The God of all Comfort

The older I get, the more I wonder how unvelievers can bear to be...well...unbelievers. How dreadful it must be to go through the struggless of this life without the God of all comforts to rely on.

However optimistic we may try to be, there is no getting around it: this life is full of suffering. Illness, loneliness, death of loved ones, failure, poverty, old age, unrequited love, overwhelming workloads, etc., etc., etc. We are all accustomed to suffering, and in the times that we suffer, we often feel that there is no comfort anywhere on this Earth. No one sympathizes, no one understands, no one tries to lift our burdens, no one listens or even cares. For the believer, however, this is simply not true. Our sovereign God knows just what we are suffering, and He cares a great deal. He provides us the greatest of comforts, several of which I shall delve into tonight.

First of all, God gives us comfort simply by being omniscient. I am sure we have all been through times where we feel as though our hearts were breaking for some reason, and the suffering was so dreadful we just had to tell someone about it, perhaps a friend or our parents. However, our would-be confidante didn't take the issue seriously. They couldn't understand how something so insignificant in their minds could bring us such misery. They told us to get over it, as though it were the simplest thing in the world to put our anguish behind us and forget it. God is not like that. He knows exactly what we are going through and why this particular struggle is hard for us. He is, after all, the God who created our emotions, and He knows that different things are difficult to different people. There is great comfort in knowing that there is someone who truly knows and understands what we are feeling.

Not only does He know what we are suffering, but He doesn't mind when we pour out our heartbreak to Him again and again. Hebrews 4:15 and 16 say, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Christ wants us to come to Him with what is on our minds, and indeed to do so "with confidence!" He doesn't think we are pathetic because we struggle with the things that we do. He can sypathize with us, because He Himself lived on this Earth as a man, and went through many of the things we do. We should not be ashamed to spill our hearts out to Him. Notice also, that God won't just listen to our problem, but He will do something about it. He will provide mercy. It may not be the exact sort of mercy we had in mind for ourselves, but it will be mercy from the Most High, and we really can't ask for anything better than that.

Then there is, of course, the comfort above all comforts: the hope of Heaven. Perhaps someone were completely fed up with his entire life. He is getting up there in age, he is still single but doesn't want to be, he hates his job, he has no close friends, his struggles with sin are often unbearable, he never had the chance to do anything he dreamed of doing; he never traveled to the places he wanted to see, he never became successful at anything, he never developed anything he once thought he might have had talent in. In short, he feels that his life were a complete waste. Yes, even believers are capable of this kind of discouragement. However, we can never be brought to total and utter despair because we will always have one thing to hold on to. We will go to Heaven when we die. Although we have not seen Heaven, we know it will be glorious beyond our wildest dreams, because we will at last be with our Saviour. Let us read this description from Revelation 21:3 and 4: "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." No suffering in this world will be on our minds when we are at last in Heaven, and every day that we struggle through just brings us closer and closer to that wonderful, never-ending day.

So then, reader, let us not feel sorry for ourselves too much when we suffer. Let us pull ourselves from the midst of misery and draw near to the God of all comforts. He will never leave us in despair.

The sovereignty of God

"For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in Heaven and on Earth, in the seas and all the deeps." Psalm 35:5-6

If there is one thing God has convinced me of this past year, it is that He is sovereign. I know if anyone happens to read this, they may think, "Of course God is sovereign! What do you mean God convinced you of it? Any Christian already knows that!" It's true, any Christian you meet will tell you God is sovereign, but when God really starts to lay this fact on your heart, you begin to realize how incredible it truly is. Once you realize that every little event that comes to pass is a result of God's providence, your point of view on everything changes. You realize that your every breath is a gift from your Creator, that the sun rises in the East only at God's command, that the only reason you awoke to a new dawn this morning is that it pleased God that you should live on this Earth for one day more.

