Comfort

 "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 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 with the comfort we ourselves received from God." I Corinthians 1:3-4...."We were not created for comfort. We were created to bring the comfort of heaven to those in our lives." Kim Meeder

What is involved in God's comfort? I doubt that most in our comfort obsessed culture have any real idea. We see it as living in the midst of circumstances that shield us from pain, sorrow, and difficulty in general. We're very interested in that kind of comfort. The Father isn't. In fact, the Father will send us out into circumstances and situations that are anything but comfortable. There will likely be pain, heartache, and loss in these places. Yet it is here that we, if we will receive it, shall discover what His comfort really is, as well as what His purposes in the pain and the comfort are. As we receive His comfort, we also receive Him, and receiving Him will also mean we receive His healing and His wholeness. If we will indeed receive it.

Kim Meeder prefaced the following story with saying that "God's love is the foundation of every revival." She then went on to relate how she and her husband had been fishing a river in the Cascade mountains. It was a cold day and the river waters were very rough. She suddenly sensed the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking, telling her to go back to the marina, and to go right now. She told her husband and they began to trip back. As they got to a particularly rough part of the river, they saw objects in the water. As they looked more closely, she saw a man, tangled up in yellow rope. He was near unconsciousness, and she and her husband rapidly pulled him into the boat. As they did so, and due to the frigid waters, she told her husband that they were just in time. The man, barely awake, whispered, "Not for him." Then they saw in the water another man, and he had died.

Later, after receiving treatment, the man called and wanted to meet the couple who had saved his life. He told her that he and his best friend's boat had capsized, and they had been in the water for over an hour. In that time, three boats had gone by but never sought to investigate what they surely saw. Only Meeder and her husband had. She then said that this was to be the purpose of Christ's people, that we are to be those who offer rescue and comfort to all those drowning and dying in the rivers of this lost world. The comfort this man received was not first the comfort of warm clothing and a warm room. It was the comfort of a life that was surely lost, but now saved by ones who first heard the voice of God and then in obedience, ministered to one in desperate need of the comfort and rescue that He is always seeking to carry out through His people.

All around us are people, outside the church and within who are dying in a river of some kind. Addictions, grief, isolation, rejection, and on and on. Will we go on being so obsessed about our own comfort and well being that we sail on past them, never noticing, and really, never caring? Or, will we, like the Meeder's, be so attuned to His voice, to His grace, that the very grace that reached out to us, and continues to reach out, does so through us to ones desperately in need? This is how we live out I Corinthians 1:3-4. This is how we are part of His foundation of love that does bring revival, as His river, the River of God, flows into all the rivers of death this world has.

There is no doubt that our lives will pass by someone in deep need this week. Will we, in our self-absorption, fail to notice them and go on by, or will we cast them His lifeline? What do you think is most likely?

Blessings,

Pastor O