Risen

Galatians 1:3-5 NIV

 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

What’s Bothering You?

During my sophomore year in high school I decided I wanted to become good at basketball.  Day and night I played on any court where I could find someone to challenge.  I lifted weights, did push-ups, ran and used a jump rope with five pound ankle weights to increase my speed and power.  Every day I shot hundreds of jump shots and played against anyone who came to the courts where I was.  I played so often that the insides of my fingers split open and burned with pain.  My basketball became so worn by constant playing that it was smooth as glass.  To play as often as I did, I had to give up something and it was my homework.  It seemed like a good trade-off for me, basketball glory for a few good grades.  My senior year I finally tried out for my high school varsity basketball team.  I played hard, took rebounds away from players stronger than me, made my jump shots and dunked in the practices.  Finally Friday came and the head coach pulled me off to the side to tell me my fate.  He said I didn’t make the team.

Have you ever been surprised by how things turned in your life?  Have you failed when you knew you would succeed?  Have you tried your best and it wasn’t good enough?  Do you know someone whose health suddenly fell apart, someone who lost his job when he was good at what he did?  Are you ever stunned by how badly things go; your planning of no use, your decisions not working out for you?  What do you think of a world that has so much difficulty?  Do you ever complain about the troubles you face?  Do you get upset about the stock market, distressed over your bad knees, frustrated  that a coworker doesn’t show you the respect you deserve, discouraged with how your career is going or how your kids are doing in school?

Jesus has told you how it will go for you.  “In this world you will have trouble.” (John 16:33b NIV)  If you are expecting everything in your life to work out nicely, Jesus said it won’t.  Let’s get this out of the way, that success and good health are promised you.  They aren’t.  You might not face cancer.  You could have a great career.  Your children might do very well.  But in all of that, you will have trouble.  It will find you and most likely you won’t be prepared when it arrives.  Jesus however does not just dump this bad news on us without a promise.  “But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16: 33c NIV)

God does not look at life the same way most people do.  Nearly everyone cares very much about finances, health and relationships.  If something goes wrong, you try to fix it. It weighs on your mind until your trouble goes away.  Our Lord though has a completely different take on matters.  Consider carefully what Christ prioritized during His physical life on earth.  Several things went quite well for Him.  Great crowds came to hear Him speak, mesmerized by His story telling and insightful teaching.  He performed spectacular miracles that brought health and wellness to vast numbers of people.  There was a movement among the Jews to make Him king after He fed a crowd of five thousand with just two small fish and five barley loaves.  He was a brilliant debater and charismatic leader.  Jesus could have had as much wealth as He desired.  He could send His disciples off to pluck coins out of the mouths of fish if He wanted more money.  Our Lord was on the verge of enjoying one of the greatest lives ever and yet he threw it all away.

At the height of Christ’s popularity, when everything in His life was trending upward, our Lord let it all unravel.  He stopped doing miracles.  He quit preaching to crowds.  He no longer debated with His critics.  He let His popularity disappear.  He did not concern Himself with His health.  He chose to let His successful ministry fall apart.  What could lead to such absolute disregard for one’s well-being?

There is something far worse than deadly diseases, worse than school shootings and child abuse, worse than poverty, sexual harassment, sweat shops and human trafficking.  It is worse than pornography, corporate corruption and even the threat of nuclear war.  It is the reason why Christ gave up all the promise His life held.  The great enemy of all of life; of the entire universe was on our Lord’s mind from the moment He could begin thinking about it.  His whole life had one mission and one alone.  He lived to save the world from Sin.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21 NIV)

Sin is the source of every evil in the world, from disease to death; it all springs out of Sin.  Jesus Christ chose for everything to go absolutely wrong for Him, to take every terror sin brings, whether it was pain, hatred, abuse or sorrow and suffer it all for one reason.  By doing so, by letting every bit of sin rip His life apart, He took sin out of us. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24 NIV)

Jesus let His friend Judas betray Him, to even kiss him on the cheek as he did so.  He did not resist as the Jewish guards arrested Him.  Jesus took quietly every slap on the face, every bit of spit that was rained down upon Him.  Jesus let bizarre accusations be hurled at Him without defending Himself.  The blows on the head, the thorns jammed into His scalp, the whips shredding His back and chest and legs and arms, all accepted without protest.  Sin wrecked Him.  And more Sin came and battered Him.  Every sin you committed slugged Him and still He accepted more in His body.  The sins of your neighbors, of your friends, of your relatives long gone, of people you have never met, of enemies that have damaged your heart, of lovers who have adored you and those who turned on you, every sin of every person who has ever been, Jesus let each one come into His body and they all sank into His flesh and pounded it with the pain of ten billion heart attacks, of ten trillion broken bones and concussions.   Each sin of every man, woman and child blasted within Him and exploded with pain and Jesus took them all in without complaint.

