Psalm 23:4 NIV
Even though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
How Do You Find Comfort?
When I was in graduate school, I received a phone
call from my father that my mom had died.
I sat down on my bed in stunned disbelief and stared off into
space. A friend of mine walked into my
room and after I told him what had happened, he invited me to go to the gym and
play basketball with him. He didn’t put
his arm around me and hug me, he didn’t tell me how sad he was for my loss, he
just got me on the court and gave me a chance to express my feelings in a game
of three on three. The irony is that I
blew out my knee playing that day and as I hobbled back to the dorm with him, I
began to weep. Mike sat there with me
and helped me talk about the loss of my mom after he got me ice for my
knee. I never would have seen Mike as
someone who could bring comfort to a grieving friend; he was far too cocky and
flip to be of help for anyone needing to be helped through a crisis but when I
needed a friend to stand by me as I wept, Mike was there for me.
Comfort comes to us in a variety of ways and
sometimes from surprising sources. If I
were to ask you what brings you comfort, how would you reply? Would you say an encouraging word does it for
you, the embrace of a friend, a compliment, or a warm smile? Perhaps it would be a steak fresh off the
grill, banana nut bread, ice cream or a backrub! For some it would be a warm bath, a workout
at the gym, your dog jumping into your lap or just holding hands with someone
you love. Comfort cannot be logically
explained all the time but we know when we have experienced it. You may not always need to be comforted but
when you do, it is one of the greatest gifts you will ever receive.
The Bible says much about the comfort God gives
us. Isaiah 66: 13a promises, As a
mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you… (NIV) 2 Corinthians 1: 3 insists, Praise be to
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the
God of all comfort… (NIV) My friend
was laid up in a hospital bed for four days with a broken back waiting for his
insurance company to approve the medical treatment he needed that would ease
his pain and fix his back. Where is the
“God of all comfort” then? Another
friend recently was laid off from his job in Christian radio. Can the “God of all comfort” really help
him? It is tough to believe God will
provide you with comfort if you are struggling to believe God is not the one
who brought you your troubles in the first place.
Our world has been wrecked by Sin. It is broken and death touches every part of
it. Satan continues to bring pain and
suffering and will persist in having the power to destroy lives while we live
in this age before our resurrection.
Trouble and hardship will be with us until God brings an end to the world
as it is and so we must accept life the way we find it. Our Lord doesn’t promise us an end to our
troubles; in fact He insists they will continue. "I have told you these things, so
that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take
heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NIV) There is however a most wonderful promise our
Lord makes in this statement and that is what we shall give our focus
today. Christ has overcome the world.
There are two different ways of thinking about
comfort. The first has to do with what
we might call “external comfort”. The
other is “internal comfort”. External
comfort is the taking away of whatever is causing distress. You are unemployed and you get a job. You are mad at someone who hurt your feelings
and the person apologizes to you and makes up for what she did. A medical examination indicates that you do
not suffer from the terrible disease your doctor thought you might have. Many times God brings us external comfort and
this is often described in the Bible.
The blind man was given sight.
The ten lepers were healed. The
Assyrians didn’t attack Jerusalem because God sent a deadly plague that
decimated the Assyrian army. Saul was
killed in battle and David is made king.
Perhaps you like Hezekiah have prayed for help with the cause of from
your distress and God tells you He will take away your illness and it
happens. We all at one time or another
have experienced external relief and we may or may not have given God credit
for His help.
Yet we live in a wrecked world that continues to have
disease, poverty, broken relationships and death. Not all troubles will be taken away from
us .I was told that a pastor declared
that the area where he lived was officially cancer free; that God had declared
this to him. But then when cancer killed
one of his parents, he had to backtrack on his prophetic word. Not every disease is healed, not every
brother is raised from the dead and not every person gets a better job than the
one he lost. We must face facts as they
are and discover for ourselves what our Lord means when He says that “as a
mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”
There are in the Bible two levels of internal
comfort. The first would more accurately
be called “relief”. This is the feeling
you have when it looks like everything will turn out ok. The second level is
when our relief is joined to faith and we experience comfort in its
supernatural state. Carefully examine
Psalm 119:76 to see this expressed practically.
May your unfailing love be my
comfort, according to your promise to your servant. (NIV) The comfort described in this Psalm is not
due to any change in the circumstances of the Psalmist. He hasn’t been healed. He wasn’t offered a promotion. He didn’t get a check in the mail. He simply had a promise from God and that
promise he believed could be trusted. God
had unfailing love for him and this he decided would be his comfort. We see this again in the fiftieth verse of
the same chapter. My comfort in my
suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life. (Psalm 119:50 NIV) What we have is a strange sort of comfort,
something decided before whatever God might do for the person. It is the promise God provides that brings
comfort, not the fulfillment of the promise.
