Some of us don’t reveal much of our troubles, struggles, and despair.

Maybe we think that’s not spiritual and mature.

So we engage in a cover-up — masks, fronts, facades, public personas.

Maybe we think that is spiritual and mature.

Then we come across something written by someone we readily accept as spiritual and mature:

“For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life” (8).

What impressed me this morning about the Apostle Paul, though, was not just his openness.

Even though he exposed his feelings of despair and inadequacy, he didn’t keep his focus there.

He saw and accepted and pursued God and His purposes:

“But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (9).

from 2 Corinthians 1:11