Comfort My People

COMFORT MY PEOPLE

God knows what you went through this past week and He knows what you will face this coming week.

You may have had an average week, or you may be thankful it is finally over.

Regardless, you should know that God desires for His people to be happy and blessed in all things.

Sometimes we come to church, sing a few songs and walk out of here looking like we have been sucking on lemons for a couple of hours. God wants you to come into His house expecting Him to do more than just fix a problem. God desires greatly to bless you, to comfort you, and to encourage you. Like only He can do.

There are some who will not come to God’s house because they will only be reminded of how miserable they are without Christ. I would not want that for anyone. Many of you know that there is nothing miserable about living for the Lord. Living for Christ is to be filled with joy & gladness that cannot be explained.

Text: Isaiah 40:1 thru 5

Prayer:

I trust you realize that you are blessed of God today, God knows we are of little value to the Gospel of Christ when we are miserable, or down in the dumps.

If we live down in the dumps, we cannot live where God wants us. That is, within the praises of our Lord.

Sometimes when we are comfortable, we serve only ourselves. But if we are comforted by the Holy Spirit, we will want to serve our God and His people.

God would have us to know/experience His comfort so that we are able to comfort others in their need.

How can we minister to the downtrodden/discouraged if we don’t have God’s comfort to share with them?

While studying this week, I found a word in the dictionary that goes along with the comfort of God. “Piety”. It means to have “reverence toward God.”

I found another word almost next to “piety”.

It was the word “pity”. There isn’t a lot of difference in how they are spelled. “Pity” has to do with the “grief and pain of a misfortune.”

Some of us may find it easy to have “piety” (in our life) one moment, and then “pity” for ourselves the next.

Oftentimes, piety is easily be confused with pity.

We have only Christ to:

• Turn to in moments of “pity”.

• Offer the downtrodden/pitiful people we know.

Church, listen carefully.

Everyone is in need of comfort this morning.

You, me, your close relative, your next door neighbor, the people you like and the people you don’t like. They all need the comfort only God has.

The people we know will never understand the comfort of the Holy Spirit (we are talking about) without first receiving the forgiveness of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

God has a charge for each of us today:

1. Let go of our pity.

2. Lay hold and accept God’s COMFORT.

3. Go and comfort God’s people.

When I began to meditate on this passage (on Tuesday of last week) I must confess that I was not in the right frame of mind to want to comfort anyone. I was having a tough week with business in Michigan.

Like you, there are times in my line of work that things don’t go as smooth as we want them to. I started back to work with a mountain of problems to resolve.

How many know that the problems we face can interfere with what we need to be doing for the Lord?

Immediately, the Lord impressed me of the need for us to find comfort in the Lord. God will make a way for us.

God will not expect comfort to come from any of us without first making a way of comfort.

God has always comforted His people.

Here is one example - There was a time when the children of God were perplexed and persecuted on every side.

It was then that God’s people were very miserable. They suffered the bondage of a ruthless ruler.

They had nowhere to go to escape their sufferings.

And then one day they were forced to the shoreline of the Red Sea. At first they thought they were trapped. Their enemy was bearing down on them and they had nowhere to go. Suddenly and sovereignly, God comforted them by opening a way of escape.

You know the story. The waters of the Red Sea parted, and the people found the Highway of their God.

The children of the Lord were given a means of escape and found comfort on the other side. God divided the Red Sea and made a highway for His people.

The parting of the Red Sea is truly one of the most exciting stories of the Old Testament.