"Comfort" - Frank VanderZwan
2 Corinthians 1:3-11

Understanding God is a difficult process. It is hard to see God working at times in the midst of the stuff of our lives. There are so many places and times when it is difficult to see God’s hand that it seems as if this thing we call “Christianity” is nothing but a cruel, cynical joke.

Several weeks ago I stood holding a single mother in deep grief at the grave of her only child, a beautiful six year old boy. After all that life had given her, she now had lost all that had given her purpose. Where on earth could she find any comfort? Is it possible to understand the One who can comfort in the midst of such excruciating pain?

There are other parents who mourn a wayward child. It is difficult to feel comforted when a child turns their back on parents, family, and on God. For loving parents, their hearts will break as long as the child drifts away. Is it possible to see that God loves their child more than they do?

There is the wife who has been abandoned by a husband trapped in an affair. She has to struggle to keep her family together and to protect the children in the face of deception, overcome with fear for the future and the incredible pain of betrayal. Life itself to some degree has lost its meaning. Where is God when there is so much disappointment and pain?

For people who have experienced the pain and sometime fear of day to day life - they know it can get tiring after a while. It gets old and we cry out with Paul to remove the thorn from our side, to get rid of the pain. Sometimes the weariness, fear, anger and the shear pain is more than we can handle, and we are right. We long for comfort.

Isaiah says it well in one of my favorite verses; “In all their distress, He too is distressed.” (Isaiah 63:9). We assume that God should make us feel comfortable in our distress and yet there is a great difference between feeling comfortable and being comforted. The comfortable feelings will come and go but the Comforter is with us regardless of the circumstances. “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)  Here is our confidence in the shadow of the Comforter.

Comfort is not found in the absence of pain but in the midst of it. To come to terms with this unshakable truth of God’s comfort is crucial but it also carries with it a certain mystery. There is the powerful testimony of a woman named Annie Johnston Flint. She was someone who lived most of her life in pain. Orphaned early in life, her body was embarrassed by incontinence, weakened by cancer, and twisted and deformed by rheumatoid arthritis. She was incapacitated for so long that according to one eyewitness she needed seven or eight pillows around her body just to cushion the raw sores she suffered from being bedridden. Yet her autobiography is called The Making of the Beautiful. Almost like a minstrel from heaven she penned words that touch the heart in its despairing moments. One of her best-known poems, put to music, reads:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction, He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials His multiplied peace.
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed e’re the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving has only begun.
His love has no limit; His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men,
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

Over the years many people have drawn comfort from the stirring words of one who came to terms with the Comforter in the midst of real life circumstances. After the initial greeting in beginning the second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul bursts forth in a joyful praise with a Jewish benediction usually offered in Jewish prayer and worship: “Blessed be the God”. Paul then makes the ancient blessing a Christian one when he adds “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. To this he adds the description of God as the loving Father from whom flows compassion and comfort. God has tender love for those who are hurting and he comforts them in their time of need. Paul writes “the God of all comfort.”  Wherever hardships may be, God proves to be near. 

If anyone could empathize with Christians who had to endure affliction, it was Paul himself. He
had experienced and continued to experience hardships because of his calling to proclaim Jesus. Paul was able to testify that the painful experiences draw us closer to God which is for our benefit. “…we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5: 3, 4)

Paul knows that God not only comforts and sustains him in his distress, but also gives him both the ability and the task to comfort others who suffer hardship. The parallel in Paul’s thinking is that we are so loved by God that we are then able to love each other - and in the same way he experience the comfort of God we can then comfort each other.

The Bible speaks of the corporate responsibility we have toward one another. Isn’t it true that we all want to avert loneliness and long for meaningful relationships? Often when we are in small groups, for instance, we come to see that we are not the only ones dealing with the problems we think we have and consequently draw strength from each other.  The term comfort comes from the Latin con and forte, means “to make strong together.” It shows a relational aspect that greatly overshadows the idea of individualistic comfort that prevails today. The word implies that one person strengthens another. For instance, medical doctors and nurses aid their patients in recovery from physical ailments; a counselor helps a person to overcome periods of depression; and a pastor consoles those who are grieving.At the time of Paul’s conversion, the Lord told him that he would have to suffer much for the name of Jesus. Nonetheless, in all his trials the Lord stood with him with words of comfort, assurance, and exhortation. Indeed, Jesus always stands next to his people with the promise that he will never leave them. One of the most important truths is that the God of Comfort doesn’t come and go as our needs change. He is there all the time in and through all circumstances. God is the Comforter who is always with us.

