Caught Up In Paradise

DEVOTION

2 CORINTHIANS

CAUGHT UP IN PARADISE

2 Cor 12:1-6

12:1 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 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. 3 And I know that this man — whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. 5 I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6 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.

NIV

Although in a third person, Paul is in fact speaking about himself. It is not clear exactly when and where, although many scholars have determined from the time of the writing to fourteen years back and that would be about when Paul and Barabus were around Antioch, but that is not the point here. What are we to learn for our spiritual growth in this? Once again we see something we can boast about and that is the actions of God in his interaction with us. Even in our weakness, God can do a mighty work in our lives. He can in fact reveal through either a vision, or actually take us to a place in the physical or spiritual showing us things others have not yet seen or experienced. Maybe it is not very plausible, but is certainly is possible. The point here or maybe it is the question here is, have we put God in a box? Have we put him in a box that we have constructed? Have we restrained his power in our lives? It would appear that if we have not experienced the almighty power in the way Paul did, it might well be due to our confining God to what we think he will or can do. We see all his mighty works in the Old Testament and well as in the new. But do we say that was just then, and God does not work like that in our day? Maybe we think people would think of us as some kind of fool, or liar, making up such stories about the power of God in our lives, and that he revealed incredible things to us. Maybe we are tied in knots by all our rules and regulations that we cannot be free enough to allow God to work in our lives as he did in Paul’s. Maybe we look toward those rules more than we look toward God. We spend such an enormous amount of time getting the verbiage just right and all the substantiating scriptures to back up our beliefs that we cannot actually see God. Would it not be so much better to just be caught up in paradise? That is all we would ever need. Then we would know all we need to know. We certainly would not need to boast all about our education, training, degrees, licenses or ordinations. We certainly would not need to boast about our position either in the world’s system or in the church. But we could boast about the mighty works of God. Oh, how much better it would be to just be caught up in paradise.