Background Information
As 2020 is now over, I wonder if the church as the body of Christ might have missed a real opportunity to minister to those who were hurting because the church ought to be where people find comfort. The church ought to be a comforting place. I look around the church house today, and I see the faces of people who needed comforting because let’s face it 2020 has affected each one of us in some way. We might have lost a love one (I can tell you that I have done more funerals in 2020 than I have done in any other year of my 40 year of ministry.) It seemed more people got sick this past year then in previous years, and I mean really sick. And families struggled, every which way you can imagine. Families were not able to see love ones in nursing homes or go near grandma or grandpa because of fear of Covid 19. In most cases, Thanksgiving and Christmas was different than in previous years and not necessarily in a good way. If you had to attend one or more funerals this year, people have not been able to grieve like they normally do. People who are part of this church family, and it is not just limited to this church family, needed comforting this year. It has been a tough year.
But they are not the only one. You open the doors of the church house and walk outside, there is a hurting world that needs comforting. And they are not going to find it by looking to government; they are not going to find it by looking to an employer; and they are not going to find it at the bottom of a bottle of alcohol or by getting high on some other substance.
God is the source of all comfort. And He uses you and me to comfort each other. In Romans 15:5 (NKJV), Paul tells us: Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus... So this verse tells us about our next one another- comfort one another.
And we need to understand how this one another works because I believe that we are going to need to be practicing this one another a whole lot more in 2021. If you did not practicing comforting one another in 2020, don’t worry, I believe that you will have plenty of opportunity in 2021. So, you and I need to know how this one-another works. How can I comfort you? Where do I get what it takes to comfort you? God is going to tell us in 2 Corinthians 3-6.
Scripture
2 Corinthians 1:3-6 (NIV)
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 have received from God.
5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
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.
Points
#1
There is no comfort apart from God. He is the God of all comfort. If I want to comfort someone, I got to get into what God is doing because He is the God of all comfort.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
Anne and I buy our food from Wal Mart, but I can’t say that that Wal Mart feeds my family. I know that they buy what they sell from the farmers, but I cannot say the farmers feed my family. Because I know although the farmers plant the seeds, it is God that brings the right amount amount of sunshine and the right amount of rain. If I go back to who ultimately feeds my family, it is God.
Paul puts it this way. God is the Father of compassion. Think about that word “Father”. I went to biography.com and looked up Alexander Graham Bell and the first sentence reads: “ Alexander Graham Bell - Father of the Telephone.” In other words, it originates with him. Comfort originates with God. It does not originate any other place but God.
So what does that mean to me that comfort originates with God? Anytime I have been treated kindly, helped in some way, shown compassion, befriended, it came from God. When that right person came at the right time with the right words and lifted me out of my downward spiral, that was God.
We need to start seeing with our spiritual eyes anytime that we are given comfort it is God. And we need to start seeing with our spiritual eyes that anytime that you are sharing comfort to someone else, God is using you. Comfort is a God thing not a man thing. Man and woman had a chance to show comfort to one another way back in the Garden of Eden after they ate of the forbidden tree and had to make that appearance before God. Instead, the man and woman both threw each other under the bus.
Remember, if I am getting comforted or if I am giving comfort, God is there because He is the source of all comfort.
#2
Today, I am so thankful that God’s comfort doesn’t have any exception clauses.
4 who comforts us in all our troubles
When I was growing up my best friend, Jerry Baggert and me, I believe, we invented new ways to get in trouble. But I cannot tell you how many times we would deserted one another when are parents found out. At that point, it became every man for himself.
Today, I am so glad that God does not bail out on me no matter what type of trouble I find myself. It says “who comforts us in all our troubles,” which if you think about it; it is really hard to grasp.
I can understand God comforting me when the world comes against me. In fact, you and I would rally around somebody who got a bad deal from their employer; or who got a bad verdict in a court decision; or their landlord showed no mercy during a tough financial stretch. It seems natural to comfort others in those cases.
I can understand God comforting me when people start coming against me. Everyone belongs to a family. You know how terrible it is when a family starts turning against you. They accuse you of something and before long everyone in the family knows about it, and points a guilt finger at you. And it makes you feel like an outcast. And those of us on the outside watching this happen come to the comfort of the one being attacked. It seems natural to comfort someone who is being treated so poorly by their family.
What I cannot understand, but I have to credit it to the greatest of our God, is God comforting me when the troubles I am dealing with are of my own making. Do I create my own troubles sometimes? You better believe it. It is almost natural for us not to want to comfort someone who has created their own problems. We even have expressions to justify not extending them comfort. He made his own bed, let him lie in it. You got yourself in this mess, now you get yourself out.
But as I read my Bible, God came to the comfort of those who had created their own problems. In the Garden, God killed an animal to provide skins for Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness as they aware of their nakedness because of their sin. God marked Cain so that anyone who saw him will not kill him after Cain had murdered Abel. To Lot, he sent angels to remove his family from the city before He destroyed it after Lot made the wrong choice as to where to settle his family. And I can go on and on, time after time, God comforting individuals after they had caused their own problem.
God is the Source of all Comfort; and He comforts in all situations!
#3
My troubles are training lessons designed by God for the purpose of teaching me to minister to you.
vs 4 …so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
Picture what is happening here. God has all this comfort originating from Him and He wants to use it every which way that He can. But He does not want the horde the blessing for Himself, He wants to share it with His children, you and me. But since comfort is foreign to us apart from God, remember Adam and Eve had a chance to show comfort and instead they threw each other under the bus, we have to experience God’s comfort in our lives so we can pass on to others.
Now when I have troubles in my life, no matter the source, God can do two things. First, and the one we usually want more than the other is that God simply remove the problem from life. But how does Dale benefit from God removing my problem? How does Colleen benefit from God removing my problem? They don’t really. I benefit, but they don’t.
But, let’s say, God decides not to remove the troubles from me. But He promises to me to give me the comfort to deal with my problem because we just read He “comforts us in all our troubles,” so He gives me comfort. Does He only give me enough comfort just to cover my problem? No, Ephesians 3:20 (NKJV) Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. So, God gives me an abundant amount of comfort so much so that I can share some of that with Dale and Colleen. So, I have been blessed , Dale has been blessed and Collen has been blessed. More people have been blessed because God did not remove my trouble from me.
And that is what Paul says in verses 5&6 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 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.
What I must be careful of is receiving the comfort of God but then not sharing it with others. How do we not share it? Not in fellowship with one another. If I am at the church house but you are are your house, we are not sharing the comfort. Another way not to share the comfort is to let sin get in the way. Sin draws me in to myself. The first thing Adam and Eve did was hide. If I am in sin, I don’t want to be around other Christians. And there are others ways, but I just mentioned two.
But, oh, if that abundant comfort is flowing then the believers of that fellowship are being blessed by God. We ought to comfort one another.
Let us pray!