We need to risk moving from self dependence to dependence on God. That is precisely the point of knowing the various attributes of God that we have been studying in this series. The incredible description of God that we saw last week in the video clip…the indescribable nature of God with the question “Do you know Him?” This is who has taken up residence in our lives. This is who continues to come alongside us to give meaning to the difficult circumstances and the painful experiences. In a conversation with my youngest daughter a week or so ago about some of the decisions that she has made in her life, some good and some not so good, she responded, “But daddy, I have learned from my experiences. I have learned from my mistakes. I won’t make the same mistake twice.” As a father this is great to hear. In our day to day life, it’s the same thing for us. We know that we have continual access to the God of all comforts, who comforts us in all our troubles so we can comfort others. 

You can’t give away what you don’t have. You can’t love someone if you don’t feel loved yourself. You cannot walk through the valley with someone else if you haven’t come through the valley yourself. I thought over the years of my ministry that I knew exactly what people were going through in their losses. I have been with hundreds and hundreds of people in the midst of their grief and I was sure I knew exactly what they felt. But, guess what. When my father died some years ago, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what the loss of a loved one meant.  Then, when my mother died six months ago I was confronted again with the reality of not fully understanding what others felt. Being comforted by the Father through the deaths of my parents, I have a new appreciation for what is involved. I understand in a whole different way how important the comfort is that I received and then recognizing how important it is to share that with others. Let us look again at the text for today.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 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.” Here is an important truth of this text. He comforts us so that we may in turn comfort those around us.

We recognize that the very nature of God is to be a Comforter. He is the one who comes alongside to encourage us in the moments when we need it most. He is the one who is consistently with us. As Paul goes on to say in this section: “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers.” (v. 10) With God’s comfort we always have hope. We are never left in a situation to fend for ourselves, depleted of resources. The Comforter is, as the gospel of John reminds us “living in us and will not leave us as an orphan.” (John 14: 17)

Comfort happens in community. How often don’t we feel isolated and alone in the midst of our pain and fear? It is necessary to be in community so that we can share what we have received.  When we have been touched by someone or something, it is only natural for us then to do what we can to share that blessing. It is impossible for us to understand someone else’s pain until we have been there ourselves. And even then it isn’t exactly the same.

The reason we end up praying at the end of the worship service is that we need that touch of community, and that should be the most natural thing that we do. Touch happens in a variety of ways both emotional and also physical. At times it is as simple as sensing his presence in the midst of frightening  circumstances or having encouragement for the future, whatever thatfuture may bring.

Comfort changes us as it fills us with hope and purpose! The reality of our lives is that we are never more fulfilled than when we are giving of ourselves to others. Paul understood this as his whole reason for living. We tend to often get so preoccupied in our own comfort zone and we hesitate taking a chance to step outside of where we feel most comfortable. Life is most exciting when we are risking something for God. Our lives, our pain, our suffering, our grief can serve the greatest purpose when we give away what we ourselves have received. The encouragement of God’s comfort gives purpose and meaning to our lives.

There is something to be learned in giving to others. The process is always one that will bless us as a result. One example of this is news story about a woman in Dallas who was loosing her home which was then put up for auction. A total stranger came along who had compassion on her and comforted her in one of the deepest valleys of her life. She bought the house and gave it back to the original owner. This act of compassion changed several lives. We all cannot do what this woman did. We can still offer comfort in some amazing ways however.

We can offer comfort with tangible gifts.
We can offer comfort with a physical presence.
We can offer comfort with understanding.
We can offer comfort by stepping out of our own comfort zone.
We end up giving away what we have ourselves received from God.
Comfort others as you have been comforted.