II Corinthians 1:3-7 (NASB)
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 will be able to comfort those who are in any
affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For
just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is
abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and
salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective
in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our
hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our
sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.
One of the
basic fundamentals of learning to study the Bible effectively is to pay
attention to how often a word is repeated in a passage. The more often a word is repeated, the easier
it is for you to discern what God is really trying to get through to you in
helping you grow spiritually. In the
NASB translation above, Paul uses the word “affliction” or “afflicted” three
times while the word “comfort” is used ten times. You are afflicted anytime you are stressed,
anytime you feel knots in your stomach thinking about what you are facing. The word used for comfort means to encourage,
to strengthen. This passage is saying
that God provides to you in your affliction His encouragement and His strength.
Yet do you turn
to God when you are afflicted or do you turn to some other source without
involving God—e.g. escape through other humans or work or alcohol or drugs or
some other temporal outlet? Even if you
are a devout Christian, do you pray that your afflictions disappear? It is not God’s purpose for your life that
your afflictions disappear. God allows
Christians to suffer for several reasons:
§ Suffering enables you to discover what God can do to help you depend more
on Him and His strength, not your own.
He is the source of comfort (v 3-4)
§ Suffering is a means for others to see how you stand up to the challenges
of life. Other people are watching you,
seeing how you handle the pressures of life.
Are you showing others to face afflictions with reliance on the Lord or
are you complaining and showing that the Lord cannot be trusted to help
you? Perhaps more than any other
situation in life, suffering enables you to be your greatest witness for
Christ.
§ Suffering causes the need for interdependence, for people to share their
problems with one another, for people to learn the importance of encouragement
and stop thinking only of their own problems and start thinking about the needs
of others. You fulfill the law of Christ
when you bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). Perhaps the most important reason why God
allows suffering is so that you will lose your natural tendency to be
self-reliant, self centered, stubborn, and too much of a complainer.
§
Suffering
positions people to be the greatest help to others going through the same
afflictions. You have lost something so
important in your life—e.g. your health, a loved one, your job. Who helps you the most dealing with the
emotions surrounding this loss? Someone
who also has gone through the same experience as you are now going
through. You learn you have cancer. Who helps you the most? Someone who had the same cancer as you have
and beat it. You are dealing with a
difficult family situation. Who do you
listen to in helping you face and overcome this family problem? Someone you know and trust who has faced the
same kind of situation.
The Bible scholar, Ray Stedman, wrote the
following, based on the verses above and continuing through verse 11 of II Cor
1: “Suffering is sent to us to show us
that we are not individuals living all alone in life. We are members of a
family, we are members of a Body, and we need each other. When you have a
difficulty or a trial, share it with others so that they can pray with you, for
many prayers will bring great deliverance. That is the reason for requests for
prayer, for sharing our needs with one another, and for enlisting the aid of
others in praying us through times of pressure, as we ought to be ready to
respond to those who are going through pressure with prayer for them ourselves.
Now that is the way the Christian community ought to respond to stress and
pressure, to difficulties and trials and disasters. God has sent them. God has
allowed them to come as opportunities that you might learn again this amazing
secret of inner strength, inner comfort, inner peace that can keep your heart
quiet, even though you are going through troubled times.”
May all these words give you
significant comfort and renewed strength as you face your troubles with the
help of the Lord through your prayers.
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