Good morning,
All of us carry a dictionary in our heads, and we often have no idea who wrote the definition for the words that we use. In the days when the New Testament was written the word comfort was all about one or more persons coming along side another person, or group of people, to care for them in the face of difficulty. Things started to change in the middle of the 17th Century when people started to use the word more and more to describe something that made them feel good about themselves or to explain pain free living conditions. In our generation, our Enemy has done his best to get us to believe that world and our cultures and our families owe us a life style that is built around our comfort. Alas, our present church culture has accepted this idea of comfort, now what we believe and where we attend church is mainly built on the idea of how a church makes us feel about ourselves. Now pain is only an enemy to be avoided, not a part of God’s good plan to become useful and Christlike persons who look more and more like Jesus.
Paul makes it clear that when God talks to us about comfort, it is very closely attached to the painful lessons that we have learned from him as we go through the growing up we need to go through to become more like our Creator God. It seems that none of us really learn the meaning of comfort until the Lord has led us through pain so sharp that we will never forget the lesson. Words can give us definitions, but only pain guided by our loving Heavenly Father, our Good Shepherd and the strength of God’s Holy Spirit, that will give us stories to tell that clearly paint what God can do for those who live their lives like Jesus did. Genuine comfort always flows from the lives of people who have gone through an experience, faced the fears and pains that were involved and finished the experience praising God and loving him more than they ever did before. The more we suffer for Christ, the more useful we will become to those around us. Dear Lord, will you please help us to have your definition of comfort as we face the challenges of life in the days ahead.
II Corinthians 1:3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. 5 For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ.
Roy Wisner
