For I do not want you to be uninformed about the sorrow that I suffered in Asia, because I was so crushed beyond any power to endure that I was in dire despair of life itself.

On every side I am ever hard-pressed, but never hemmed in; always perplexed, but never to the point of despair;

For this slight and momentary sorrow continues to accumulate for me a solid and eternal glory far beyond any comparison,

obscure and yet well-known, on the point of dying and yet I go on living, punished and yet not put to death,

For see what this very sorrow, suffered in accordance with the will of God, has done for you! How earnest it has made you, how concerned to clear yourselves, how indignant, how alarmed, how much it made you long to see me, how loyal to me, how determined to punish the offender! At every point you have cleared yourselves in the matter.

For they have given, I can testify, to the utmost of their ability, and even beyond their ability. Of their own accord,

so that I can preach the good news in the regions beyond you, without boasting in another man's sphere of work already done by him.

Are they ministers of Christ? So am I. I am talking like a man that has gone crazy -- as such I am superior! -- serving Him with labors greater by far, with far more imprisonments, with floggings vastly worse, and often at the point of death.

It is now the third time that I have been ready to come to see you, and I will never ask you for financial support, for it is not your money but you yourselves that I want; for children are not by duty bound to lay up money for their parents, but parents for their children.