As we read in verses 3-4:

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,  4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

Did you hear that astonishing promise in verse 4.  God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any troubles.  Paul candidly opens himself up to show us the struggles and fears.  Pressing in on him in this crucible of suffering – The Heat.

Paul shows us he gained wisdom.  It’s where he learnt joy and perseverance of faith.  God grew him in the times of testing.  Paul starts out reshaping what would have been a Jewish blessing said at Synagogue and gives it a focus on Jesus.  He then comes to writing about how the sufferings of Jesus carry over to us.

Have a look through verses 5-7.  What is the word that keeps on being repeated there?  Comfort.

Christ’s sufferings carry over to us.

verse 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

God comforts us:

Verse 6  If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 

We are to comfort others:

Verse 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

Paul brings us to see the bigger thing going on with what God is doing in the suffering.  Now Paul moves from the general in verses 3-7 to the particular in verses 8-11:

It’s the experiential weight of his burden

8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 

Verse 8 - All the bitter fruit, grumbling and complaining, anger, fighting and conflict; confusion, anxiety and fear, escapism.  These are all consequences of the THORNY HEART.  When we react to suffering with fleshly wisdom, the instinct of our foolish wisdom is to trust ourselves and try to control our situation.