At the end of Paul's epistles he usually takes care of personal and personnel issues. It is in these farewells that i begin to sympathize with him as I realize the number of churches he is assisting in leadership. He never uses his enormous spiritual authority to build his own empire. He always uses his authority to under-gird one of the young leaders he is helping. By giving his authority away to help others, he actually increases his authority. It would be good if all leaders could understand that principle.
As we slip into 2 Corinthians I notice something. A few days ago we talked about the misquoted, "God won't put more on you than you can stand", and realized that the scripture was actually referring to not being tempted beyond your ability to resist. Paul makes the point that we will most certainly have more put on us than we can stand in verses 8-10: 8 We do not want you
to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the
province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability
to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9
Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened
that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10
He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.
On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
It stands to reason that if we never had anything come against us that we couldn't stand, we wouldn't need to trust in God. But God wants us to trust His strength, not our own. He has delivered us, He will deliver us, and will continue to deliver us as we depend on Him.
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