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.