Painful trial

P 2633 We all need comfort and love …

/ DVH

“All praises belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is the Father of tender mercy and the God of endless comfort. He always comes alongside us to comfort us in every suffering so that we can come alongside those who are in any painful trial. We can bring them this same comfort that God has poured out upon us.”2 Corinthians 1:3-4 TPT.

So many of us are struggling in one way or another in these difficult days, so today – let’s pray together: “Precious Holy Spirit, please be with the lonely, suffering, the broken and those who are in pain. Jesus please make Yourself real to them in a brand new way. I pray that whenever they open the bible, the scriptures they read will fly straight into their hearts and bring them such overwhelming comfort. I ask You to help them to draw even closer to You, in their sorrow and suffering, so that they constantly feel protected and loved. Please bring their brothers and sisters around them to offer Your comfort and help, in Your precious Name, Amen.

When stuff happens to me and it starts to sink my little ship, I go straight into the Psalms and dig in!  But today I found these two verses in Corinthians and realised I was limiting myself, by staying in the Psalms. So I looked up comfort and love instead. What a wealth of stuff there is in our bibles! Now here are a couple of references that really helped me. Psalm 23:4;  Psalm 27:1;  Psalm 145:18-19; Isaiah 41:10;  Matthew 10:29-31; Matthew 11:28;  2 Corinthians 4:16-18 and Colossians 1:11. As you can easily see, a couple turned into a lot! 

My advice is to read these verses over and over until they slip down from your head into your heart. Your heart will remember far more easily than your head, and they will surround and comfort you in the dead of the night when no-one else is awake. There is no sad like the sad at 3.00 am and you can’t sleep. Life seems incredibly dismal when you have pain in your body or soul. However, we gotta give the Holy Spirit stuff to work with, so that when we are overwhelmed: ‘He can lead us to the Rock that is higher than we are!’Psalm 61.

There is a hidden blessing in suffering — it builds something inside us. And it makes us more open to care for someone else who is not doing well either. Over the years I have learnt to recognise pain by looking in someone else’s eyes. I don’t think it is a spiritual gift … well maybe it’s discernment… whatever! Lately, everywhere I look I see pain. I can’t even watch the news. How newsreaders can read about such terrible daily suffering and still smile beats me.

The wonderful thing about our Heavenly Father, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is — They are non-partisan and not prejudiced against anyone. Holy pure Love flourishes between Them like an ever-flowing fountain, and we are incredibly blessed to be splashed and washed over and over again, in the fountain-overflow of Their love. When your body is tired and aching, a shower or a bath is great – when your spirit and emotions are overwhelmed we need to be soaked in, and splashed with His love for us.

Think about this – our God actually loves those who hate Him. Just think about that as an example of His unending Grace! Think about the people you know who have deliberately walked away and could care less about coming back to Him. Yet He still goes after them. I pray for those people that God will give them a revelation of how marvellous His love is. Until time is no more, our wonderful God will chase after ALL His kids. Each one of us matters to Him, and, speaking personally … some of us are kind of a bit strange – and that’s an understatement! 

Our Heavenly Father pays attention to every bird that falls to the ground. That made me wonder just  how many birds die every single day all around the world? So I looked it up…tens of millions of birds die every single day and He sees each one fall. Now here’s the glorious, hang-onto-this-info-with-both-hands bit — we know that HE CARES SO MUCH MORE FOR YOU and I, as imperfect as we both know we are.

The point is we need to let Him comfort us, instead of trying to buck up and stagger on, pretending everything is alright. My advice is to just sit in a puddle of your own tears on the floor and tell Him everything is NOT alright, and it won’t be alright until He helps you. And then wait for His peace to fill and still your heart. We need His comfort and love to surround us, all day every day.

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” … “Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4:7 (I found another one!!) Bye.👋

P 2346 Be a conduit of comfort for someone else.

/ DVH

“All praises belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is the Father of tender mercy and the God of endless comfort. He always comes alongside us to comfort us in every suffering so that we can come alongside those who are in any painful trial. We can bring them this same comfort that God has poured out upon us.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 TPT

What comforts you? Seriously. 😶 Do yourself a favour, don’t pretend – be truthful. In your little list of comforting things you could find family, potato chips, hugging your pet/kids, having a proper job, or enough to eat, perhaps somewhere warm to sleep, yummy chocolate, or maybe just a hot drink on a cold. 🤗 First of all I want to say that none of those things I’ve mentioned are inappropriate or wrong but … if you want to be truly comforted inside, where you feel so broken, or even give away true comfort to others – you will need a whole other source. God Himself.

Yeah … I know, Almighty God is kind of hard to get on the phone in a crisis. 😳 Yet it is astonishing how quickly human beings call out for Him when life presses in on us hard. People who say they don’t believe in Him start crying out: ‘God help me!’  We’ve been designed with a need to have God Himself as our primary source of comfort. And, as the scripture says, we will have nothing lasting to give others, that will still their spirits and bring them fresh hope -except God Himself. Whether we believe it, or even feel it, or not – the reality is – we are God’s chosen method to reach out to other people.  Please note the Lord does not push His way into anything – He loves volunteers. 

True comfort is very lacking in our modern world. Instead, the people around us stuff all sorts of things, like excesses of gambling, drugs and alcohol, other religions, even strange relationships, into the deep parts of their hearts hoping to alleviate their pain and ongoing suffering. I’m not going to comment about whether that actually works or not – because today I am talking about US passing on something we have already received from God Himself on to someone else in need. 

It almost goes without saying that the reality is, we have nothing lasting to give if we do not trust our Jehovah Jireh our Provider, as our Source to be there and help us. So how do we do this? We begin by renewing our minds as a priority, so any rumour or innuendo or inaccuracy will start to kind of slide off us, because our first response to something that is a bit ‘off’ is this: ‘I don’t remember reading that stuff in my bible!” And then we go away and check out whatever it is, in the book. And THEN we believe what the book says, above what we think or feel. 

I have seen God comfort someone else with the dumbest, weirdest scriptures. Things that appear to have absolutely no relevance to this person’s situation AT ALL and yet, comfort entered into them immediately. I literally watched it happen. I didn’t even give them the scriptures that the Holy Spirit had used to comfort me in the past. I just did and said what He said and watched Him move.  At that moment, I became a conduit for the Father’s loving comfort to flow through me. 

This is our destiny – yours and mine – to give away what God gives us. Not just good advice or even scriptures we know off by heart – unless the Holy Spirit highlights something in particular to us. Our response comes directly from the One Who used His word to comfort us. These times are also opportunities for us to experience ‘God’s love for me,’ personally. People can get caught up in seeking after experiences, but at times like this a scripture can jump out at us – almost with flashing lights. Just as clearly as a sign flashing in our heads, it dawns on us that God Himself just spoke to us. And that’s comforting. Not only does Almighty God know … He cares and we have proof.  These things become our own personal memorial stones.

Maybe a phone call comes unexpectedly, and a loved one, or a brother or sister in the Lord, has been moved by Him enough to call to see how we are doing. To comfort someone else with that kind of supernatural comfort, all we need to do is pray, listen, and OBEY.  That’s all it takes to make us a Godly conduit of comfort for someone else. 👋🏻