-Paul is a servant. Think ‘waiter’ - his was to take care of the needs of others, many of whom would take him for granted, all too ready to criticize (that's how fallen selfish people roll with servants). It was in many ways humbling, dirty, thankless work, low pay and long hours, work to which very few would aspire and which few others would even consider. Yes, God had (hard) work for Paul to do, He trusted Paul with it, calling him to labor on behalf of others, to do what needed to be done in order to help others truly follow Jesus. This is the same calling that Jesus had, Who came not to be served but to serve (Luke 22.27, Matthew 20.28), and it is the exact same calling He gives to each of His people (Luke 22.26, Galatians 5.13, 1Peter 4.10). He has work that He wants to entrust to each one of those who follow Christ. There is every likelihood that this work will be thankless and dirty, and will be something that a lot of other people don’t want to do. It will probably be quite tiring and may seem 'beneath you'. And there will be critics, folks who are hard to please. But in embracing this service, this stewardship, each of us, we find wings. Not some humdrum day job, some mundane monotony, this. No, you and I, like Paul and countless other heroes of faith who have finished the race before us, we were made for this.
-For his part, Paul was specifically made for ‘filling up the Word of God’. His was to verbally teach and preach and otherwise get the Word of God into the lives of others. Get it out there and let it do what it do, this Word which always succeeds in accomplishing what God wants (Isaiah 55.11), which is living and active and more powerful than any weapon known to man (Hebrews 4.12), able to break through the hardest of hearts and heal the most broken of lives (1Thessalonians 2.13).
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