God Of All Comfort (December 3rd, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter 1.

2nd Corinthians chapter 1.

Now I know what you're thinking.

Well, hold on a second, aren't we in Galatians?

What happened?

Did we finish that and I didn't realize?

No, we're actually uh hitting the pause button on our Galatians series right now until the new year.

We're gonna be coming right back to that and finishing off our remaining time uh in that.

Uh next Sunday, we'll actually be starting a three-week Christmas series in John's gospel, John chapter one, and talking about uh Christ, of course, and actually more on that later.

We'll get to that at the end of the service.

We're gonna be doing a family chat and talking about uh some more things.

Uh but you know, I've been thinking about um just this week, I've been thinking about kind of the Christmas season and how generally speaking, I think we are all for it, right?

I think that's pretty safe to say.

I think people generally uh enjoy Christmas, they enjoy everything that that entails, and it is uh a season of joy, I think, and all of that, and we enjoy that, we love that.

Um, but uh but that being said, it can be a rather difficult time uh for others.

It can conjure up all kinds of painful uh memories.

It can force us to confront uh some really uh awkward or even flat out ugly uh family dynamics.

Right?

You're having a meal around the table, and there are difficulties there between uh family members, or or maybe for you, it brings up uh the realities and the reminders of what has been a very, very difficult year for you financially.

It's the kind of season where we tend to spend frivolously, and uh you know, we're reminded of all of that and how tight things can be uh for us.

Okay, this time of year for us in Christmas season, as we're heading into all of that, can actually uh be a time of suffering.

It can be a time of suffering.

And suffering, of course, we know this.

It comes in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, all kinds of different shapes and sizes for some of us.

Uh, we've been dealt uh very, very difficult and crushing news regarding our health.

And uh I have been uh so burdened to hear of uh some of you who have uh experienced some of that bad news even recently.

All right, or maybe for some of you it's a really difficult season with your kids, and you've been walking through that with a younger child or someone who is older in their teen years or young adult years or whatever it might be.

Maybe for you it's persecution.

And it's persecution at work, and you're like, man, I'm just trying to live for the Lord.

I'm I'm praying for people.

I'm not even saying anything that's really all that offensive necessarily to people, but there's somebody at the office, there's somebody at my work who has seen fit to make me their enemy and to try and you know, you know, drag my name through the mud and the cause of Christ for all of that, and it's just been really, really awful and difficult, kind of brutal uh time for me at work.

Or maybe it's something as so out of the blue as your your aging parents who you know suddenly announce out of the blue, out of nowhere, that they're getting a divorce.

And for you, it's like, wow, my my world is is hemorrhaging.

All right, suffering, of course, is it's wide-ranging, and and to experience it can be to experience really um extreme anguish.

Extreme anguish.

Now, one of the things that I love about God's word, and I love about the scriptures, is that God Himself, He never makes light of our suffering.

You notice that?

He's never like, ah, suck it up, you know, deal with it, time to time to move on.

No, the Lord, the Lord doesn't do that uh at all.

He doesn't make light of it, but in fact, what he does is he offers us very real comfort.

Very real comfort in the midst of all of that.

And that's really the passage that we're looking at here in 2 Corinthians chapter 1.

2 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

The God of all comfort is is the title that many of you may see uh over this section of scripture.

And so let's read this uh together uh today, or follow along with me as I read it.

Uh starting in verse 3, we're gonna be reading down to verse 11.

It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation.

And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.

Our hope for you is unshaken.

For we know that you, that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction that we experience in Asia.

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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

On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

You also must help us by prayer that we so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for being a God who um tells it to us straight, Lord.

You never uh tell us that life will be easy.

In fact, you promise the opposite.

And God, in the midst of that, you are a God who delights in drawing near to us.

You delight in granting us comfort.

And God, I know that uh there are multiple people sitting here in this room today who are desperate for that, who have been crying out for comfort for what seems like ages, Lord, and they are waiting on you, Lord, and they are wrestling in this.

Whether it be relational discord, something financial, something else, God, would you please show us that you are good, that you love us, and that you comfort, Lord?

Would you help us in this, Lord?

We pray that this passage of Scripture would be so timely for our church here today.

God, we would we rely on you?

Would we learn all of that?

Would we have our hearts and our minds uh transformed here today, Lord?

Would you help us?

We are a needy people with arms stretched out, Lord, just desperately wanting to be near our Father.

So, Lord, draw near to us.

We cry out, we pray all of these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, can we all agree on this?

Can you can we all agree that you can't escape suffering in this life?

I think I think a lot of us try to.

We try to escape all of that, but but at the end of the day, no amount of money can insulate you from suffering.

You know, no matter how far you try and run away from it.

I think some of us have this dream of you know buying a little cabin out in the woods, in the boonies somewhere and escaping from life and getting away from it all.

