By Michael A. Milton
Unlike this person, the hard hits of life, the crushing events of life, the perplexing moments of life, don't always wait. Paul said they didn't wait for him. This is the reality. This is what all of us have to expect.
2. Cheap Shots
Persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. — 2 Corinthians 4:9
He said that he was also persecuted and struck down. The Greek word for struck down is kataBallo. Kata means downward and ballo is to throw. I suspect that when Coach Steve Sloan was a quarterback, he was been picked up by big defensive ends and just thrown down on the ground. This was what Paul said he lived as a minister. Time and time again, Paul was persecuted. The one who used to persecute others was being shaped under the crucible of suffering for Christ himself.
Football is filled with cheap shots, and so is life. We would like to imagine that everyone will love us, everyone will play fair, but the truth is that we all take some cheap shots every now and then in life. I talk to people everyday who relate to me things that just are not fair. I often take these cheap shots of life with me into my prayer time and they lead me to tears. But Paul said he could take the cheap shots, for he was not forsaken. Christ Jesus will not leave you. Thank God that this good news is for everyone here today. This is what Paul meant in Romans 8.37-39:
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
3. Achy-Breaky Pain
Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. — 2 Corinthians 4:10
In this verse, Paul was saying that all of these trials, these fourth quarter adversities were to him signs of his faithfulness to Christ. Indeed, he used his trials to identity with the sufferings of Jesus. Paul did this in Philippians, as well, when he wrote:
That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, bring conformed to His death . . . — Philippians 3:10
So, beloved, all things that come to us-every hard hit, every cheap shot, every achy-breaky pain of life-we should actually offer back to God as an offering of faith. We may say, "O God, this is the fourth quarter, and I am tired and I am getting hit hard. I am taking some cheap shots, I am in pain, body and mind and soul from this onslaught of trials, but I know this: Jesus Christ is alive in me, and because He lives, this game is not over with yet!"