It Was Not Your Fault That It Did Not Work

The line this site carries everywhere, and it belongs at the top of this one most of all: this is not medicine and nothing here is treatment. I am not going to tell you what to try next. That is not what this article is and it is not what this site is for.

This one is for afterwards.

You did the thing. Whatever it was. You followed it properly, you did not cut corners, you kept at it longer than most people would have. And it did not work.

And there is a particular silence that comes after that, and in the silence a question forms that almost nobody says out loud. Not what do I try now. The other one. The one that goes: was it me.

Did I not do it right. Did I not keep at it long enough. Did I not believe it hard enough.

I have come to take that question away from you, and I want to do it thoroughly, because I do not think anybody has ever actually answered it for you.

He asked three times and it did not go

There is a passage where the most effective minister in the New Testament asks God for something, repeatedly, and does not get it.

For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. (2 Corinthians 12:8, King James Version)

Three times. Paul.

This is a man who has seen extraordinary things happen through his own hands. He is not a bystander to the power of God and nobody could accuse him of small faith without embarrassing themselves. And he asks three times for one specific thing to be taken away, and it is not taken away.

Notice what is not in the text. There is no suggestion that he asked wrongly. There is no correction of his method. Nobody tells him he should have asked a fourth time, or believed harder, or checked whether there was something in his life blocking it.

The thing did not go, and the record does not blame him.

You are standing where Paul stood, and the record has never once blamed the person who asked. Second Corinthians 12:8 has an apostle ask three times without result and reports it without a single word of correction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that land on somebody who has been quietly blaming themselves.

Where the blame actually came from

I want to say something about why that question got into you in the first place, because you did not invent it.

Somebody put it there. Usually kindly, and usually without knowing.

It comes out as: have you tried. It comes out as a story about somebody else for whom it worked. It comes out as a suggestion made in a caring voice at the wrong moment. And every single one of those, however well meant, carries the same quiet implication: there is a thing that works, and you have not found it, and finding it is your job.

And then when nothing works, the arithmetic completes itself without anybody having to say the last line. Second Corinthians 12:8 refuses that arithmetic outright, and the Holy Spirit does not finish that sum either.

I want to say the last line out loud so it can be refused: the reason nothing worked is not that you were insufficient. That sentence has been sitting in you unexamined, and it is not true, and it is not from God.

You are not the reason, and the burden of the outcome has never once been yours to carry. The written word says he besought the Lord thrice and the answer was not the removal, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes an accusation off somebody who was only ever doing their best.

What was actually said to him

Now, what Paul does get. And I want to handle this carefully, because it is the most misused sentence in this whole area.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9, King James Version)

That gets quoted at people as a consolation prize, and used that way it is almost cruel. So let me say what it is not.

It is not an explanation. Paul is never told why. He does not get a reason, and he does not appear to be given one later either.

It is not a promise that he will feel fine about it. Read the passage: he is honest about it being a thorn, right through. What it is, is a presence and a sufficiency in the middle of an unresolved thing. Not instead of the thing being resolved. In the middle of it, while it is still there.

You are given enough for today without being given an explanation, and that has never once meant God was withholding. Second Corinthians 12:9 gives grace rather than a reason and does it without apology, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes sufficiency feel like company rather than like a substitute.

The plain routing, which is not another thing to try

I am not going to hand you another thing to try. That is the whole point of this page. But there is a routing that sits on every article on this site, and it is not a remedy and it is not a suggestion.

If something frightening is happening right now, you call 911. If what is heavy tonight is your own mind and it is more than you can hold, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And if the thing that did not work has left somebody unwell and unseen, you ring a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist, and that is not one more attempt: it is the ordinary door.

You are allowed to walk through that door with nothing left in your hands. Second Corinthians 12:8 has a man come back a third time with no result to report and no rebuke waiting for him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody arrive empty without arriving ashamed.

Going again is not admitting the last thing failed because of you. It is what people do who are still alive and still being cared for.

You have not used up your welcome, and no unanswered thing has ever once counted against you. The Spirit of God is the one who goes in with a person who has run out of ideas, and what is written records the asking and the not receiving side by side with no fault assigned to anybody.