart that was kept clean there was a mind that was kept sensitive to the voice of god in that dungeon he was able to spell the interpretation of a dream that put a fellow prisoner back into his position and upon departing he said when all is well with thee remember me remember me i'm going through a little time right now where the thorn is a little hard to cope with but it's not over i'll be out someday just remember me and pray for me when everything is well with you hallelujah most beautiful thing to me about the story as far as joseph's attitude and coping was concerned the purpose of god of course was the salvation of the lineage god's lineage but the most beautiful thing about the whole story to me concerning joseph was that in playing the role that he played to fulfill god's purpose he understood and it was evident that it was the things that he learned in the valley that let him know how to act when he got back to the throne if it had not been for those dungeons pit slavery experiences if it hadn't been for the hurting in midnight hours if it hadn't been for the loneliness year in and year out if it hadn't been for the concern and the love and the empathy that was born in his heart when his brothers finally came to kneel before his feet like he had already dreamed he would have reached for a sword instead of a grain sack but he was conditioned to know what to reach for when the dream was fulfilled

instead of reaching for a sword of vengeance he reached for the grain sack that would help god spare the limits sometimes saints of god ministers of the gospel we don't understand what's happening when all of these things are buffeting us we don't understand what's taking place on the outside and on the inside when some of these things now look nobody loves to preach revival and shouting and miracles any more than i do but every once in a while we have got and i'm not knocking anything that we've heard everything has been totally level in this whole meeting but what i'm saying every once in a while we've got to be realistic with ourselves we've got to understand that there's some things that we don't understand and we've got to go ahead and have an answer for our own human reasoning in these efforts because it's in times when the devils are buffeting you when you're doing a godly thing that he will come back around then and say if he was doing right if he was on god's side and he's on your side it wouldn't be happening like this would it huh come on be reasonable it wouldn't be happening like this if god was on your side there was something exposed to me here three or four years ago when joan and i were invited to go to columbia to preach the conference there i'll never forget it as long as i realized two times we went there and in a little a little hotel that was you would have hardly wanted to have rented here but it was the finest they had just a little cubby hole with two little cots or joan and i swept a piece of iron or wood or something that you could hang your clothes on in the corner it was the finest they had but i came in one day and i it something happened to me something dawned on me i looked at joan and i said john if our american concept of god's favor on our lives if our american concept of the favor of god on our lives is right that means colombia don't even have a god because in our concept we gauge the favor of god on our lives by material blessings you know it as well as i know if something happens to one of the saints in your church or the first thing he'll hear on the job you must not pay the preacher see it's a material concept a material concept we we we can and i know we bring people into a state of conversion and god begins to bless them because and that's beautiful and good but we cannot come to bear with this ideal that material blessings is synonymous with the favor of god we cannot afford to do that because i witnessed it with my own eyes while american side you have to beg people to stand on their feet and raise their hands and lift their hands to god and we have everything under the sun materially to thank him for when we go to general conference you have to have taxi cabs to carry the people another taxi cab to carry the luggage when they come to their general conference their bedroll everything they had drafts wardrobe and all was in a little paper sack but yet when they were standing to praise god you'd have to get microphones and pa systems and horns to try to get them sit down so you could go on with a service when all they had to thank god for was the fact that he had saved them from the devil's hell that's all i say again if materialism is the synonymous with the favor of god on our lives colombia has no god