And I think somewhere in our hearts, we kind of just want to see if if if a simpler way of life means that life will be, you know, easier and all of that.

Okay, but listen, no matter where you go, no matter how much money you have, no matter who you are, the bad news, okay, is that suffering, suffering finds us.

It always does.

It always does in some way, shape, or form.

Okay, but here's the thing.

This is the big idea that we're really driving home here today.

My God comforts me when I suffer.

My God comforts me when I suffer.

That's the that's the nail that we are gonna be continually just driving over and over and over again as we seek the Lord and relief that comes from him.

Now, here's the first thing in all of that.

My God comforts me when I suffer, for the purpose of comforting others when they suffer.

Okay, that's the first thing that we see here today.

Take a look at this now as we work through these verses.

Verse three says here, this is again, uh, 2 Corinthians uh chapter 1.

All right, in case you're still you're just kind of tuning into all of that.

Okay, but here's verse three.

It says this Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our affliction.

Now, the first thing that we see here, you know, and notice here quite uh quite obviously is is the the glorious promise.

Okay, that's a promise there that we see that God will comfort us in all of our affliction, okay, in all of our in all of our suffering.

Okay, so notice here, this isn't like uh, you know, God's not up there saying, well, maybe, you know, may maybe I'll throw you a bone, or, you know, if I feel like it, or uh, you know, a wolf sea, okay, God's not up there saying that or thinking that.

No, this is this is the assurance here that we see in God's word, his truth, that he will bring us relief.

He will bring us relief.

In fact, that our that our God is a God of comfort.

It tells us something.

It tells us something very powerful about his character.

It tells us something very powerful about his character.

It tells us that he's a deeply kind, right, kind-hearted, loving God at his core, who who sympathizes with us in our suffering as we go through that in various ways and loves to draw near to his children.

Okay, just a couple of weeks ago we were talking about how God is our father and and he has adopted us.

And we need to remember that when we when we suffer.

You know, and as we begin to comprehend all of these things and that God's God's heart is to comfort us, and that his that that that heart is is really built right into the DNA of his character right there, and then understand that his character never changes, right?

God's not like flip-flopping and and he isn't fickle.

We've talked a little about a little bit about that uh as well.

As he never changes, it should really give us an increasing uh confidence and uh and a growing rock solid faith that when God promises to comfort us, okay, he can't do anything other than deliver on that promise.

Right?

He just can't.

That's what a promise means.

Now, why is it so essential, okay, that we that we understand and remind ourselves of these kinds of things?

Why is that so important?

Of the things that, you know, like God's character and the nature of all of that, and and the fact that his comfort is a promise and and the fact that he is loving.

Why do we remind ourselves of these types of truths?

Well, because you and I, we we both know that in the heat of the moment of our of our suffering, it can feel like what?

It can feel like God is anything but these things.

Right?

He's anything but a God of comfort.

He is anything but loving and caring.

And it you know, it doesn't feel like it at all.

He's not a comforter, and so and so we we think, well, you know, as we hear even a message like this and we we read a scripture like this one in front of us, we're thinking, well, if he if he loves to comfort us so much and he loves to comfort me, why am I not experiencing that comfort right now?

Right?

Why am I not feeling this?

And I think what ends up happening in those moments of of struggle for us, and as we're trying to figure all of this out and wrap our minds around this, and as we go through different sufferings and all of that, uh the Lord's unearthing some things.

Have you ever noticed that?

He's starting to unearth some things in you, and and what I think maybe maybe he's doing is he's starting to kind of point out to us, you know, some of our some of our immaturity.

And listen, I don't mean that word immaturity as a slap in your face as you are experiencing uh very real suffering, but this is just the reality, right?

We're all sort of immature, you know, believers who are trying to grow and become more mature and become more solid, and all of that thing in Jesus, in Jesus Christ.

And and so our immaturity, the Lord's kind of pointing this out and saying, listen, you need to grow in some things, and maybe it's in the area of patience.

Have you noticed how impatient you are to have God's comfort right this second?

Right?

It's why something like Amazon exists, right?

We don't like going to a mall like a sucker, right?

Why would we do that?

We want to I want to be able to look online and just order it, click a couple of buttons, insert my my Visa card number or whatever it is, the thing shows up at my door, I don't even have to go out.

This thing happens easy peasy, nice and simple, nice and you know, nice and quick.

Maybe it's our maybe it's our impatience with all of this.

And like we think we need it right this second.

We want it now, and there's a lot of frustration in all of that.

Maybe for us, our you know, what's being pointed out or unearthed to us is just our our lack of understanding God's ways.

And we sort of think that God exists as you know, sort of like a big vending machine in the sky.

And if I you know put my prayer request in and poke the button there, you know, out comes the answer to my prayer, and I'm like ramming on this button and I'm praying like crazy.

And why is he not pouring this out yet?

And you know, come on, vending machine, God come through.

Right?

That's kind of what we think, and we don't really understand who he is, and we don't understand his ways and what he might be trying to accomplish here.

We don't really get the bigger picture and and the larger scope of what God might actually be trying to accomplish in you and in your life and through you, through your uh suffering.

And so what ends up kind of happening through here in these types of moments is is what?

Well, we we begin to allow our feelings and our emotions and the circumstances we find ourselves in to inform our understanding of what God must be like.

Right?

And my emotions are really calling the shots here, and my life is not going the way that I want to, and so therefore, God must, I don't know, not be good, he must not be powerful enough to help me, he must not care about me.

And so you see how that kind of happens there, and at the at sort of the bedrock of our of our hearts and you know, in the core of our spirit and our soul, we kind of live according to these, you know, very faulty, very unbiblical uh beliefs.

And listen, like we've been talking about all through our Galatians series here, is just how important it is to teach ourselves, right?

To to can to instruct and and continue to remind ourselves of the gospel, to remind ourselves of the incredible and awesome truths about our about our God.

And and we've talked about what happens as we begin to do that, as we preach these things to ourselves, and and as we go to a Bible-believing church, we open up God's word for for ourselves, and we're studying it, we're reading, and we're understanding it.

What ends up happening?

Well, the Holy Spirit, as he is working, he actually welds our hearts to the truths of the scriptures.

And that's an awesome thing.

Why?

Because what happens is we begin to grow mature in that, and we begin to become and grow uh rock solid, we become more certain of and assured of things like, well, in this case, how you know God is a God of comfort.

All right, keep going.

Let's look at verse four here.

And now we're starting to get into, you know, why God comforts us.

Okay, well, what's the purpose of all of this?

Why am I going through the ringer here, through the valley?

This is this is hard.

Well, here it is, verse four, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with a comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation.

Okay, salvation here, referring less to justification and the person first coming to Jesus Christ, but referring more to sanctification.

So we're being comforted so that we can help others grow, others in their sanctification, others be comforted as they suffer.

Okay, keep going here.

It says, and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.

Our hope for you is unshaken.

For we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

Okay, it's pretty unmistakable here as you read through that, that one of the purposes of our suffering is that as recipients of God's comfort, when he brings that, we now learn, we now understand and want to help other people as they suffer.

We get a heart for them and a desire and even Noah.

We know how to kind of walk a person through how to suffer well and how to find comfort in the Lord.

We can encourage them and just draw alongside them and shed tears when they shed tears and pray for them and all of that.

Right?

We're to comfort others when they suffer.

Now, of course, this isn't the only reason that we suffer.

It's not like the only reason and all of that.

In fact, there's a there's a number of reasons, and you know, John MacArthur uh gives us a few here, and so these will be up on the screen.

Okay, some of the reasons why God allows suffering, why God allows bad things to happen to Christians.

You ever wondered this?

We are like in the deep end of the pool today.

All right?

But we were going into this.

We're gonna go pretty quickly through this, but you can jot these down.

First one, to test the genuineness of our faith.

To test the genuineness of our faith.

Now, this isn't for God's sake, this is for our sake.

Right?

The Lord knows who's saved and who isn't, right?

So he's not like, hmm, I need to prove to myself, you know, whether or not you really know me, so I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna allow some suffering.

No, it's this is for our sake.

You know, and it's for the church's sake, so we are able to better identify, you know, who's uh Christ's follower and who might not be.

So if someone professes to know Jesus Christ and they're all like, you know, excited about that and we're rejoicing with them, but that the first sign of suffering, they're like, forget it, I'm out.

This is ridiculous.

You know, God owes me the perfect, you know, perfect, easy life, and they're they're gone and out of the church and nothing to do with it.

Well, it's to sh it goes to show that their profession of faith, their salvation was perhaps not genuine.

You know, and and for us who who who are saved, it gives us increased confidence in our salvation as we suffer and come through that uh well.

The Lord wants to test the genuine genuineness of our faith.

Okay, the second one there is to wean us from the things of the world.

To wean us from the things of the world.

We all think that we need things of the world more than we actually do.

And sometimes we have an overdependence on these things.

And our heart operates as though I have to have this thing.

It becomes an idol for us so much.

And and suffering really kind of strips all of that away and shows us, no what, you know, you know what?

I need Jesus Christ.

I need him, I need the power of the Spirit in my life.

I need God above all else, and this overdependence that I have on maybe it's money and maybe it's a big bank account, and it's that kind of stuff.

The Lord will wean that from us.

The third one is to call us from our to call us to our ultimate heavenly hope.

To call us to that.

Too many believers are living with with earthly hopes, with too many earthly dreams.

Now, not all of those are wrong, but maybe again, that's kind of at the bedrock of your heart.

And the Lord's trying to try to get your attention through your suffering.

Listen, hope in me, hope in things eternal.

He's trying to produce in you uh an eternal perspective, and so that you you hang on to the things.

I'm continuing the money theme here.

Okay, holding on to things like money with you know, kind of uh you know, an open hand, and and I don't have to have this, and this is not my ultimate hope.

My hope is found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have money, but money doesn't have me.

Right?

Jesus is my ultimately heavenly hope.

Here's my or ultimate heavenly hope.

Here's the fourth one to reveal what it is that we love most.

Again, this is kind of linked a little bit, right?

Again, our hearts love certain things that we just don't need as much as we think we do.

Here's the next one to teach us obedience, to teach us obedience.

We don't we don't make enough.

We don't pay enough attention, maybe, as believers and as the church, is the importance of obedience.

Right?

That's how we prove that we're that we love the Lord.

We obey him.

And suffering, you know, points that out to us, and the Lord will get our hearts to the point where we obey and we love to obey and we want to obey.

And it's not just this external thing, but it's from the heart.

Okay?

Reasons God allows suffering, number six, to reveal his compassion.

To reveal his compassion.

The Lord is a compassionate God, and some of us don't have the first, the first, you know, we don't really have an adequate sense of all of that.

And maybe we have uh, you know, a religious upbringing where God is distant and God is impersonal, and and we don't actually, you know, we kind of understand in our minds that God loves us, but we don't really, you know, think we don't really realize that he no, he actually does, and he is compassionate and he cares about us when we suffer.

Here's the last one, the seventh one we're looking at, to strengthen us for greater usefulness in his kingdom.

Oftentimes we think that that our mission, our plan, our life, the way we want it to go is what really matters.

Well, it doesn't.

God's mission is what matters most, God's kingdom is what matters most, and and putting us through suffering is like is like going to the gym and working out.

And he is preparing you for greater usefulness, he's making you fit spiritually to be able to be used powerfully in the church, in the community, in people's lives.

Okay, so those are just a couple really quickly there.

We could spend, I mean, there's a seven-week series at least right there on those seven things, and maybe someday we'll get to something like that.

But obviously, here what we're seeing us seeing is one of the reasons or another purpose in our suffering is that we're to, we're to comfort others.

We're to comfort others as they endure uh their own trials, and we're to draw alongside people and truly care for them.

And and listen, this is one of the things that I just absolutely love about our church.

I think you folks uh have been such a great example to me and been such a blessing to me as I've seen you draw close uh to each other, and I've seen the desire that you have to comfort others as they are going through uh various struggles and various uh pains and hurts.

And what often happens is, you know, I'll get an email.

Some of these happened just this week.

I would get an email about a situation and something that that somebody is going through, and and only I look back, you know, you can look back through the history of your email and I see all the different people that have already been included in this, and I see that the you know, the small group that the person in is is is in is already like taking care of them and and making sure that they're praying for them and giving them a meal or there's even financial assistance or visiting them in the hospital or whatever it is.

It's like we're just kind of bringing the you know the pastor in on the loop and all of these kinds of things.

And I just love that.

I I love to see the heart that people have to just draw alongside those who are suffering in our church and are hurting.

And I think I've seen, you know, I've seen that be a real strength in so uh so many of us.

You know, and maybe as you kind of think back on your own life, you know, and you now can kind of see that the urge that you have in your heart to you know console somebody who's who's hurting comes really as a result of the fact that God has comforted you in the past as you have suffered and as you have received the comfort of other people in the church and other followers of Jesus Christ who have just rallied around you and drawn alongside you and sacrificed their time for you to help kind of walk you through.

How do I think about this?

And you know, how do I care about this situation and fix some things?

And and so the Lord and and people have so been good to you, and because of that, you're like, man, I I I want to I wanna you know kind of pay it back, so to speak, and and now I have a heart uh to comfort others.

And so let me just encourage you as the church just to keep this up, right?

Keep up the good work.

Let me be your you know your biggest cheerleader, if you will, in all of this.

Continue to build relationships, you know, continue to be willing to talk about things that are really going on in our lives.

Who cares if the leafs lost last night to Vancouver?

Let's talk about what's really mattering matters, and let's talk about what's really going on, and let's draw alongside each other and get down to what really counts.

One of the purposes in your suffering is that God is equipping you.

He's equipping us as the church to be to be agents of comfort in the lives of other people.

How awesome is that! Right?

How great is that that the Lord would use our suffering as kind of glue to bring us all together as one big family.

Love that.

Love that.

Here's the second thing.

My God comforts me when I suffer, and in the agony of it all, he's teaching me to rely on him.

He's teaching me to rely on him.

Verse 8, take a look.

He says, For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction that we experienced in Asia.

Now, no one's like a hundred percent sure of the specific uh the specifics of Paul's suffering here in Asia.

Some people have suggested maybe it was something that you know he had gone through during his time in Ephesus and all of that.

Um, but it doesn't really matter to us what the specifics really were, because uh we do know, and it's quite obvious here from the context, that he was enduring persecution.

He was enduring persecution uh because of uh his involvement in the cause of Christ.

And he'd already told us in verse 5, we already read it and kind of went over it quickly, but it says there that he he shared abundantly in Christ's sufferings.

He shared abundantly in it.

Beyond the the physical toil that the suffering took on Paul himself, just notice the agony of the emotional toil.

Okay, the emotional suffering.

This is what it says.

It says, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired.

We despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.

But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

Despair is a dark place.

Some of you know exactly what that's all about.

Some of you are bringing that despair in with you today.

You know, others of us, you know, carry, you know, something like depression, you know, with us constantly.

And that is that is dark.

That is that is ugly.

I mean, I think the word agony sums it up well.

It truly is.

It is agony.

And again, you a lot of you get it.

The burden that that you've carried is is just so heavy.

It is so utterly beyond your ability within yourself to carry it.

And you feel exactly like Paul.

You're like, I feel like I've received a death sentence here.

The weight of this is just it's just too much to bear.

And it's in those moments that you kind of wonder, and you know, why, Lord?

Like, why why has why has God not come to my rescue yet?

Like, why has God not uh comforted me?

Right?

And and and why is he not come to my aid?

Why is this, why does this comfort seem to be eluding me?

And you've truly wrestled with the Lord.

And when you hear a phrase like that, wrestling with the Lord, you're like, oh yeah, right, I know it.

And I'm, you know, maybe you're even you're dealing with that right now, and and that that darkness, that agony that that you have been walking through has brought you to the utter brink of despair, as you see Paul writing here.

And some of you are like, yeah, the brink of despair?

That was a long time ago.

I am way over the edge in this.

Total hopelessness.

You're feeling a lot of fear.

There's a lot of doubt, and mixed in with this kind of ugly stew is anger and rage and all of it, and all of that.

I mean, you didn't even know that you could get to those places, you didn't even know that you could feel that way uh so deeply.

And Paul says here that it's to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God.

That's one of the purposes in all of this.

And it shows us, I think, when you read that and you start to look at that and you think about your own suffering, I think what it does is it kind of reveals to us that our our self-reliance that's something that just runs runs so much deeper than we even realize.

Right?

We we want to be independent individuals.

We want to be truly self-governing, we want to fix our own problems.

When when life goes sideways and and the truck is going over the cliff, so to speak, we we want to be able to fix the problem.

And you know, I want to be able to change and and and transform myself in this suffering.

I want to heal myself, I want to, you know, provide for myself what I really want most.

I believe, is the the ugly truth that deep down in the heart of every single person, listen, what do we want?

We want to be God.

We want to be God.

And hey, that all started in the garden.

Why do you think Adam and Eve took a bite out of the apple or out of the fruit?

Why did they do that?

Well, because the temptation was to be like God.

And that is the core of all of our sin.

That is what pride is.

That is at the root of all of it, and that runs so much deeper than this surface level kind of thin layer of pride that we kind of think we have.

No, that this that actually runs right down to the root and to the dark kind of corners uh of our of our hearts.

We want to be God and we want to fix ourselves and we want to heal us in our suffering.

But listen, listen, God knows that that is just not possible.

It is not possible.

We cannot be like God.

We can't.

We're finite, limited creatures.

God is God is infinite.

God is God is is way more than than we are.

He is not finite.

And all of that tells us that we need Him.

We need that raising the dead power in those moments of our of our suffering.

That, you know, and we're just flat out, we're unable to supply that.

You and I do not have that in any kind of reservoir that we can tap into when life gets tough.

We don't have it.

We need him, we need to trust him.

We need to rely on him.

Even when our circumstances and you know and our emotions seem to tell us that he doesn't care or you know he's not even there, right?

In those greasy and you know, gritty, kind of agonizing moments that you know so many of you have gone through, he's teaching us at the core of all of that to long for him more than anything.

Because he is real, because he is there, and because he will come through.

So listen, if you're in that place right now, and I know some of you are, you're in that place of suffering and agony, and you know, God's comfort hasn't arrived yet, and you've been crying out for that, and you're you feel like you're losing hope and you're at the end of your rope, and all of that.

Listen, two words, um, two P words really for you.

The first thing is pray.

The first thing is pray.

Now, let me let me tell you something about prayer.

I'm not talking about the the cheap, kind of flimsy, you know, surfacey, limp, mechanical kind of, you know, Lord, please bless this dessert to our bodies.

Like, how does that even compute, right?

I'm none of that nonsense that the church is so embroiled in, and that's the the only depth that we ever get into in our prayers.

I'm talking real, guttural, visceral from that place of darkness and pain and despair and anger and rage and wrestling with the truth of all of this.

I'm talking from that kind of place, real prayer.

If you have never been to that place in your walk with the Lord, listen, you do not know what prayer is.

No wonder you think prayer is lame.

Because again, this you know, this surfacey, you know, pray for my grandmother's big toe prayers is that's lame.

That's not what it's about.

When you are suffering, you need something so much more than that.

That's the kind of prayers that the scriptures continually drive us towards.

That is the prayer that we need to be about as a church.

People are suffering.

We need to pray like this for people.

Not the pat on the head, yeah, bro, I'm gonna pray for you.

No, going to the mat.

Tears soaking the carpet, screaming out.

Do you mean that, Mike, like like spiritually screaming?

No, verbally, actually screaming out, crying out to the Lord, not worrying about what you look like and not know, not worrying about what the neighbors think.

No, crying out to the Lord, real prayer.

That's what you need when you're in those moments of agony, and you're in those moments of suffering, and and you're hearing a message like this, and you're like, I know comfort, I'm I'm I'm kind of waiting for it, and it's not there yet.

You need to pray and pray like that.

Second P word, patience.

Patience.

I wish I could stand up here and tell you that, yeah, if you just jump through hoop A, B, and C, the Lord is gonna rush to your aid and and bring you that that uh that comfort that you really need, and that's gonna happen, you know, exactly when you want it.

Listen, that's just not the way it works.

I can't promise that.

The scriptures don't promise that.

The Lord will comfort us.

That we can hang our hat on.

The when?

We don't know, right?

We don't know.

That's up to the Lord, and and that's in his timing and that's in his sovereign plan for you in your life.

And in the meantime, we gotta be patient.

And we often think in all of our suffering, every single moment of that, from the second that it starts, we think, 11th hour! I need the comfort now.

Lord, where are you?

And what we start to realize through all of this is our 11th hour is actually, it's not today.

And it might not even be tomorrow, and it might not even be next month or next year, but the Lord knows.

And we've got to be patient in all of that.

We need to have real prayer, real prayer from the heart, from a place of desperation.

And we also need to have patience.

He will come through for you, but it just might not be right now.

Allow God in those moments where you're awaiting his comfort to do the work in your soul that he has deemed is necessary for you.

The work that you can't even see right now.

You don't even know what needs to take place.

All you think you need is that physical relief, that that that release of the pressure valve so that that life is enjoyable again.

That's what you think you need.

The Lord is actually doing way more in you to prepare you for something that you don't even know about yet, and you don't even realize is gonna happen.

He's gonna put you in into those kind of positions later on.

Trust the Lord in all of this, be patient.

In the agony of it all, he's teaching you and I to rely on him.

Okay, third thing.

Third thing.

My God comforts me when I suffer.

He's done it before, and I'm confident that he'll continue.

He'll continue this.

Okay, he verse 10, take a look at this.

It says that he delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.

On him, we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

Okay, what this verse shows us is actually the incredible benefits of spiritual maturity.

Okay, at the beginning of Psalm 13, King David wrote it, and at the very beginning of that, he's like, How long, O Lord?

Right?

He's like crying out, and there's some desperation there.

He's like, Will you forget me forever?

Right?

You read that in a moment of suffering, like, yeah, I mean, I get that.

Right, I under I understand where he's coming from.

But then at the end of the psalm, and as far as we can tell, even before he gets that comfort, even before he gets the answers to that prayer, he says this is what he says.

He says, But I have trusted in you.

I have trusted in your steadfast love.

My heart, okay, so not a service-y thing from his core, but my heart shall rejoice.

Not like grudgingly accept, no, my heart will rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing, I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

He has done it in the past, and he will do it again.

David, Paul, these guys, they they have this spiritual maturity, they've got this experience that comes as a result of battling it out in those dark places with the Lord in that suffering, and listen, and not giving up.

They didn't give up in all of that.

And so they saw the Lord, they've seen him, and they look back on their life.

I've seen him come through time and time again.

And so now their heart genuinely, legitimately, is like, well, he's come through before.

Why isn't he gonna come through it again?

Of course he's going to.

That's just gonna happen.

I can bank on it.

Now, it's really important for us to note this because I know this is percolating in the back of your mind, or maybe even in the forefront of your mind, as we're talking about God's comfort.

And that is to note that we do not always get that favorable physical or earthly deliverance that we long for.

We don't always get that blessing that we are praying for, and I mean physically or or earthly.

And you might sound like I'm you know going back on what the scriptures just said now, but for example, you know, we don't all get dise uh uh healed from that terminal illness, right?

We don't all we don't all get that, and so what does that mean?

Does that mean that God's word cannot be trusted?

Does that mean that God loves others but not me?

Does that mean that God is not strong enough to heal me from cancer or revive me from this from this financial disaster that has taken over my company?

What does this mean?

Well, we have to understand that sometimes God's comfort is as far as his deliverance goes in this life.

And of course, listen, we all know this.

We all know that his peace surpasses understanding, and and many of you, and you might be this actual person, but many of us can you know kind of point and think to somebody that we know who has who has suffered and and taken that suffering right to the grave, and they were never delivered from that from that disease or that illness.

But what did they have?

They had incredible peace, right?

They had that incredible comfort that came from the Lord in that trial, despite the fact that that physical ailment or that financial disaster or that persecution didn't actually end.

Okay, deliverance from every single thing in this life will have to wait until the next life.

And listen, as we are wrestling through that, and I just want to make it really clear that I understand that that's not an easy wrestling match.

That is a hard thing, and and a lot of things are gonna be unearthed and revealed in our hearts that we want.

And and there are gonna be times where we are where we are angry, there's gonna be times where we are frustrated, there are gonna be times where we uh perhaps despair and all of that.

And let me just tell you this your God's big enough for that.

Bring that to him.

Wrestle with him, be honest, be open about all of that.

He can he can handle that, and he wants to meet you uh there.

in that in those moments and and what and if that that that actual physical earthly blessing prayer request deliverance that you're looking for doesn't actually come and you need to really just kind of realize and have your heart solidified in the fact that eventually God is going to glorify me and I am going to have a body that that no longer deals with the the negative effects and consequences of a broken and sinful world and listen to to long for that and to want that and to want that happen now or even yesterday hey listen that's a good thing that's a good thing but hey if you are new in your faith and you know you're kind of in that waiting game you're sort of in that holding pattern as you you know anticipate God's comfort and maybe you're hearing a message like this for the first time that's how new you are in in Christ and all of that and listen know that everything that you are going through is to build you strong.

It's to grow you as a mature follower of Jesus Christ so that you can have that same hope that that Paul talks about and that David writes about in the Psalms that you can have that down the line that again these guys have so that you can be stronger that so you can be more stable so that you can be more secure in your faith and in your walk and in your relationship with the Lord going forward.

Okay take comfort in these verses and don't quit on this that is always the temptation listen we need to remember that the Lord the Lord will be there he will come through for us how he sees fit and when he sees fit but listen don't give up if you're to give up if you're at the end of your rope you're hanging by a thread all of those pictures that we think through and the way that we talk about that listen don't quit because if you do you might be missing out on massive you will you'll miss out on massive blessing that God has in store for you.

And hey if you're you know you're not new in your faith and you're a little more experienced in your walk with the Lord but you find yourself in you know again another season of of suffering listen learn to look back on on the previous sufferings that you've had look on look back on the trials that you've that you've gone through and and actually remind yourselves of very specifically all the ways that that the Lord came through for you in the past.

Think through that through that talk about that with your spouse or or with your children and and and remind yourself of how people came through and and and the Lord sent the person just at the right time or or that check showed up anonymously at the front door or you know God came through just when you were despairing there was that word you know in your your quiet time with him in the morning think through those different things and and and allow that to encourage you and remind you hey the Lord came through before he's going to come through again so that you can set your hope that he will deliver you again as Paul says and sometimes I'm kind of amazed at at how long it takes some of us to to kind of understand this.

And I and I I've talked with believers before who have you know have have sat in my office and at times and they've and they've said like I'm I'm really struggling with this and I'm suffering and I'm and I'm having a hard time but because I know this person and I've maybe helped them walk through certain situations in the past I I remind them of that.

And yeah but don't you remember when God came through for you?

And remember how the Lord was so good and he and he brought you comfort and I and I have been sometimes a little bit maybe shocked to realize that the person is like yeah but will he do it again?

I'm like man how many times do you need to see it?

Before your your your heart gets solidified in this and you realize that the Lord's not gonna go he's not gonna hang you out to dry he's never done it why would he why would he do it now?

That's just not the way that he works and so we need to we need to grow in confidence in these things that God will continue to come through remember what God has done before okay what he has done in the past you are it will give you confidence now okay right now in what God promises to do later okay last thing my God comforts me when I suffer as God's people pray fervently for me.

Okay verse 11 look at that he says you must you also must help us by prayer love that you so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

One of the things I love about the apostle Paul is that as much of a spiritual giant as he was he was never too big for prayer right like he he never big timed the you know the Corinthian church he wasn't like well you know I'm an apostle and you're the ones who are really in need of prayer from me but be but you know you are kind of down here and how dare I you know I would never no he's not he's not like that.

He's like no we need your prayer in fact he commands it right he humbly leads into it he covets their prayer he says that you must you must be praying for us and for others who are who are suffering.

He believed firmly in the power of prayer and he recognized that God's comfort comes to those whom you and I pray for isn't it kind of an amazing and awesome thing to think that the comfort that God wants to pour out on the person sitting next to you might come as a result of your prayer.

That is uh wow right that is amazing now I want to be just really practical here practically here I want to I want to kind of give us two ways to tap into the power of prayer here at our church.

Okay and this is something that you hear me uh talk about every single Sunday okay two ways that we can make the most out of the prayer uh make most out of prayer here and be praying for each other as a church first one of course is the black folders the black folders wasn't that something you say just because you have to say it no it's something that we say because we want to because we get to listen the the the the folders that come by you is an amazing opportunity for you to write down what's actually going on in your life to actually write this down because our our pastors actually pray for these things our our elders love to pray for you I love to spend a portion of my week going over these things and sometimes interacting with you through emails and texts and and all of that.

And it's such an amazing thing to be able to do that.

And listen on some weeks I'll just give you a sense of the numbers here in some weeks we have like 10, 12 prayer requests.

I think we have probably a few more than 10 or 12 sitting in this room right which means that what's happening with those prayer folders get tossed to the next person right or sat on right we we need to make use of these this is you know the sometimes what'll happen is I'll have a conversation with somebody and I'll find out it's been it was months ago they went through this huge trial and they're like yeah it was really really hard and it lasted so long I'm like well how come I didn't know about this because no one ever mentioned it.

Right no one ever said anything about it.

So we need to make most make more use I think out of those prayer folders here's the second way upfront prayer after the service.

Right the event at the end of every service we've got leaders we've got people up here who love to pray for you.

And honestly there have been so many weeks where it's like we're just standing there twiddling our thumbs a little bit right and I get it like we're not like ridiculous about this.

We know that people have to go and serve and there's times where you need to jet out of here and you need to go to something and all of that or you get caught up in a conversation we understand that this is not the only way that we can be praying you know for each other as a church not the only application of prayer at harvest and all of that but listen this is an amazing opportunity again like the folders to come up and tap into the power of prayer to come forward in that and sometimes I just kind of wonder maybe I don't know if this is 100% true for everybody it wouldn't be but sometimes I wonder if we're you know we're a little bit embarrassed and I don't want to I don't want to bother that person or or maybe that's how we kind of spiritualize our pride and I don't want to be honest about my prayer and as soon as the service is done I want to go eat you know or or or whatever it might be.

And listen this is this is a time that we we kind of end up sometimes putting to waste now not every time I've been able to meet so many of you because of this time and and I realize it's it it's a it's a it's a it's a humbling and very difficult thing to come up to somebody that you don't even know and just say you know hey can you pray for me?

This is going on in in my life this is going on in my family or or even my marriage or something like that.

And that that's very hard.

I get it.

I'm not trying to make light of all of that I'm just trying to say here we've got lots of opportunities for prayer and it goes much beyond these two options that I just gave us here.

But this is something that we can do so that we can be we can be praying for each other so that we can be relying on each other so that we can tap into the prayers of each other and allow other people to pray fervently for me.

And now maybe you've kind of noticed here that all the way through this passage that we've been talking about there's this you know there's this sub-theme of prayer kind of coursing all the way throughout it.

God's comfort it it comes to us as we fervently cry out in prayer first of all for ourselves for sure you know and hopefully we're growing in all of that but also for others we need to be praying for others and we want to be doing that and then and then for you know as as others cry out fervently for us.

And it's such a it's such a conduit of of comfort of God's comfort to us when we when we pray and listen I understand prayer is something we're all weak in and none of us are like yeah I've totally arrived in prayer and I'm awesome at that no one's saying that right we all have work to work to go I have a long way to go with all of that but it's such a it's such a massive avenue of God's comfort and if we're not praying listen we're missing a massive portion of this and sometimes we wonder why God isn't comforting us well we haven't we haven't prayed my God comforts me when I suffer do you believe that I mean really I'm not looking for like any like again is it obvious that we hate surfacey stuff around here like I hate it.

Can we talk about that?

Like that's obvious I hope we're not looking for any of that nonsense.

Like do you actually believe this is your heart resting in that do you believe that God is good and that he will comfort you might be like well I'm wrestling with this pastor and and and and it's been it's been so hard and I you know honestly I do have my doubts and I do have my fear and I have despaired and I might be despairing right now listen I know I know I have actually been there and I know what it's like and I can say that all of that churning that's going on in your soul and in your mind and in all of those sleepless nights and you know that lost appetite and you know I can't even and don't even want to get out of bed in the morning and all of that listen as as awful as it is and as much as we don't enjoy all of that listen all of that is actually is actually in the end it's actually good.

Because it's in those moments that the Lord is is doing far more than we realize.

Okay remember that remember that as you're going through that our suffering is not random it never is it may feel random but obje objectively when the Lord is involved it never is so let's trust him.