What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever been asked to do? Was it to give someone bad news, or maybe to fire someone? Maybe you were asked to give up something so that someone else could have it, or to make a sacrifice of time or money for a cause. What did it cost you to do that difficult thing? The apostle Paul was given the unenviable task of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. I say “unenviable” because his fellow Jews had a very difficult time believing that Gentiles could become members of the exclusive club known as, “The People of God.” But this was the ministry Paul was given, and he gave it everything he had. It cost him his vaunted status among his countrymen; it cost him freedom; it cost him physical harm and mistreatment; and eventually it cost him his life. He talks a little about the cost in the 2 Corinthians. Reluctantly responding to the Jewish crowd who considered themselves superior to Paul and who constantly criticized him, he writes in chapter 11, beginning at verse 22,
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