This week, I want to offer you some comfort and encouragement if I can. We’re all facing trials. Some, if not most, are simply the results of living in a fallen world. Accidents happen. We age. We get sick. Eventually, we die. All of us to one degree or another have made our own trouble at times, and may suffer the consequences. Or, it may be that we suffer because we did something right. Whatever the cause, it is easy to become discouraged unless we work to maintain the proper perspective.

Consider the apostle Paul. Once a persecutor of the church, he became one of the most effective evangelists the world has ever known. As one of the Lord’s star witnesses, some might think his life should be pretty good. People were healed and even raised from the dead. He preached the Word everywhere he went. No one would question his faith. Actually some may have done that, as he writes in part to address false teachers coming against him at Corinth.

But Paul’s life was full of trouble. Almost everywhere he went, he encountered opposition. Sometimes that opposition was violent. He was slandered, beaten nearly to death, and put in prison on multiple occasions. He is believed to have been martyred in Rome. But Paul does not express anger or disappointment at these things. Instead, he writes in Colossians 1:24, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and I fill up what is lacking of Christ’s afflictions in my flesh, on behalf of His body, which is the church…”

In the second of his letters to the Corinthian church that have been preserved for us, Paul writes of the difficulties faced by himself and fellow missionaries. He defends the truth of the Gospel message, and points out that it is through the humanity of his messengers that God’s glory becomes evident. Twice he says in Chapter 4, “We do not lose heart.” The truth of the message, the certainty of the eternal promise, and the knowledge that the truth continues to spread through their efforts sustains them through every hardship.

They knew that a glory awaited them far beyond any trouble this life may bring. They could endure any hardship, secure in the knowledge that nothing in the world they could see could compare to the promises yet to be fulfilled. They might have remembered the words that David wrote, “In God, whose word I praise, In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me?” (Psalm 56:4)

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light affliction is working out for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

These men had the boldness to preach the gospel in the face of any opposition, knowing that not even death would stand in their way. They would eventually be taken from this world, but only to enter their rightful realm in Heaven. When we become that convinced that God is with us, we, too can step out in boldness into the mission that He has given us. We may also take comfort in the knowledge that every trial that we endure can be turned to our good and His glory. Yes, if you love the Lord, even your mistakes and their consequences will be redeemed. Do not lose heart.