Saint Paul - Hardships

Hardships

In 2 Corinthians 11:20-32 Paul provided a litany of some of his adversities as a missionary. In comparing his experiences to those of some of the "most eminent apostles", he wrote that he:

  • worked much harder
  • was in prison more frequently
  • was flogged more severely
  • had been exposed to death again and again (five times he received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one, three times was beaten with rods, once he was pelted with stones)
  • was shipwrecked three times, spending a night and a day in the open sea
  • was constantly on the move
  • had been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from his fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers
  • had labored and toiled and had often gone without sleep
  • had known hunger and thirst and had often gone without food
  • had been cold and naked
  • to escape arrest by the governor of Damascus, he was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and got away

He concluded: "Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches".

Read more about this topic:  Saint Paul

Famous quotes containing the word hardships:

    The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.
    Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)

    ... that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people’s hardships picturesque ...
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.
    —For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)