Let us look at a couple of examples that illustrate this law of God’s
comfort.
A few weeks ago we mentioned a Roman centurion who
came to Jesus wanting help for his servant who was suffering paralysis. When Jesus told the centurion that He would
in fact heal the servant, the centurion believed Jesus, had faith in God’s
promise. He went away comforted; an
internal change for him. Later, when he
got home, he discovered the servant was indeed well and he was relieved. (See Matthew 8: 8ff) A different outcome is described in Matthew
14. There we have the famous account of
Peter walking briefly on the water.
Jesus came to the disciples who were in their boat in the middle of the
Sea of Galilee during a horrific storm.
He was walking on the water and in faith Peter asked if he could join
Jesus out on the waves. For a moment
Peter also walked on the water but then his faith faltered. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid
and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and
caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you
doubt?" (Matthew 14:30-31 NIV)
Jesus’ encouragement to come and join Him on the water brought Peter
comfort. The wind was still raging, the
waves continued to threaten everyone.
But when Peter lost his faith, he also lost his comfort. Peter was relieved when Christ calmed the sea
but he missed out on the supernatural comfort that would have been there for
him if he just kept believing Jesus would fully take care of him.
One more example of comfort vs. relief as seen in
the miraculous healing of Naaman the leper is found in 2 Kings 5. Naaman, an Aramean came to Israel looking for
the prophet Elisha, hoping Elisha could heal his leprosy. We cannot say how much faith he had in the
prophet but we do know Naaman was not at all pleased with Elisha’s
instructions. The prophet told Naaman to
go dip in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed. The Jordan was a muddy, cloudy river and
Naaman could not see any good in going to it for healing and so he left Elisha
in a great huff. He was not at all
comforted by God. Some friends though
convinced Naaman to just try it and so Naaman did and to his great joy, he was
indeed healed by the Lord. This was of
course a tremendous relief to Naaman and he returned to Elisha to express his gratitude. Now here we must look at the supernatural comfort
that could have been experienced. God
wanted to comfort Naaman with his promise but Naaman wouldn’t believe the
promise and so he remained in turmoil.
What a great thing it would have been for Naaman to ride to the Jordan
River in supernatural comfort rather than turmoil. He was healed and found relief but he did not
experience comfort. Comfort is when
God’s peace is combined with our faith in God.
All too often we are like Naaman. Rather than believe that God will provide for
us, help us and carry us through whatever trial or hardship we face, we do not
trust God and our minds are thrown into chaos by our difficulty. We get mad at one another, lose sleep and scramble
around looking frantically for a solution rather than believing that God will
show us what to do and take care of us. I want to provide a picture of God’s comfort
working in a practical way. Abraham was
told to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and offer him there as a sacrifice
to God. The next morning Abraham got up,
gathered the wood, a knife and a donkey along with the boy and together they
started going up the hill. There is no
mention in the description of Abraham stewing with rage at God for making such
a demand, no indication that he went up the mountain in great despair or abject
fear of what was going to happen. In a
supernatural peace he climbed with his son and even when Isaac asked his father
where was the lamb for the sacrifice, Abraham calmly replied, "God
himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two
of them went on together. (Genesis 22:8 NIV)
Imagine having enough comfort to take your son and
walk with him up a great hill knowing that at the top of it you would be killing
him. Abraham was not the sort of person
who naturally could do such a thing, only God could give him that sort of peaceful
calmness. When Abraham and Isaac got to
the top of Mount Moriah, placed Isaac on top of the wood and pulled out his
knife to kill the boy, the Lord showed Abraham a ram caught in the thicket and
told him that it was the ram that was to be killed as a sacrifice and not his
son. Now let’s go to the secret of
Abraham’s comfort. Hebrews 11 tells us, By
faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had
received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though
God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be
reckoned." Abraham reasoned that
God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back
from death. (Hebrews 11:17-19 NIV)
We have supernatural comfort the same way Abraham
did. Abraham took his son up the mountain with a certain amount of calmness
because he believed that after he killed the boy, God would raise him from the
dead. The Lord, he knew, would take care
of both of them. You gain comfort the
same way. When you decide that God will
take care of you, the comfort of God begins to come over you like a warm wave
of peace. His comfort relaxes you, lifts
your spirits, calms you, and takes away your worry and your anger as you trust
in Him. You begin to discover that the
Lord is quieting your desperation and in the storm you are at peace. Memorize this short statement and repeat it
again and again for it is the promise of God to you. “My God will meet all my needs according to
His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” If we make this our prayer of faith, God will
comfort us in any and every situation.
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