Ever since the Garden of Eden, when sin invaded our world and impacted everything, thorns and thistles in the form of difficulty, disappointment, and death have been a reality in our world. Yet we tend to think that if God is good, and if we are good, then certainly we can bend His will toward ridding our personal world of the things that bring us pain. We long for a supernatural experience to which we can point, demonstrating that God is at work in our lives. Paul longed for this as well when the pain of a “thorn in the flesh” invaded his already pain-ridden life. Paul begged for God to do something. And he did experience something supernatural—a supernatural experience that we can expect to experience too.