The God of All Comfort

I received an email from a friend with a link to a Flash movie which was so encouraging, I want to share it with you. It can be found at:

http://www.dayspring.com/movies/view.asp?moviename=comfort.swf&movieheight=485&moviewidth=726

The quotation in the "movie" is from 2 Corinthians 1:3-11, and since this passage has meant a lot to me over the last month, I'd like to share it with you in more detail. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 starts off with these words:

"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."

It's amazing just how much in our walk with the Lord starts with a definition of who God is. The starting point is never me, but him! Here, God is defined as "the Father of compassion" and "the God of all comfort." His comfort flows directly from his nature as "the God of all comfort" - in other words, God cannot help being a comforter - it is written into his very nature.

But notice that there is a flow-on effect from the comfort we receive from God. We are able to "comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."

Suffering has the capacity to bind people together in compassion and mutual comfort. Like you, I've experienced many points of suffering in the past, and these enable me to show compassion to others at a depth that would be impossible if I hadn't experienced that suffering. A lot of people ask the obvious question, "Why would God allow suffering?" I have no pat answer for that, but one thing I know is that suffering, if we respond to it correctly, produces a depth of character in us. Nobody enjoys it, but as James 1:3-4 points out, suffering "develops perseverance" and "Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

2 Corinthians 1:5 goes on to say:

"For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows."

You can see the "overflow" effect at work here. In our close walk with the Lord, we cannot help but be touched by the sufferings of Christ (have you ever "felt" the pain when a loved one is in agony?). Here, we're not just talking about the sufferings of Jesus on the Cross, but the sufferings that Jesus continues to experience every time "the least of his brothers" (Matthew 25:34-40) suffers persecution or goes through pain (you'll note in Acts 9:4-6 that Jesus counted persecution against the Church as persecution against himself).

There is also an element of deepened awareness of other's pain that comes through one's own suffering. Pain is not at all pleasant, yet the pain I've gone through in recent days (which is hardly the worst I've experienced) gives me a window on the agony Jesus himself experienced on my behalf on the Cross. I have analgesics to eliminate the pain, but Jesus refused his analgesic when it was offered to him (Mark 15:23).

You also notice that comfort is described as an overflowing experience. It is like a cup that has so much water poured in, it overflows the rim. This means that God's intention is not just to comfort us enough for our particular troubles; he desires to comfort us to the point of overflow, where the comfort we receive overflows to others! It is a comfort "in abundance", a comfort "in excess", a comfort so great that we cannot keep it to ourselves. It is part of the "streams of living water" that flow out from within us (John 7:38).

2 Corinthians 1:6-7 then goes on to say:

"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. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort."

Ah, echoes of James 1:3-4 again! Like James, Paul points out that the end result of "comforted distress" is "patient endurance." And again, Paul speaks of sufferings not as a lonely, isolated experience, but as a shared experience. Not only are we to "share in our sufferings" but we are also to "share in our comfort" which results from the overflow of God's comfort in our lives.

Now we come to the passage of scripture which Andrew Wan, a dear brother at ECC, shared with me a couple of weeks ago - even before my cancer had been diagnosed. 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 says:

"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead."

This passage has meant a lot to me over the last couple of weeks, because in many ways it was the Lord preparing me for what was to come (the Lord has a wonderful way of doing that). Paul is now describing his hardships and he is frank about their severity. He says he was under "great pressure" and that this pressure was "far beyond our ability to endure." I've felt the same. If it weren't for the Lord, how could I possibly face what I'm facing now?

Paul says that the severity of his hardship was such that he "despaired even of life" and that he felt it was like "a sentence of death." Ever get that feeling? I know that first hearing the news of my diagnosis was like I was receiving the death penalty. I could easily feel like I'm on "death row" - "Dead man walking!", as the old saying goes.

And yet this is where God's grace kicks into action. In fact, Paul says that the very purpose of his suffering was so that "we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead."

Ever asked the single-word question, "Why?" Well, this is the answer: "So that you might not rely on yourself but on God." And so for me, as I face this apparent "sentence of death", I don't even need to ask, "Why, God, have you allowed this to happen?" Because I already know the answer.

And note that Paul ends verse 9 with these words: "...that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." God is the God of the resurrection! Jesus himself said, "I am the resurrection and the life!" (John 11:25). And Paul wrote, in Romans 8:11, "And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you."

God is in the business of raising the dead - on a spiritual level (see Ephesians 2:1-7) as well as a physical level. When we place our trust and faith in him, his resurrection power begins to work in our life.

Finally, in 2 Corinthians 1:10-11, Paul writes:

"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. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many."

I could not have expressed this better myself. God has delivered me from "a deadly peril" many times in the past and I have full confidence that he will deliver me now! It is "on him" that I have set my hope "that he will continue to deliver [me]" - "as you help [me] by your prayers." The result will then be that "many will give thanks on [my] behalf for the gracious favor granted [me] in answer to the prayers of many."

I started off this post with a link to a movie which quoted 2 Corinthians 1:3-11. I'd like to end it with a link to another movie which my dear sister, Patti Savage, just sent me this morning (it's an exe file, but I vouch for its safety). It is in zipped (compressed) format, so you will need to download the file first, unzip it, then double-click on the exe file.

http://www.online-bible-college.com/GODWords.zip