²⁷ toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold, and without clothing. (2 Corinthians 11:27 CSB)

Paul came from affluence, but he knew hardship. In fact, while he became very acquainted with many hardships he continued preaching the Good News of Christ crucified. Even through imprisonment and many beatings.

Looking upon our lives today, how hard would that be to simply expect each day to be hard. Maybe some of you do. Maybe some of you are not dealing with Paul’s kind of hard, but you have it hard in some other way.

I have dealt with depression and anxiety and I know how difficult these can be. In fact they still haunt me from time to time, however, God has taught me how to cope with them. Mostly that coping mechanism is fervent prayer and continual scripture reading. But too, He has taught me to look upon all He has done for me in the past. He has shown me that even in my worst fears He is there and He is sovereign.

For the most part we have it pretty good, I expect. But we need to prepare our hearts and our minds for the rough roads ahead. I mistakenly did not do this early in life and it took many hard paths and many difficult teachers for me to learn. What this taught me, for the most part, is to bend without breaking.

When we learn to lean into and upon God, and we are doing His will, we learn that we can take far more than we imagine. Like Paul, we learn that through it all God will hold us even in our hardest moments.