I OFTEN WONDER that if the Apostle Paul was known today in person, he’d be labeled an outcast by many professing Christians because of the immense and constant suffering and hardship he went through. ‘Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.’ (2 Cor 11:23-28) We so easily forget that through many hardships (the things that bruise and wound us – not the fact that we couldn’t afford the mansion or the Mercedes we pined for) we enter the kingdom of God.

– M.A. Williams