haiti has no god but that's not the case that's not the case you can have the same love and the same relationship and the same favor with the god of glory if you don't have a plug nickel in your pocket brother these if you don't have a plug nickel or a copper pity in your pocket you can have the love and the joy and the relationship and the favor and the anointing of god on your life but things happen to give us balance every church you ever pass and there's a beautiful building and a driving successful congregation you look real close somewhere on that map you will see a tombstone somebody died for that church to live there's a balance we shall follow by somebody died for it to happen somebody died for it to happen it don't just spring up without cause somebody paid the price on the side of the counterbalance for the boom to reach out as far as it did i'm telling you preacher you hear me if you want to be used of god somewhere there's going to be a counterbalance called a thorn to give you the power to reach father in your ministry i'm not asking for any more i'm not asking for any more but i'm telling you for just a small degree at least i speak from experience and i do not try to claim anything for myself but my dear dad before the sickness happened to him my dear dad told his church i'm praying a prayer i want god to give my church revival and it don't matter what it cost me if it cost my life i want my church to have revival his church had the revival brother anthony and then kenneth phillips was the one that came in six to six and preached it for us the boy that has his hand lifted right under is the one of the first ones that got the holy ghost in that revival he's a young preacher trying to get a start into the ministry right now a great anointing of god on his life god's church had that revival but you know what it cost he was smitten with a stroke never got into a pulpit to preach the way he had once preached before not ever again not ever again but one month after that kenneth and wonder were on their way to conference they came through through their trailer through lake charles on the way to pocket here to go to conference they stopped at his truck stop and said called us they said come over and have lunch with us i said where are you going he said we're going to park the trailer to go to conferences and no you ain't you're fixing to park the trailer right by mine after dad had that stroke i went straight home i sat there i started continuing to build that church that he had already started for one month we didn't know whether the church was gonna fold or what it was gonna do because they didn't understand they were without a shepherd he was the building contractor he had it all he knew what was going on and the only thing that i knew as a little 25 year old evangelist was to walk in there and go to preaching we're going to have revival revival at midnight revival at midnight revival at midnight reaching that kind of sermons for a month kenneth came along and said you're going to put your trailer behind we're going to have a revival we started on range tonight that little church that was that was drowning in self-pity drowning because of the thorn drowning in unbelief despair

the gloom had so gotten a hold of him we're going to have revival though we're going to have revival get us that up pardon me brother phillips don't don't don't hold me let me call him so so they didn't understand they were without a shepherd he was the building contractor he had it all he knew what was going on and the only thing that i knew as a little 25 year old evangelist was to walk in there and go to preachers we're going to have revival revival at midnight revival at midnight revival at midnight preaching that kind of sermons for a month kenneth came along and said you're going to put your trail of a mind we're going to have a revival we started on range tonight at the little church that was that was drowning in self-pity drowning because of the thorn drowning in unbelief despair the gloom had so gotten a hold of them we gonna have revival though we're gonna have revivals dennis got up pardon me brother phillips don't don't don't hold me let me call him kenneth my friend from way on back but he came parked his trailer just like i told him he was wednesday night he told the people he said some of you called me a false prophet if i told you that 12 or 15 people have had the holy ghost by sunday night or four little people if they had false teeth that like to fell out in their lap my god what you talking about man our pastor lived at the point of death here you are what are you talking about what are you doing but you know what happened there's about two or three got the holy ghost during that week on that sunday night you know what happened was given an offering that night i felt like having everybody come up and march around the offering pan there was a little lady sitting over there she was not a pentecostal she came down she gave her offering one dollar she started back toward the seat and when she started back toward the seat she got right over here the holy ghost hit her she threw up her hands and went to talk it in time when that happened that man right back there stand up brother larry that man his his wife who was just his girlfriend at that point she led him down the eye or his sister one of them led him down the aisle and when he got down the aisle the ministry laid hands on him when the ministry laid hands on him the holy ghost hit him knocked him to the ground when he when his head hit the floor he went to talking in tongues but when he got up he could see hallelujah hallelujah god had restored his sight while he was on the floor receiving the holy ghost that built faith we said everybody else that wants the holy ghost come on across the platform we march them across the platform and everything in the house that didn't have the holy ghost that night prayed through and talked in tongues when the ministry laid hands on them i'm talking about revival at midnight but you hear me there was a thorn a thorn a thorn