Truly, there are few things of more importance to a Christian than a correct attitude towards God's sovereignty. So many of our sins come as a result of our having a problem with this all-encompassing doctrine. For example, when we complain, we are really saying, "God, I know you are sovereign in all things, but right now I think my will is a better idea!" When we worry, we are thinking, "God, I know you are supposedly sovereign, but I don't really think you are taking care of this area in my life, and even if you are, you won't take care of it the way I want you to." When we covet, we are saying, "God, I know you are sovereign, but I'm not happy with what you've ordained for me and I think you ought to have given me something a little better."

Sin issues aside, I think the fact that God is sovereign is really the most comforting thing about Him. He will always do His will, and His will is always good. How comforting it is to know that, though we sin and make mistakes, our depraved nature will never triumph over God's perfect providence. We can never make a mess of our lives so big that God cannot clean it up if He sees fit to do so. Even Satan cannot harm us without God's permission. (Remember how Satan needed God's approval before attacking Job?) We can know that there is no event in our lives that God is not in complete control over. I like the way Charles Spurgeon said it: "There is no event, however base and vile, however grand and good, that is not within the management of the Dread Supreme."

I will share one small example from my own life, of how much of a comfort God's sovereignty can be. I am nineteen years old, and I do not have a driver's license. I'm a terrible driver. I took my driver's test at eighteen and failed miserably. This set me into a panic. I didn't know anyone else as old as me who didn't have a license. I would worry excessively (and still do sometimes, I admit) that I would never get a license and would have to nag my parents for rides until the day I die. Every so often, I would have bouts of extreme anxiety over the fact that I don't have a license. In the middle of one worse than normal panic attack, God reminded me of His sovereignty. He knows I am a bad driver. He knows I failed my test, and He also knows how very convenient it would be if I had a license. He knows all of this, and He is in control of all of this. For whatever reason, God just did not see fit that driving should come as easy to me as it does for others. My failure isn't something that God is sitting in Heaven shaking His head over. He was with me the day I failed my test, and if He had wanted me to, I would have passed. If it had been His will for me to pass, then nothing, not even my naturally bad driving habits, would have kept me from passing. While I may never know God's reasons, I do know that He does have a reason, and that it is a good one.

The problems come in when we decide that God's will isn't in agreement with our own. We may know that God's will is perfect, but our human desires set in so strong sometimes that we cannot think clearly. We just can't imagine that what God knows is good for us can be any better than what we want. In times like these we must remind ourselves over and over of God's promises: "...the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God, and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose." Once we can beat this knowledge into our thick skulls, we Christians can really just look forward to whatever God brings our way.

I'll end with a story I recently heard from a pastor that has always stuck with me. A shepherd was asked by a traveler, "What do you think the weather will be like tommorrow?" The shepherd said, "Oh, it will be whatever pleases me." The traveler asked, "What do you mean by that?" The shepherd answered, "Well, the weather we get will be whatever pleases God, and whatever pleases God pleases me." May we strive to have a similar attitude in our lives towards God's sovereignty.

~Susan

I guess we'll see how this goes!

Welcome to my blog! I admit I am a little nervous to start this because I have always been the sort of person who comes up with all kinds of brilliant (to me) ideas and tries to follow through with them, but after a while, decides they were not really so brilliant at all, and gives up. Nevertheless, I have decided to give this idea a shot.

I am a Christian. I try hard to live my life wholly and solely for my God. I would love to say that I succeed, but the Christian walk is not easy. Actually, it is the hardest thing in the world, and I probably spend more time laying in the ditch than I do walking on the road with my eyes fixed on Heaven. I would not say, though, that my walk has been completely unprofitable. On the contrary, as I seek to draw near to God, He has given me much to think about and learn about. Unfortunately, being the quiet person that I am, I rarely talk about the things I think and learn about. Therefore, I thought this blog would be a good project for me. A way to practice expounding on my thoughts as I strive to fulfill my chief and highest end: to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever.

I hope I follow through with my plan. I have no idea when I will put up my first real post, but hopefully it will be soon. Welcome to my blog, gentle reader. I trust that this will be an exercise of some profit. All that having been said, Soli Deo Gloria!