He Comforts Us in Our Troubles

2 Corinthians 1:3-5(NLT)
“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.”

Everyone has troubles – and I’m sure you can name a few off the top of your head. We all need help, advice or comfort at some point. God is merciful in our times of trouble, and because of His amazing grace, we can comfort and uplift others.

God has given us the authority through His love to be able to pour out love and kindness to other people. It is especially meaningful to be a conduit of His love towards those that are enduring a troubling season in their lives. Take the Apostle Paul’s example for instance. He understood that his mission was to follow the example of Jesus Christ and to instruct the church in righteousness, but Paul had a past. Before his Road to Damascus experience, he actually persecuted Christians. He faced what many of us face today, in that people who knew his past tried to use it to hold him back. 

The church at Corinth had a lot of problems. They hadn’t renewed their minds to God’s Word in important areas of the faith. Division among them crept in. Following his call by the Lord Jesus Christ to guide the church in righteousness and Godliness, Paul wrote the Corinthians an epistle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was sent to sternly correct them. Some changed their ways after receiving this correction, but others strongly turned against him. Some even said that he was not a real Apostle of Jesus Christ.

There can be no question that Paul suffered persecution and endured things many of us living today couldn’t endure. As he wrote the Second Epistle of Corinthians under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul knew and had experienced the comfort of God through tribulation personally, and this is one of the reasons he was able to offer this same comfort to other believers. Paul knew God’s power, and this gave him the confidence to minister, serve, and help others. We are not sufficient in and of ourselves. Paul wrote in 2Corinthians 3:5 that our sufficiency comes from God. Our Heavenly Father empowers us through His tremendous love, and this very same love gives us the strength to encourage, comfort, and help others.

It’s no question that all of us will go through seasons in our lives when we endure pain and suffering. Like Paul, we all make poor judgements and bad choices. Many of us start out with a healthy appetite for living God’s way, but we will sometimes allow relationships with a significant person to throw us off the path. By the third or fourth month of dating, self-control goes straight out of the window. This is the condition many Christians find themselves in. They succumb to the pressures of life and the flesh; they give themselves over to sinful behavior. I’ve heard many of my single Christian friends say how much they regret actions like these, because their sinful actions caused so many problems, and my friends wished they had been more patient while dating. 

Our God will make sure that we never lose out when we patiently endure, no matter how challenging things may seem. He will reward us for living His way and by following the example of Jesus Christ. Paul knew this. He had experienced the power, grace, and mercy of God continually. Paul had a problem that was so troublesome to him that he called this problem a throne in his flesh. He prayed to God about it, and God told him in 2Corinthians 12:8 (NLT), “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”

God knows we’re going to make mistakes, but He never stops loving us; therefore, we must not allow our mistakes to keep us from loving and helping others. We’ve got work to do, and we shouldn’t let anything keep us from being a blessing to the Lord’s people. God told Paul to lean on His grace, and this is precisely what we must do. God’s power works best in weakness. We must remember this no matter what we’re going through, no matter how much we are tested. Things can become bad very quickly, but tribulation should press us to draw closer to God because we have no other help but Him. We must lean on Him and remember that it’s in the struggle that we’ll see the overwhelming strength and power of God’s love.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“He Comforts Us in Our Troubles”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.