We Do Not Lose Heart...

Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart.—2 Corinthians 4:1

It is SO easy to lose heart in this fallen world.  So much evil, sin, suffering and death.  So much despising of the things that are precious...so much despising of even God Himself.  How does one stay the course in the face of all of it?

How!?  Because WE have been given the ministry of reconciliation.

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.—2 Corinthians 4:6-7

How AWESOME IS THAT!!  God lives inside of us and He is reconciling the people in our lives to Him through us!  Oh, that God’s light and grace through us would make them “light in the Lord”!  What a privilege!!  Knowing this, how can we lose heart!!?  Like, Paul, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting ME! into the ministry.

I am so glad Paul does not say that the excellence of the power is of us.  There is so much at stake.  The Bible tells me that my sufficiency is never of me and always of God.  I am thankful that the life I now live, I live for His purposes and His glory.  It is by God’s grace that I am what I am.  Like Paul, it is not me who labors, but the grace of God which is always with me.

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.—Galatians 2:20

The suffering and death of Jesus became a spiritual reality in Paul’s life as He lived for His Lord.  The same can be true for me and for you. Paul’s sufferings enabled him to experience the fellowship of Christ sufferings and the victory of His resurrection.  He was hard-pressed, as we sometimes are, but not crushed....struck down but not destroyed.  Through his suffering, Paul carried in his body the dying of our Lord Jesus so that the life of Jesus was also manifested in Him.  If I have to suffer...and that is a given as a believer...I want my suffering to make the life of Jesus evident in me.  I want the life I live to my God to turn hearts toward Him.

For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.  So then death is working in us, but life in you.—2 Corinthians 4:11-12

But in all things we commend ourselves as ministers of God: in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fastings; by purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.—2 Corinthian’s 6:4-10