God will comfort

For a long time, I believed a person’s ability to comfort another was simply a by-product of having experienced suffering. But notice what the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians:

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.… 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 —2 Corinthians 1:3–4, 6, NIV

According to Paul, God does not comfort the believer for the believer’s sake only. Part of His reason for comforting us in our times of distress is so that we can more effectively comfort others. The apostle portrays himself as one who is passing along to other believers the very comfort God used to comfort him.
He goes on, however, to make a strong statement concerning the purpose of suffering in general.

He says, “If we are distressed, it is for your comfort.” The implication is that part of the purpose for the adversity he was facing was to better enable him to comfort the Corinthian believers. In other words, God sent adversity into his life just to make him a more effective comforter. This was more than a by-product of suffering; it was part of God’s purpose.

What was true for the apostle Paul is true for all believers.

God allows tragedy to interrupt our lives so that He can comfort us. Once we have dealt with our hurt, He will bring someone across our path with whom we can identify and therefore comfort.

As strange and as unnecessary as it may seem on the surface, this is part of God’s strategy is maturing us. God is in the business of developing comforters. And the best comforter is one who has struggled with pain or sorrow of some sort and has emerged from that experience victorious through the comfort of another.


Defining Terms

To comfort others is “to impart strength and hope” to them. By strength, I mean Christ’s strength. For as I said in a previous chapter, God wants to use adversity to teach us to rely upon Him. The job of a comforter, then, is to move the other persons from relying on their own strength to that of Christ. When we have been used to do that, we have imparted strength.

Every time I read the biography of a great saint I am encouraged by God’s grace to that person in times of adversity and difficulty. I come away thinking, If God sustained that individual through such trials, He will sustain me as well. In that way, the testimony imparted strength to me. It motivated me to go on and forget about giving up.

To impart hope is to enable others to take their focus off their immediate circumstances and place it on eternal things. Much of our suffering will not be completely understood or justified in our minds until we see Jesus.

In His presence, all the loose ends will tie together. All the questions will be answered. The apostle Paul described our hope when he wrote,

  Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal  —2 Corinthians 4:16–18, NIV

Why did Paul not lose heart when faced with great difficulty?

Eternal glory; that which is unseen. Paul’s hope was that which is yet to come. That was where he found great comfort. So it is with all of us when the questions raised by adversity run too deep for simple answers. It is not a cop-out to talk about finding answers in heaven. Pointing a person toward eternity is not an act of desperation; it is certainly not the last resort.

In Scripture, the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and His ensuing judgment are almost always presented as encouragements to those undergoing difficulties and trials. In fact, John wrote the entire book of Revelation with that purpose in mind.

The Christians of his day were in despair because of the physical persecution they were experiencing from Rome. As the pressure on them continued to mount, the Holy Spirit moved John to write this stirring account of the last days. By his presentation of the fall of Satan and the ultimate and eternal reign of Christ, the believers of his day were encouraged to take heart and endure to the end. John imparted hope to them!


Author: Stanley, C. F.