What is difficult, necessary, highly emotional, and rarely practiced?
Comfort: Caringly responding to a hurting person through words, actions, emotional responses, and physical touch; hurting with and for others in the midst of their grief or pain. (Romans 12:15; Matthew 5:4, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
We, Carol and I, are doing a ton of traveling these days and so have lots of time to listen to music. Regardless of travel, I enjoy listening to music most of the time. Rivers and Robots have become my favorite music to study, drive, or just chill by. Listening to a shuffled playlist on iHeart radio the other day, I noticed something for the first time; namely, many (perhaps most) of the contemporary Christian songs I heard focused on the theme of sadness, brokenness, pain, and God’s place in healing our aloneness and personal suffering.
That is a good trend in my view, but it can be over-done. Agree? Yes, we suffer and experience pain in relationships and life’s circumstances, and God the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter for a reason. For those of us, who follow Jesus Christ as our Lord, we have been given Holy Spirit to live in us permanently. (1 Corinthians 6:19 – “Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which you have from God”. You are not your own.”).
Something most of us know intuitively is that we, too, can provide comfort to others. We can come alongside a hurting person “through words, actions, emotional responses and physical touch”. Though emotionally difficult for most of us and a bit frightening to consider, let’s get good at receiving comfort from Holy Spirit then giving it away to those hurting persons God brings across our path. Many times, the opportunity to comfort another person is a great opening to share the Good News / Gospel of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 makes it clear that “Praise be to 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 receive from God.” Get it? We come to God for comfort and healing and receive what we need as Holy Spirit lets us know we are not alone in our times of trouble. The comfort we receive becomes an asset (blessing) to give away to others.
How does that look exactly? My questions this week are about comfort. Did you get it from people, from God’s Spirit, or from other sources? Do you think that we will get comfort or try to get it from somewhere even if the source is not legal, legitimate, or healthy for us? Where have you tried to find comfort? How have others you know attempted to forget their troubles, find help with their hurt, try to forget their past, or sought to find peace in their storm? How did that work for them? How did it work for you? How many sin habits start with our trying to comfort ourselves, remove our own aloneness using substances, doing something because our friends were already doing it, or attempting to heal our own hurts without consulting God or others who truly love us?
My example comes from trying to remove my own aloneness by seeking comfort in dating relationships in my mid-teens and early 20’s. Having a girlfriend made me feel good and acceptable. I didn’t lead them well and basically used them to help me feel respected and accepted. By God’s grace I was led to a lady with great moral standards and much more maturity than I had in those days – maybe even now . Carol, my wife of 48 years, moved from an object of comfort to me into a person I love and want to know. God showed us that He provides the comfort and healing and wants to use us to help each other. Listening, responding kindly, sitting together without speaking, holding each other, and sometimes even crying together have been some of the ways God comforts us and allows us to comfort one another. God is so good to help us not go off the deep end of life when we certainly could have in earlier days – chasing comfort in alcohol, money, drugs, things, status, job titles, reputation, or a host of other “gods” we could have served. He offers comfort that is legitimate and relevant and always accessible. There is no better way to find comfort than God’s way.