The Apostle Paul experienced poverty but nowhere do we read of him being disheartened. He describes himself as “poor, yet making many rich.” Paul used his skill in tent-making to support himself, and his co-workers His knowledge of the scriptures and his close walk with God enriched the lives of those around him.
We tend to forget that the spiritual riches we enjoy in the epistles of Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians came from God’s revelations to Paul during his years of imprisonment in Rome. Instead of dismaying him, the imprisonment caused him to become increasingly dependent on God for support. (Philippians 4:13) And while there he wrote letters.
We might think of Paul as focused and intense: both of which are the characteristics of a person of choleric character. But from the moment of his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was dependent on the Lord Jesus and those who followed him for support and protection.
Blinded by the light, he was led by the hand to a house in Straight Street, Damascus, where he was welcomed as “Brother Saul” by a disciple of Jesus named Ananias, who had heard of Saul’s zeal in persecuting the followers of Jesus. Then the Lord Jesus informed him of Saul’s conversion, he dispensed with caution and on Saul’s arrival greeted him as “Brother…”.
After hearing of a plot to murder Saul, believers lowered him down the wall of the city in a wicker basket. Saul spent years among the Arabs, and was brought south from Tarsus to Jerusalem by Barnabas, who introduced him to the wary apostles. From the very beginning, the word dependency perhaps best describes his lifestyle.
Paul writes of himself as “unknown, and yet well known…” There had been a time when as Saul of Tarsus he was well known. A descendant of Benjamin, a Hebrew scholar, and a strict Pharisee, Saul’s name and reputation was well known — especially to Jews living in Jerusalem.
But when he forsook his Hebrew name Saul and his status among the Jews, and then adopted the Latin name Paul and began ministering to Greeks, he lost all that he had held dear in life. The Jewish leaders despised him for teaching that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One. However, because of his call as an apostle and his inspired letters to churches, the name Paul, by which he was known from the time of his appointment in Antioch as an apostle, became known more and more in the wider world.
Paul writes that for Jesus, he had “suffered the loss of all things” but possessed all things (Philippians 3:8); The NT Greek word speaks of “holding firmly in possession”. Paul had a good grip on who he was in Christ and the ministry to which Jesus had called him!
Likewise, through faith believers hold both present and future things in firm possession (1 Corinthians 3:21-22). These things are ours by faith now, and will be by inheritance when Jesus returns. In Mark 10:29-30 these possessions are listed, and to them the promise is added membership in a worldwide spiritual family.
So, what if, through severe persecution, you faced the loss of all you worked for in life — all of your precious possessions? Would that dishearten you? Would you choose Jesus and continue your walk with him? Not everyone does. The rich young man could not. (Mark 10:17-22). It may be that the greatest test in life is not what we have to live with, but rather what we can live without. What do you think?