somebody had a thorn that gave us the revival i wish every one of you could drive along interstate 10 now and see 15 16 years from that time another church nine and a half acres on i-10 1200 foot of frontage a beautiful church there that i don't take glory far there were thorns that gave birth to that church who shot all of the high thorns thorns thorns dorms brother mike williams what you're encountering right now you hear me it's a thorn but it's going to give you a counter balance that'll reach further than you ever dreamed of reaching in your ministry somebody believe what i'm a preaching right now somebody believe what i'm a preaching right now we saw the property i throw the streets of lake charles praying god i never will forget drove the interstate about every area of our city is covered with another one of our pentecostal churches i wouldn't have infringed on another one of their territories for anything in the world i drove the freeway out of perimeter i said god i hate to spend this much money back here in the corner where you church and your truth your full gospel cannot even be seen please open up something if it's not your will to open it up i'm not asking for a kingdom i'm not asking for the advancement of eastwood or the advancement of the ewing name please god for your cause i get tired of churches with less than the truth having all the exposure i want one of god's churches that preaches this acts 238 message i want them to have four props it was a nine and a half track three blocks down the street from where our old church was but it happened to be in the corner of the main east and west thoroughfare again and the north south earth there 171 the main crossroads of southwest louisiana but that nine and a half acres was not for sale it had been in the same family for 70 years and then the grandfather of the man whose heirs we brought it from owned it before that i don't know how long he owned it they just wouldn't sell it it wasn't for sale but when god's preacher got desperate for a cause two of the heirs of one of the original heirs just all of a sudden wanted their money they had to sell the property to satisfy those two heirs i drove just a few nights after i prayed that prayer and there was a for sale sign on that piece of property i called about it they said yeah it's for sale the people lived in alexandria we want three hundred thousand for it i figured they'd have been asking a hundred thousand an acre you hear me god knows how to open the doors at the right time but between the time when we found the property when we made the deal on it the more first of all i lost my voice six months i didn't know what i'd ever seen again one night i was trying to recoup i couldn't go into the higher tones and you know singing is a part of my life ministry is my first love but singing is a part of my ministry and i was in my i was in my bedroom and i'd gone for about two or three months and i was saying god i know i don't want to damage my voice anymore but i've got to know if i've got anything left if i'll ever get this thing again so i started on the scale

just a blockage this is how i try to go it just nose off i couldn't i couldn't force it to come through my little bunny was in the other room and she didn't know what was going on she burst through our bedroom door mama mama somebody's cows out in the yard joan looked back at her and with tears in her eyes she told money she said no darling that's not a cow that was daddy trying to sing and when bonnie understood what it was she had to laugh because it was so funny but tears were streaming down her eyes at the same time that was the first thing when i finally learned how to sing again i had to learn how to sing again but when i learned how then the next thing was a blood clot in my leg i was on my way to delaware to take care of it take an engagement and a blood clot in my leg the next thing when i finally got over the blood clot in my leg i came to preach the youth camp here in our own district and thank god for the for the invitation that was extended to me but it was during that youth camp that i was in such pain that i would roll in the floor during the night after i'd preach when i went home found out that there was a mass in my colon when they went in it was malignant they took the thing out while i was recuperating from that my dad in the hospital for gallbladder surgery we thought before he got out of there his heart failed i lost him in the hospital things kept going until finally when joan and i would go over the overpass and we'd see that that piece of property you didn't even want to look at it please hear what i'm saying there'll be times i never heard anybody any more honest than jim larson was the other night when he said in the battle of that church building program even suicidal thoughts come through his mind i'm telling you if you don't have something to anchor yourself to if you don't have a counterbalance and know something about why that balance is there it'll drive you up the wall when you get in the dark times you hear me and there's so much more that i want to preach but i don't have time and i don't want to fringe on anybody's time but you hear me the greatest lesson of what balance is all about we know the glories of pentecost we know the powers of an upper room but we've paid very little visits to a field called calvary but you remember there was a counterbalance called calgary that purchased the right of a glorious pentecost but you know what happened at calvary there were people at calvary that were there because lord drove them there but there were others there because wanting to be a spectator drove them there through different eyes two crowds saw two different things one was driven away by the spectator crowd and the bible says they had to view it from a distance while spectators walked out scripture says when they saw the site and what was done there it moved them they they couldn't look at it and just walk away they had to give some kind of expression so they just smoked their breasts and return home but you hear me calvary purchase more than just for a spectator the smite is breast calvary purchased the right devotion humbling oneself at the foot of that sacred prayer and identifying with the price that was paid there

your spiritual level will determine what you see if you're carnal you see fear if you're carnal you'll see you'll see hypocrites if you're carnal you'll always see devils and that don't mean that it don't exist but if you ever get on a higher plane and go to looking through different eyes instead of fear you're going to see in faith who shall tell her behind instead of hypocrites you'll go to see in saints and instead of devils you'll seek 15 angels between you and every devil would you stand lift your hand to god