II Corinthians 4:1-18 details the reasons why Paul wouldn’t give up in the face of trial, reasons why he was “all-heart.”
Paul understood that when he was in pressure-filled moments, that is when God was doing some of His deepest work in him and His most public work for others to see.
I can’t give you a reason for every trial you face, though God has one, I can assure you. I can, however, give you reasons for not losing heart. I can give you reasons for going the distance. I can give you reasons to keep praying, keep walking and to keep believing. Here is what I see Paul saying in a nutshell: Though I have trials, I will not lose heart because I have a treasure, a testimony, and a transformed life!
In ancient times, sacred scrolls or valuable documents were rolled up and placed inside a jar of clay and then hidden for safe keeping. The Dead Sea Scrolls were kept in such jars of clay. Very important messages were deposited into earthen vessels.
According to II Cor. 4:7, you and I are like jars of clay, like earthen vessels, in which a very important message, a treasure has been deposited. Why would God put the treasure, the message of the Gospel, the power of God, into ordinary, fragile people? Wouldn’t you want to deposit a treasure in something safe, something nothing else could penetrate? Something that could never break open?
God’s strategy however, is really quite genius. God made sure the treasure would be placed in the kind of vessel that would be mobile and vulnerable enough so that everyone could see it. If the message of the Gospel was relegated to a museum that had guarded security, was only in one location, and could only be experienced at certain times of the day, how many people could be exposed to it? You are a mobile museum!
God strategically put His message in broken, fragile vessels so that every time we are shook up, His message, His life, can spill out. Every time we are squeezed, His life can be seen. Every time we are hit with a challenge, and a hole appears in our vessel, God’s grace and mercy can leak out.
God allows trials to come our way so that His message advances. Paul saw it this way. Paul knew he had been chosen to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15) and because he knew he was obeying God’s design for his vessel, he knew he could trust God to accomplish his purpose in his life even when it was tough.
One word of caution: Don’t allow trials to junk up your vessel. If we junk it up with anger and bitterness, God can’t pour in the things He wants to seep out as you walk through your challenge. Don’t junk up your vessel with sin which keeps the attention on you. Keep the vessel empty, surrendered, and clean so that God can keep filling it with His power, His peace, and His strength.
Take heart, you have a testimony to share. Your broken places, your bruised places, those moments when life punches you in the gut, the trials you face become your testimony when you are willing to allow God’s purposes and treasure to stream through them.
Part of Paul’s testimony included his conviction that what he was going through was WORTH IT to help others see God’s glory spilling through the dry and broken places in his life. Look at verse 15: For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.
Paul didn’t lose heart because he possessed a transformed life.
Don’t miss this part of Paul’s experience. God went into Paul’s existence, deep into his inner man, where no-one else could see what was going on. Only God and Paul truly knew what was being accomplished. While life was being taken from him, a different kind of life was being given to him.
Look at 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Paul had a surge of strength. There was a quiet surrender to the plan of God. There was a determined resolve to finish what God had given him to start. There was a courage that trumped the worst case scenario. There was an ability to overcome anything that was given to him by God. If God was sustaining Paul in the process, Paul had all he needed.
If Paul would have dwelt on all of the possibilities, he would have lived overwhelmed because every day of his life was rough. He chose, however, to live day by day and it transformed his trials to the point that he described them as light afflictions just for the moment. He saw beatings and imprisonments and shipwrecks as speed bumps; just little bumps in the road. That is only possible through the indwelling power of God. Paul’s trials didn’t define him. They refined him. They shaped him on the inside to where he never became trial-focused, but was always treasure-focused and testimony-focused. If you will trust God day by day, He will transform you into the person who can face and overcome anything, but it is a daily surrender.
Let’s be “all-heart.” Let’s display the treasure of God in every test, sharing our testimony as we allow God to transform us from the inside out!