The time came, when after so much horror fell upon Jesus and His body became completely filled with all the carnage of Sin, He knew it was finished and came out of His body saturated with all of our sins.  The Bible makes it completely clear that Jesus decided this, that He knew when His work of taking our sin from us was finished.   Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty."   A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.    When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28-30 NIV)

How can we ever thank Jesus enough for what He did for us!  Every sin you committed He took into His body and suffered for each and every sin.  The pain and sorrow each sin brought Him careened through His body like the echoes of a train wreck screeching in the night.  And yet the universe waited in hushed horror as Jesus’ body of sin lay crumpled in the tomb.  His spirit was gone but the body still remained and with it was our death, our sorrow, our pain.  Another day came and the body was still there.  Our dying sat with it and the demons with Satan watched and waited.  The body was dead.  Sin remained within it.  But then the morning of the third day the greatest miracle of all time took place.  The magnitude of that early Sunday morning has been lost to nearly all across the generations but the Apostle Paul reminds us what we have forgotten.

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:6-7 NIV)  Carefully go over this one more time.  On that day, that first and greatest of all Easter mornings, on that bright and shining morning we were raised with Christ from the dead and brought into the Heavenlies with Him.  Before you were born, before your parents knew your name, before you ever knew you needed a Savior, Christ and you were raised from the dead and made eternal with God.  We cannot begin to express the wonder of this.  We cannot explain it nor do we understand it.  We just know that on Easter Sunday, you were raised from the dead along with Christ and you became glorious as the sun.  Let this sink into you.  Literally the Greek text reads that “He (God) together raised and together seated (us) in the Heavenlies in Christ Jesus”.  Easter Sunday, when Christ was raised from the dead, we were raised from the dead too and in a world of death and dying, of sin and suffering, that is nearly incomprehensible.  Easter, that first Easter of all history is not just the triumph of Christ, it is yours too.  For that, we celebrate!

Guilt

In the United States and many parts of the world, it is considered prudish to have less than seven sexual partners.  No longer is promiscuity considered morally wrong, at least as it pertains to a standard derived from something less than the Bible.  There are other areas of behavior that are morally repugnant to a large portion of the population that would be odd concerns to any era but our own.  Feelings of guilt have not left us; they simply have become attached to new morality tenets that have surfaced in our time.    Would a couple ever before have felt guilty about having another child yet now many do!  Has there ever been an age where so much angst has been suffered over the military strength of one's own nation?  When did we start feeling guilty about expressing faith in Christ?  It is moral to send naked pictures of oneself by text but immoral to pass those naked pictures along to others.  There is a moral code to our world and it shifts about like seismic fissures.  The natural course is to make morality match one's behavior rather than the other way around.  In a social order that decides it is moral, what need is there for a God who dies for one's sins?  A god who powers success might be interesting or a deity that settles emotional instability could garner a following but a true Savior who wrecks ones inner world by becoming Lord is anathema to  moral self-determinists.  Satan does not want a guilty sinner and does his best to keep the fretting over right and wrong from the soul.  But once a man or woman faces the mirror of God's own justice and gains a fresh insight into what really is right and wrong, the sham is uncovered and the healthy guilt of the Holy Spirit descends.    We try so hard to be done with guilt but guilt is a window through which the light of God shines into the heart and reveals the true need of every soul, the need for Christ to bring salvation to the totality of life.

When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: 

John 16:8 NIV

The Fullness of You Hearing God

Isaiah 28:23 NIV

Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.

Why Don’t You Hear From God?

Perhaps you have had an experience like me.  I was in Russia and had gone into a

department store.  I was just exploring because I wasn’t sure what they had and I was always on the hunt for inexpensive souvenirs to bring home.  Causally I went down one aisle after another mindlessly glancing about.  I noticed there were about six store employees and I was only one of two customers in the store.  Suddenly it dawned on me that every single employee was watching what I was doing.  They were not just watching me, they were staring at me and some were following me as I left one aisle and went to another.  I began to smile inside myself.  Did they really think I was going to shoplift?  I said something to one of the clerks. joking about my intentions, but she only stared at me like I was an American spy trying to infiltrate their secret weapon system.  I did not understand Russian and the clerks did not know any English.  A great barrier stood between us of culture and language.  How could I get through to them that I was not going to take any of their toys or kitchen supplies…that I would pay for what I wanted?  I was baffled.

What if we have a similar relationship with God?  What if there are many times through the day when God is talking to us but we either aren’t paying attention or unable to grasp what He has said?  Would our lives improve if we did hear from God; did comprehend what He was communicating to us?  Is there a possibility that there is a vast number of ways God is trying to get through to us but we are missing it?  Some of us have had the experience of trying to understand what someone speaking another language was saying and being flummoxed in our efforts.  Hand signals and motioning just hasn’t worked.  Could that be happening between us and God?

