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 Corinthians 1[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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