Can you imagine how much encouragement Paul needs? He may be in a dark dungeon with rats scurrying around, and chains hanging from his hands and legs. Sleeping, sitting, and standing may all be difficult for him, and he may be alone for much of the time.
Those who design prisons, especially in those days, you can bet, did not design them with the welfare of the prisoners in mind.
When he said I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, what he communicates is that even that was not going to be an easy thing to do, so he is invoking the name of the Lord Jesus. And we can feel that hearing news about them would be like water in a dry ground.
Like cold water to a weary person,
so is good news from a distant land. (Proverbs 25:25)
Sometimes we see Paul as a superhuman. But there are places in the scripture, like the focus verse, that give us a window into his heart, how much he needs the news.
But now we don't have to send someone a long distance to hear the news about people. We can pick up the phone or even go online and review their presence there, and we can see their progress. But even at that, we can do all that because we are free.
Therefore, Paul is not just an example of the grace of God, but our call to patience and endurance. He had to be patient to be able to get good news from the church, and hope for God to align things together for him to send Timothy to them, and then Timothy would spend some time there and then come back to Paul, and in the meantime, he had to endure difficult situations.
Paul is undergoing persecution for his faith, and he has to endure. But that did not cause him to abandon his faith. In previous verses, he mentioned the possibility of God eventually saving him from imprisonment, which was not a sure thing, or that he may even die and go be with the Lord. But in the meantime, he is living and pushing forward, specifically with the letter that he is writing. He is not allowing his difficult situation to stop him from reaching out to others.
And if he hears news about them, how they are standing firm for the cause of truth, and not wavering, but flourishing, you can imagine him thinking it was all worth it, the pain he is suffering was all worth it. And he would gain a new perspective, which would not make the situation as difficult, even though the external things did not change, but the news he would hear would make an impact on his soul, would probably increase his joy level.
See what Paul wrote in another place:
Therefore we do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. (1 Corinthians 4:16)
So we have the difficult experience that Paul went through, which took a toll on his body, but rather than running away from it, he embraced it.
But some people choose the opposite. They live for worldly pleasures and eschew physical hardship. They live their lives feasting with no fasting, even though that discipline was encouraged in the scriptures. They gain the whole world, figuratively, and lose their soul (Matthew 16:26), while Paul said the inner person is being renewed day by day.
Paul contrasts the physical difficulty with the inner renewal. Let's pause on that for a moment. Some people may experience physical difficulties, but it leads to a worsened inner life because it was all trauma and no joy, because things are only seen from the natural stance. But out of that can come something glorious.
Conversely, we can have trauma that is not physical that leads to physical symptoms.
A cheerful heart brings good healing,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Proverbs 17:22)
So the inner life impacts the body.
Paul is saying your difficulty is a factory producing something.
Read this:
For our momentary, light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison because we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. (1 Corinthians 4:17-18)
So think of it. He calls it momentary and light. And the persecution you endure is not just working inner renewal, but an eternal glory.
It is in that context that we would situate the joy in the apostles when they were flogged for Christ (Acts 5:40-41).
But sometimes the difficulty is so thick, and we may not think much of the glory that it is producing, like a factory producing something, and the suffering you are enduring is the raw material for the production. Don't worry. God is keeping count.
From Addiction to Freedom by Favour Oyinloye
