Focus: Unusual Troubles

Text: 2Cor.11:28

"Beside those things that are without, that which COMETH UPON ME DAILY, the care of all the churches."

"That which cometh upon me daily…" Things outside of our making. Every day comes with its troubles, but beyond the ordinary ones are the unusual, unexpected, unpredictable, unconnected, and extremely uncomfortable ones. The Margin of the Revised Version says, "Things that come out of course." Situations you can't relate to or even understand. You just can't explain it. Just from nowhere life happens and all hell is let loose! And you suddenly find yourself bombarded and invaded. The Message Bible paraphrases it as "daily pressures and anxieties…" The fact that it is a daily occurrence makes it even worse. 

You have no breathing space. It comes daily upon us, and in Paul's case, it came upon him out of his love for God and his daily concern for the churches under his leadership and stewardship. These daily pressures are unplanned, unwanted, distressing, disturbing, perturbing, destabilizing, riotous or disorganizing, sudden, shocking, unfamiliar and unfriendly. They are things out of the ordinary, things not bargained for, things external and internal, conspiracies of circumstances. They are pressures, perplexities, adversities and anxieties.

The Greek word for 'come upon' is episustasis, which is a compound word: epi, meaning 'upon'; and sustasis, meaning 'things standing together, a series of arranged things.' They are a kind of 'together things,' but in your life they seem very much out of joint, totally unconnected, practically uncoordinated, and they don't make sense. It also means, "a stopping, halting (as of soldiers), an incursion, onset, rush, pressure." They are occurrences that negatively stir up one's emotions and tear one's heart into shreds. They raise up your blood pressure.

It's sudden, heavy, burdensome, and even by its weight, crushing one's emotions. It's an intolerable load that is hard to shake off every day. It's simply troubling and frustrating, mentally and emotionally. It's a concourse, a crowd, a tumultuous situation. They are pressures coming like a mighty force or like a mighty stream rushing tumultuously on one's soul. It's incessant and continuous - a daily thing. They are manifold - a crowd of things and a daily troop-like pressures. 

Whatever they are, I believe that they are divinely designed to advance your destiny.

The story of Job's trouble serves as an example. The troubles were coming one after another. For days, weeks and months Job found himself under intense and immense pressure. The Scripture says, "While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said… While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said… While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said…" (Jb.1:16,17,18). Different and difficult calamities; so sudden and so strange! In just a moment, it hit him like a thunderbolt. The troubles came upon him unannounced and unprepared. He nursed the fear of something sinister happening to him, though. He even made sacrifices on behalf of his children to keep them from harm, but all to no avail. He said, when the troubles eventually came, "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me" (Jb.3:25). Three times, Jeremiah did say, "Fear is on every side" (Jer.6:25; 20:10; 49:29). Paul said twice, "We are troubled on every side…" (2Cor.4:8; 7:5).

Are you experiencing out-of-course issues in your life right now? Are you facing the pain of people you make your priority seeing you only as an option?

A little girl was in tears as she complained to the mother about her doll baby, "All I do is love her, but she doesn't love me back." Paul had a similar experience when he said to the church in Corinth, "O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged… Now for a recompense in the same…be ye also enlarged" (2Cor.6:11,13). In 2Cor.12:15, he cried out, "And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, THE LESS I BE LOVED." O the pain of not being loved back in return! He experienced a lot of the out-of-course situations in the course of loving God's people and caring for the churches. He says, "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?" (2Cor.11:29). Paul really loved and cared for people. He was a true shepherd. He did God's work with God's heart.

Doing ministry is not a bread-and-butter thing. You must love God enough to do ministry, and ministry is about people, and people need to be loved and cared for, and no one should love if he is not ready to suffer for love's sake. To truly love is to suffer and bear with others, and you don't have to understand them to love them. 

Whatever the challenges love always loves. There are people you enjoy loving and those you endure loving. But by all means just love and keep loving. If you are not loving, you are not living.

The motto of my life has been to give love wherever I see no love, and to take or enjoy it wherever I find it.

I pray God to give you the courage to bear the burdens that caring for others bring upon you, and as another has said, 'Courage is grace under pressure.' May you have the spiritual capacity to endure, and to understand that "endurance," according to William Barclay, "is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory." And in the words of Fannie Flagg, "being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome."

As a believer in Christ, be aware that God is behind the out-of-course things that come upon you on daily basis. Paul says, "But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel" (Phil.1:12). And also, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Rom.8:28). Amen!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter