Finding Comfort in Community: Embracing God's Compassion

G'day, thanks for joining the Heights Church Podcast today. We hope you enjoy our message.

If you're in the Sydney area, be sure to join us at the Heights Church at Galston

Road, Hornsfield Heights, Sydney, Australia.

Reading from 2 Corinthians 1, 3 to 11, if you want to get your Bibles out.

I just want to pray first. Dear

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for letting us join and gather here,

and being able to hear from your word, and having the amazing crowd and congregation

and everyone to praise you and worship you, Lord.

And I just pray the words that come from the Bible that someone is able to have

something resemble with them, Lord. And I pray this in your name. Amen.

So from verse three, praise be to God and Father, our Lord Jesus 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 who comfort us with the comfort

we ourselves receive from God.

For just as we share abundantly in the suffering of Christ, so also our comfort

abounds through Christ.

If we are distressed it is for your comfort

and salvation if we are comforted it

is for your comfort which produces in your patient

endurance of the same suffering 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

we do not want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about the troubles

we experience in the province of Asia.

We were under great pressure for beyond our ability to endure.

So that we despaired of life itself, indeed we felt we had received the sentence of death.

But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but rely on God who raised the dead.

He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again.

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.

Thank you, Nat. I'm speaking tonight on this idea of sharing compassion,

sharing comfort, receiving and then giving away. way.

There is a wonderful magical place that exists and that place is called Kennard's Storage.

I don't know if anyone's ever been to Kennard's Storage before.

It's a wonderful place. It's a place that can help you when you're maybe moving

between places and you don't have somewhere to put your stuff.

It's a place that some people I've heard in a pinch have attempted to live in

small storage containers, technically very much not allowed.

There are various TV shows that show the ways that certain criminal organizations

might use those storage canards, not putting anything on them particularly.

There's another group of people that uses a place like Kennard Storage,

and that is the sort of people that have hoarded and kept so much stuff that

their home, which is sufficiently sized, if you were to look at it,

no longer can hold what they've got.

So, they need to lean on a place called Kennard Storage for their overflow,

for all that stuff that you might need one day.

They used to have a sign out the front of Kennard Storage that I liked,

basically inviting people in that said, you're not a hoarder.

You just have attachment issues.

And that might be it, Dave. I'm not sure. You just have attachment issues.

And the truth is we get attached to stuff. I get attached to stuff.

I used to be the most brutal chucker outer of stuff that you've ever met.

And then I had a kid and all of a sudden I want to keep everything forever to

the point where now Kate is constantly giving me a hard time of Chris,

when are you ever going to use that again?

I don't know. I find the words coming out of my mouth. You never know when I might need that thing.

I found it's a mantra to live by.

I found an explanation of what happens when hoarding goes wrong when it's turned up to 11.

You can turn it up to five or six and get by, but what happens if it's turned up to 11?

What's gone wrong there? It says scientifically that a person with a hoarding

disorder experiences great distress at the thought of getting rid of items.

Excessive accumulation of items, regardless of actual value, then begins to occur.

Hoarding can often create cramped living conditions that homes may be filled

to capacity with only narrow pathways winding through stacks of clutter.

Countertops, sinks, stoves, desks, stairways, and virtually all other surfaces

are usually piled with stuff.

I promise this is not a personal attack on anyone right now who's thinking of

the stuff that's on their kitchen bench.

But this is something that can go wrong. We can be a people who want to keep, keep, keep.

And that whore to throw attention is something that can cause relational issues

in marriages. It can cause tension within yourself.

It's a question I did pre-marriage counseling with a couple not that long ago,

and I asked them the question about hoarding and throwing.

Let's get it out in the open. Which way do you lean to begin with?

That was one of the more easier parts of that process, but worth putting out there.

Well, we're looking at this verse in 2 Corinthians, which was written by Paul

to the church in Corinth, and it was written in the context of a rocky relationship

that Paul had with the Corinthian church.

Paul had some ups, and he well and truly had some downish downs with his relationship

with the Corinthian church.

In our Bibles, we have two of the letters that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.

Interesting, maybe, I don't know, but most believe that there were actually

maybe three, four, five letters that Paul had written to them.

And we've only, lucky enough for our New Testament scriptures, we have got two of them.

Paul's relationship with Corinth was interesting. There were a lot of people

in Corinth that didn't like Paul.

I know this is hard to believe, but sometimes in churches, people sometimes

like some people more than they like others.

It happened in the Corinthian church. It would never happen to a church that

you're a part of, but it happens sometimes.

Some people did not like Paul. They wanted Paul to be larger than life.

They wanted him to speak eloquently.

They They wanted him to be somebody who was a dominant figure, a strong leader.

But Paul, even though he said, I write with strong words, the indication is

that when Paul spoke, that he wasn't necessarily a talented public speaker.

Maybe decent enough, but there was another person called Apollos who they were

like, can we get less of these Paul talks about sin and how the Old Testament relates to Jesus?

Can we get a polos? We don't really understand the content of what he's saying,

but geez, he speaks well. We don't like Paul.

He's not impressive. He's not strong.

You can imagine being Paul, whose job was to be an apostle to this church,

to guide them, to lead them, to teach them, and to encourage them when a bunch

of them didn't even like them.

Challenging situation for him to be in.

And so you can imagine him about to write this.

I don't know if you've ever been about to send a risky text or about to send

a message to somebody and you're just like, please let my tone carry across.

I'm going to put about 55 emojis in this text just so they know I'm calm. We're cool.

You send a text to somebody and you're just thinking, How can I word this so

that what I want to say actually gets across?

That's how I imagine Paul about to write this letter, this second letter,

maybe it could be the third, fourth, fifth, we don't know, to the Corinthian church.

And what he does is he thinks, okay, I'm going to start with a positive.

Good news, bad news. Let's give them some good news. Let's give them,

let's give them, let's pump up their tires a bit.

And what he says to them is that they're doing well on a bunch of stuff.

This is how you should encourage, I'd say to my leaders, this is how you should encourage our youth.

This is how I would encourage the leaders at youth.

Often it can be helpful, hey, this is the stuff you're doing right.

Maybe I want to just chat to you about this tiny bit. And that's what he's sort of trying to do here.

And he appeals to them. Okay. Yep. You've received comfort from God.

It seems like you've got a good connection with God going. He's working in your

lives. That's really great. That's good to hear.

But then he says to them, there's a little problem with what's happening at

that point in the process. Really good up to that point.

We're hitting a little bit of a hurdle when we get to that bit of the process

with your relationship with God.

You guys are doing an awesome job at receiving God's love. Really good.

You're doing an awesome job at receiving God's love.

You're doing a great job at praying to God and receiving his blessing and living

as a people confident that God in Christ wants the best for you. Awesome.

However, he says that thing that you've been receiving, which he calls comfort.

Sometimes it's translated as compassion.

We could just think about it as just that thing that we receive from God in

easy times, but sometimes in hard times, that loving feeling,

that loving action by God, that compassion,

that comfort, that connection with God.

He says, you've received that.

And he says in verse four, you receive it so that we can comfort those in any

trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

God is the God of comfort and compassion, he says, and what God wants to do

in your life, Corinthian church, and this is what I think I want to encourage

every one of us here tonight about,

is God wants to give you comfort and compassion.

He wants to help you through hard times. He wants to bless you in good times.

He wants to teach you, show you, guide you, love you.

One of the reasons that he does that is so that you can be someone who is empowered.

Motivated, encouraged, on fire to go out and do, to go and be somebody who is

an agent of positive love and comfort and compassion out into the world.

And in doing so, Paul says, we're actually called to reenact the gospel story,

that just us like Christ suffered so that we might receive God's comfort.

So sometimes in our lives, God will use the hard times that we've gone through

and the subsequent help that God's given us in those hard times.

He will then not only do that to get us through a hard time,

but he will do that to transform us into somebody who is now equipped and able

to help somebody else, to encourage somebody else, to come alongside somebody else,

to comfort somebody else in the situation that they're going through.

He comforts us uniquely and intimately in all of our troubles on a grand scale

in the person of Jesus and in a micro scale in your day-to-day getting you through.

It's very true. God did not just wish us well from a distance when we fell,

when we became became sinners.

He didn't just say, well, good luck with all of that. No, he sent Jesus into

the world. He helped the world and he came alongside us.

But he does so, so that we then would be transformed as a people to then come

alongside each other to help each other with what we've got going on.

In a previous church that I was a part of a long time ago now,

our whole youth and young adult ministry,

we signed up for, what we did was we decided to, and then maybe this might sow

some seeds of an idea for some people, but we decided we want to do something in the community.

We want to just go and not run something, not invite people to,

but we want to go do something in the community that's already good and support

it. And so what we did was we saw the Cancer Council's Relay for Life.

They did it at Anzac Reserve in Castle Hill where they raised money.

They basically walked all weekend and they raised money for some good stuff, the Cancer Council.

And so we decided we're going to sign up for that and spend all weekend walking.

Which sounded like a really cool idea when people were talking to me about it

and showing me the website and you just got to type in your organization's name here and commit here.

And then I realized, wait a second, first of all, I play soccer on Saturdays

and I can barely walk to the car after I play soccer on Saturdays.

So my shift was going to be Saturday night all the way through to Sunday morning

because I had to stop because then I had to go to church.

It was one of those situations where as I got closer to the weekend,

I thought to myself, what have I I signed up for again.

So I did. I went and played soccer. I limped to the car. I drove to Castle Hill.

And I said to the group, I said, I know I said, well, I'm going to be part of

the, I might just sit and watch some of it tonight.

We'll see how we go. Well, they weren't going to let me get away with that.

So from about 8 p.m.

Till about 5 a.m., it was actually a bit later than 5 a.m., I completed 30 kilometers

of walking that I did not know I had in me.

I did not have the energy. I didn't have the motivation.

There's not a chance in the world that, well, obviously on an average Saturday

night, that that's what I was going to sign up to do.

What I was going to sign up to do is have a hot shower and get to sleep as quickly as I could.

But instead, there I am. It was cold and we're walking around.

But I was able to do so because this energetic group of 20-year-olds would not let me stop.

In fact, they'd go to any time I looked like I was flagging for some reason, Carly Rae Ratson.

What's her name? Is that something like that? Anyway, Call Me Maybe was played

about 40,000 times to get me through that night.

Chris, we got this. One more lap. Let's go around. Let's go around.

Let's go around. Let's go around. I went to church and.

Went home. I think I slept for like four weeks after that, but I got through that night.

One of the lessons that I learned about that, and it's a lesson that I hope

that you know in your life, how true is it that on our own,

we might only have the motivation to go so far, but if someone comes alongside

us, if two people come alongside us, if a group of people come alongside us

and say, you know what? No, no, you've got this.

Take another step. Let's do this. Let's let's do it together.

Come on, we can do this. Let's just go over there. Let's find the energy.

All of a sudden, that energy, it becomes infectious. All of a sudden, you've got it in you.

The voice in your head wasn't getting you there, but the voices coming out from

other people does get you there. It motivates you.

And what happens is, it's a really good image for what happens in the church

in a community like this.

How often we come to church on a Sunday and we We think, man,

I just, I hope that, I hope I can just sing a few songs, hear a short sermon, get home.

I'm not feeling, I'm not feeling church. I'm not feeling God.

I probably am just coming because I should or whatever.

I hope that you have the experience of arriving like that sometimes only because

I also hope that you have the experience of coming like that and going away

thinking, oh man, I, how good is God?

I'm excited for what God's going to do in my life this week.

That's what we should be. We should be a people that get around to each other,

comfort each other in the stuff, the real stuff that we're going through,

but do so in a way that we send people going forward out into the world to then

be that person out in the world alongside people.

To put it another way, any of God's helping presence that we might have received

at any point in our life is given to us in some sense.

You can't really measure compassion or comfort, but if you think about it like

the canard storage idea, it's given to us not so that we can pack it away and

just be, look how blessed I am. Look how good God is working in my life.

He does so not so we can keep it, but so that we can have it and give it away.

As the comforter of God, Christians are called to be a helping presence to those

around us who are suffering.

It's supposed to inspire us. Our relationship with God, our connection with

God is supposed to inspire us, not to be like, I just had a great vibe during worship.

I'm good to go now, but to be like, God is actively working in my life so that

my eyes can now be open to go out into the world and be that person in my world.

Both elements are a part of what this idea means.

Part of what I like about this, and it happens a lot as you read scripture,

is when you think about the implications of it, is if you go back to the real

hard stuff that all of us have gone through,

maybe are going through, or maybe one day will go through, the real hard stuff,

the stuff that maybe you don't want to think about, the stuff that you sometimes

don't want to share, the moments, the days where you think, I don't know how

I'm going to get through this.

What it does is that it gives meaning to that pain.

It gives significance to that pain, that God in his infinite wisdom,

in his infinite everything,

is able to transform form something that is terrible,

not just to fix it, because how often do we know God doesn't always say yes

to our prayers, but sometimes through hard things, God will make us different.

He will stretch us. He will build us up. He will move us.

We'll come out of it a different person to what we went into it.

They say that some of the people that have the most amount of empathy aren't

ones who are born with it, but of people who have gone through some stuff so

that when they see someone else going through some stuff, they think, man,

I don't know what your situation exactly is.

I can't pretend to understand what you're going through, but I know what it's

like to go through something.

In the Old Testament story of Job, after Job loses everything,

something I just couldn't even comprehend, after his life falls apart in every

way, it says this of his three friends.

It says, when Job's three friends heard about all the troubles that had come

upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go

and sympathize with him and to comfort him.

When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him.

They began to weep aloud and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their

heads, which was a symbol for just saying, you're going through some stuff,

so I'm going to symbolically say I'm in it with you.

And it says, then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights.

Nights no one said a word to him because they

saw how great his suffering was we won't

talk about where the three friends go wrong after that perhaps

but they get it right there they come alongside job they say job you know what

you're going through hard stuff let me just sit with you let me just be on the

chair next to you i don't get it i can't possibly understand i can't possibly comprehend,

but let me be on that chair next to you during this hard time and just sit with you.

I want to tell you, too often in our lives, people go through stuff in your

world and you, and I know that you do this because I do this, we assume...

That chair next to that suffering person that someone else will sit there.

Someone else will do it. Someone else will comfort that person.

Too often what we do is we let ourselves off the hook. I've got my own stuff going on.

I'm not good at talking about hard stuff. I'm only young. I'm not trained in

that. I'm not a psychologist.

I'm just going to give in their space.

Too often God calls us to sit in that chair next to somebody who's going through

some hard stuff and we say, someone else will do it.

Every single one of us has done that at some point. And we do so for lots of

reasons because yes, we do have a lot of our own stuff going on because the

day goes into the day, goes into the week, goes into the year.

But Paul here is appealing to these people emotionally and is appealing,

I think, to you tonight, to motivate you tonight, to fix their hoarding problem.

Paul was telling them, you have comfort in abundance. You are a comfortable church.

Most of you are pretty well off. You're blessed. You've got a good relationship

with God. You've got all the resources.

You've got all the Bibles and the commentaries. You guys have got great buildings to meet in.

You've got a good thing going on in the Corinthian church. I'm not doubting

that. In fact, I'm praising that. Good stuff. Awesome.

But I think you're so attached to it that you won't now offer it to those that need it too.

We actually learned later that they weren't just hoarders of comfort.

And again, you can't really be a hoarder of comfort, but work with me on the image.

But they also had a problem with hoarding their money too. They weren't a generous

people with their time, with their energy, with their money.

And you see, the Corinthian issue wasn't that they weren't giving enough money.

It wasn't that they needed to just do more and sort of suck it up.

No, the issue was that they began to develop a heart that was just me, me, me. This is for me.

Yes, God, work in my life. Be with me.

And Paul's saying to them, yes, do that, but don't forget the so that.

Work in my life so that.

I wonder what the so that in your life is. God wants to work in your life.

Every single person here, God has a unique plan, vision for your life that you

are created for a purpose that God loves you and wants to, even now when you're

sitting there thinking,

no, no, I don't have time for a new vision or new, no, he's even right now trying

to invade your heart and say, no, let's go and do something exciting. I want to meet you.

I want my spirit to meet you even tonight, but he's doing so,

not just so you get to feel good, but he's doing so, so that.

It makes me think in my life, and I reflect on this sometimes,

that some of the troubles and.

I'm not only thinking, oh man, God got me through that, but I've realized more and more in my life,

God didn't just get me through that so I could just get through that,

but God got me through that so that he could prepare me for a circumstance that

I couldn't possibly have imagined at the time.

There have been many times in my life where I have said to God,

God, please fix this situation.

Please intervene in this circumstance. circumstance please change this thing

that is causing me active pain in my life right now,

and in those times god has often said to me no he hasn't actually said the words

no before but the answer has been no there have been many times in my life when

the suffering i was going through just totally messed me up, confused me,

hurt me, messed with my image of a loving God.

That made me think in my darkest of darkest moments that I perhaps actually couldn't go on.

I've had times in my life where the pain that I was going through just haunted me at every moment.

If I could go 10 minutes on those days without thinking about the pain,

they were a good 10 minutes, but I've gone through days, weeks,

and months in my life where I couldn't even go through that long without feeling

just that thing in my life that sucked,

that was wrong, that was hurting me, that was breaking my heart,

that left me feeling helpless and abandoned and angry.

A lot of those times in my life occurred when I was around 15,

16, 17 years of age, that I went through stuff that I would look at other teenagers,

other people in my grade at school, other people.

I think, man, their life looks so good.

Why couldn't I just have a simple, comfortable, easy life like they have?

Why do I have to go through pain in X, Y, and Z? Why do I have to feel fear

and worry and anxiety on levels that they don't have to feel?

And it was around this time where I started to think about what is actually

the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of anything?

It was around this time where, and I didn't grow up going to church at all,

but I had started to hear a little bit of the Bible here and there.

And I I started to have older, wiser Christian people that were in my life who

were saying things to me that obviously were from the Bible,

that were God-led, that were starting to just,

drift into my mind of things.

That is the only thing that's making sense to me right now.

And I remember in a particular time in my life where I was going through a few

things at once where a Christian mentor of mine who was actually a Baptist pastor,

which is interesting to me because this is my first Baptist church.

I'm only newly still a Baptist in some ways and happily one,

by the way. It's going great.

But I remember this Baptist pastor who had more wisdom than I'll ever have,

who had read more of the Bible than I will ever read in my life,

who knew all the things, trained in theology and psychology,

trained in stuff, really wise guy.

And when he spoke to me about my stuff, I remember one time that this guy didn't

lean on the right theological phrases to get me through.

There was one time where I just went.

Like I told you, I'm done. And

what he did was he came alongside me and he sat on that chair next to me.

And he said, I don't know what you're going through, but why don't you just listen?

I'm just going to tell you a story about some stuff I've gone through.

Not because it compares, not because it's less or more otherwise.

He said, I think you've got an idea in your mind that other people haven't gone through stuff.

And I'm going to tell you this now, not to make you feel less about your stuff,

but to know I'm here for you because I know how much it sucks.

He went through some of the pains and the sufferings in his life,

the letdowns in his life, the sort of stuff that I wouldn't have thought an

adult would have shared with me in those particular moments.

And he was equipped with a lot of compassion and empathy and patience.

I was 16, I think, when I had this particular moment. So he had a truckload

of patience with me, actually.

Me as a 16-year-old, you needed a lot of patience.

And all he was, was someone who just sat in that chair next to me,

who just said things like, life does suck sometimes.

And this bit is important because he didn't even share all of his story.

He wasn't telling me, yeah, I understand. Look at the things I've been through.

But he'd share these little snippets of stories here and there when it was appropriate.

But it wasn't because he thought those stories would fix my pain,

but rather that his story included him receiving the comfort of God and that

it equipped him to be there in moments when my emotional wounds were open and bleeding.

And he said something to me on one of those occasions that stuck with me.

He said, Chris, these wounds that you're feeling right now, emotional wounds,

open wounds, he described them, that are bleeding right in this moment,

they won't be healed today.

They probably won't even be healed tomorrow.

But Chris, one day God will close that wound up. up and one day it's going to

leave a really ugly scar, but it'll be a scar that's closed up.

And that ugly scar will hurt for a bit. It will ache.

And in some ways it will always ache, but eventually it will stop hurting as much.

Even possibly one day that ugly scar will barely hurt at all.

The scar will always be there. He told me, I remember this line,

especially God is not going to take that scar away.

And what he said to me is, Chris, you don't know it now, and you probably don't

even care right now. And I didn't.

But God is going to use that scar in ways that will help so many other people

in times and situations that neither you or anybody else could imagine in this particular moment.

He said, I don't know how, but I'm confident that he's going to.

So what this man provided for

me is what I think God wants to encourage us to go and be into the world.

Just to sit on that seat next next to people and go, yeah, I know that life's

hard and it's not going to be fixed today. It's not gonna be fixed tomorrow.

And I'm certainly not going to be the one to fix it. I don't have advice. I don't have solutions.

But I can provide to you a little bit of potential meaning, and I can provide

to you just a shred of comfort that God has shared with me.

And even though I didn't care in that moment, this guy was absolutely right.

When I was 16, there was no chance that I was going to go to a church permanently,

let alone work in churches, let alone be so passionate about youth ministry,

let alone be in a moment right now where I am up in front of you pretending

like I know something of the Bible to share.

But I think that God used those scars to equip me in moments to come alongside

people to be a helpful presence.

I think that without the hard things that I went through, any sort of compliment

anyone's given me about, hey, sometimes you're good at listening,

sometimes I really appreciate how much you care, that was not on the cards for me.

It wasn't my natural personality. It wasn't my natural sort of way of being.

I was a super illogical person that everything was black and white.

I didn't listen to anybody. I didn't care about anybody.

All I really cared about at that point was just being better than other people

so that I could just prove myself a little bit more.

But through those moments of meaning and comfort that someone else shared with me,

I can look back now and think the times when I'm talking to a young person,

the times when I'm talking to a friend, and I have the capacity to sit on that

chair next to them and just be able to say, I don't know what your situation is, but I know it sucks.

As I finish tonight, I want to challenge you to not underestimate the value

of getting in that seat next to someone.

And don't leave it to somebody else. God is working in your life,

and I promise you that He is.

He's trying to help you in the good times, and perhaps you're going through

a hard time right now, and all God wants to do right now is comfort you and love you.

But he wants to do so that maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,

but he wants to do so, so that you can go and be that person in the world,

that you can be someone that puts a flag down of, you know what,

I'm here not to hurt, I'm here to help.

I'm here to be not a net negative, but somehow in my brokenness,

some minor bit, a net positive to your life, to your situation.

God wants to come and meet with you and to be alongside you as you go through

stuff, but he wants to do so, so that.

I want to just say quickly that there are people here hearing and thinking,

I'm not really going through anything at all, to be honest.

Life's not that bad. Weekly stresses.

What do I do? Do I need to go and then force myself to be in a hard situation?

Should I go and make a reckless decision so that the consequences can come and

mess me up so I can and be someone with empathy.

It's not what this is about. We live in a fallen world.

You have stuff and your stuff, you might think it's small,

but he is uniquely using that and will want to one day uniquely use that so

that you can be a help to somebody that nobody else could be.

So I want to challenge you. Be ready to sit with people more.

Be ready to come alongside, side, to be by their side, to not hoard the comfort

of God, but to be someone that wants to give it away, to be a blessing,

not just for yourself, but a blessing to others.

Let's pray. God, we thank you so much that you do comfort us.

We thank you so much that in our hardest times, in our most difficult times,

in the stuff that we go through, God, that just hurts us, us,

that even in ways that we can't even feel or imagine all the time,

that you do help us through those times.

I pray for anyone in the room right now that is actually feeling like they're

going through something really real.

I pray that you give them the courage to just say something to someone,

but I pray you'd also give every single one of us here to have the courage to

go and sit in that chair, to not wait for somebody else, to go,

look, I'm not here to fix. I'm here to just sit.

Help us all, God, because of what you're doing in our life to go and do that.

Empower us, God. We pray all this in Jesus' mighty precious name. Amen.