I had a recent experience that caught my attention.  I went to a local church facility that is known for opening its doors for people to pray during the day and evening Tuesday-Friday.  Most of the time in the sanctuary they have live streaming worship from a sister congregation in Kansas City that has prayer and worship taking place 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Other times they have someone in their own sanctuary playing the keyboards and singing.  Every once in a while a person from their congregation reads Scripture out loud for a full hour.  What the Bible passages will be aren’t posted in advance and it varies from reader to reader what will be read without a particular order it seems.  I never know what will be happening when I arrive because I don’t know the schedule.  I came a little early before the building was opened and read my regularly scheduled Bible reading for the day.  I was in the Proverbs and read chapters 19-20 before entering the sanctuary.  When I got in I saw that someone was reading the Bible and I soon realized he was reading from Proverbs.  Not only that, he was in Proverbs 21, the very next chapter after what I had just finished reading in the car.  How could that be?  How could such a coincidence have occurred?  As I sat and listened and prayed, I wondered if God was trying to communicate with me, and if so, what was He saying.

In Isaiah 28, God makes it clear that He intends for us to hear what He has to say.  Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say. (NIV)  Through the prophet Isaiah, God makes this promise to us, The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. (Isaiah 58:11 NIV)  Perhaps the boldest statement in Scripture of our Lord’s determination to speak to us and show us the way as we go about our business is also found in the book of Isaiah.  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21 NIV)  But how is this possible?  What is the way God does this?  The Holy Spirit, who our Lord puts in us, somehow gets through to us, if we are available to Him, what He wants us to hear.  But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.  (John 16:13 NIV)  If we want to hear God speak to us, He will through the Holy Spirit.

There is evidence in God’s word that we can shut down communication between ourselves and God.  King Saul is a classic example of this.  After Saul on two occasions openly disobeyed God, the Lord stopped communicating with him.  Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. (1 Samuel 16:14 NIV)  For a time this did not bother Saul as he found ways of coping without God guiding him but when a monstrous Philistine army came to attack him and his army, the craving for God to lead him reached a crescendo.  When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart.  He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. (1 Samuel 28:5-6 NIV)  Although he himself had forced all witches and mediums to go into hiding because of his pogrom against them, Saul in his desperation, tried to find a witch to raise the prophet Samuel from the dead hoping that God might speak through Samuel.  Saul then said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her." (1 Samuel 28:7 NIV)  Saul is not alone in his desperation to hear what God might say to him.  But sadly, there can be reasons for why we miss out on God speaking to us.

The most obvious is disobedience.  If you don’t do what the Lord tells you to do, God may wait for you to change your mind.  There cannot be two masters in one life.  Either the Lord is or we are.  If we are, then God will give us room to find out what that is like.  In Saul’s case, the Lord let Satan attack him so that he could feel just how weak and defenseless he was without God.  A warning from God’s word must be taken seriously.  "But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” (Psalm 81:11-12 NIV)  If we want to take control of our lives, then God will let us but He will back away and and give us the opportunity to see what it is like living without Him.  We may not even know God has done this for a while because it can be comfortable without having the Lord directing us.  But then a crisis hits and like Saul we look for God to guide us.  It is then that His silence can be terrible.

Another hindrance to hearing from God is having a cluttered mind.  If we are thinking about everything but God, how can we be ready when He enters our thoughts?  We can’t because we are distracted.  Like the virgins who did not bring oil to the wedding feast and were kicked out of the building, we must not be lackadaisical about the opportunity to hear from God.  Paul talks about the cluttered mind in his letter to the Corinthians.  Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ.  I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? (1 Corinthians 3:1-4 NIV) God’s Spirit speaks to us so quietly that only those whose minds are on God can hear.  Any bit of sinful thinking, any sort of greed or hatred or lust or doubt can quench His voice in us.  Paul the Apostle says that if we want to know God’s will for us, we must not ever conform to the ways of the world; whether it is in regard to entertainment, habitual behaviors, use of our money or how we react to the people God brings us.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.  (Romans 12:2 NIV)

There is one more hindrance to hearing God speak and that is the age old problem of a lack of faith.  In Hebrews we discover, And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6 NIV)  God will speak to us in the Bible in general ways if we do not have much faith in Him and the truth is that even this form of communication will sound like gibberish to those without faith in Christ.  But, if we want to understand what God is saying to us as we drive, when at work as we are with our children or while shopping, we must have faith He will guide us and direct us.  There is no work around when it comes to faith.  Either we believe God is talking to us in a still whisper or we don’t and if we don’t think we can hear from Him, we won’t hear from Him.

So how can we begin to hear from God as we go through our days?  We must practice gratitude.  Do not let a moment pass when you are not thankful for what you have and how God is working in your life.  Do whatever God tells you to do.  Act in faith.  Believe it was the Lord who directed you and trust Him to correct you if you were wrong.  Scripture is your protection.  God will never oppose the Bible with what He tells you.  Keep your mind on God at all times.  Make Ephesians 6: 18 the standard of how you live each day.  And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.  (Ephesians 6:18 NIV)  God will not bother talking with you if you are distracted.  If you are thinking about God and you are on the edge of your seat anticipating His guidance, you will find our Lord will reward your faith by leading you through whatever difficulty, perplexing situation or relationship issue you face.  Keep your mind on God and He will come near to you with His strength, peace and guidance.

Faith and Comfort

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.