Second, Paul was encouraged because life had not thrown more at him than he could handle. When we read verses 7–10 we are likely to catch only the bad things that had happened to him and to notice the words “hard pressed,” “perplexed,” “persecuted,” “struck down,” and “always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus” (v. 10). If Paul had told us all the bad things that had happened to him as a servant of the Lord, we would have felt that he would be justified in being bitter, leaving