Comfort One Another Series

Background Information

As 2020 is now over, I wonder if the church as the body of Christ might have missed a real opportunity to minister to those who were hurting because the church ought to be where people find comfort. The church ought to be a comforting place. I look around the church house today, and I see the faces of people who needed comforting because let’s face it 2020 has affected each one of us in some way. We might have lost a love one (I can tell you that I have done more funerals in 2020 than I have done in any other year of my 40 year of ministry.) It seemed more people got sick this past year then in previous years, and I mean really sick. And families struggled, every which way you can imagine. Families were not able to see love ones in nursing homes or go near grandma or grandpa because of fear of Covid 19. In most cases, Thanksgiving and Christmas was different than in previous years and not necessarily in a good way. If you had to attend one or more funerals this year, people have not been able to grieve like they normally do. People who are part of this church family, and it is not just limited to this church family, needed comforting this year. It has been a tough year.

But they are not the only one. You open the doors of the church house and walk outside, there is a hurting world that needs comforting. And they are not going to find it by looking to government; they are not going to find it by looking to an employer; and they are not going to find it at the bottom of a bottle of alcohol or by getting high on some other substance.

God is the source of all comfort. And He uses you and me to comfort each other. In Romans 15:5 (NKJV), Paul tells us: Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus... So this verse tells us about our next one another- comfort one another.

And we need to understand how this one another works because I believe that we are going to need to be practicing this one another a whole lot more in 2021. If you did not practicing comforting one another in 2020, don’t worry, I believe that you will have plenty of opportunity in 2021. So, you and I need to know how this one-another works. How can I comfort you? Where do I get what it takes to comfort you? God is going to tell us in 2 Corinthians 3-6.

Scripture

2 Corinthians 1:3-6 (NIV)

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,

4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.

Points

#1

There is no comfort apart from God. He is the God of all comfort. If I want to comfort someone, I got to get into what God is doing because He is the God of all comfort.

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,

Anne and I buy our food from Wal Mart, but I can’t say that that Wal Mart feeds my family. I know that they buy what they sell from the farmers, but I cannot say the farmers feed my family. Because I know although the farmers plant the seeds, it is God that brings the right amount amount of sunshine and the right amount of rain. If I go back to who ultimately feeds my family, it is God.

Paul puts it this way. God is the Father of compassion. Think about that word “Father”. I went to biography.com and looked up Alexander Graham Bell and the first sentence reads: “ Alexander Graham Bell - Father of the Telephone.” In other words, it originates with him. Comfort originates with God. It does not originate any other place but God.

So what does that mean to me that comfort originates with God? Anytime I have been treated kindly, helped in some way, shown compassion, befriended, it came from God. When that right person came at the right time with the right words and lifted me out of my downward spiral, that was God.