We learned not to rely
on ourselves, but on God.
—2 Corinthians 1:10 NLT
He’d had a close call with cancer years earlier. In recent days, it had come calling again. After two bouts of surgery. this inspiring brother, still bandaged and still smiling, said, “God has been so good to me.”
Paul opened 2 Corinthians, telling his sisters and brothers about troubles so severe that he thought it was a death sentence. “But this happened,” he wrote, “that we might not rely on ourselves but on God” (2 Cor 1:9).
In the next sentence (v. 10), he sees it as God’s threefold deliverance: He has delivered (past tense), will deliver (present tense), and will continue to deliver (future tense). He did, he does, he will.
God rescued Paul in the past so that he might trust him in the future while he suffered in the present.
All is well that ends well.