Are you suffering? Everyone suffers somehow, in some form, in some fashion, at some time. Suffering is an inevitable part of life, from aging, death, heartbreak, and through disappointments. We suffer from physical pain, injury, and disease. We have emotional suffering through betrayal, loneliness, rejection, and all the traumas of life. And yet, suffering seems to be one of the great instruments of God. How? Suffering continues to reveal to us our dependence on God. Not only our dependence on Him, but our hope in Him, despite of our circumstances. Suffering deepens our faith and our spiritual experience.
How can you comfort someone else unless God put you in training? And how does God train you? He allows you to suffer. Oh, I truly know that training is costly, and sometimes extreme. In order to be perfect in ministry, you must go through the same afflictions that many other believers have gone through or will go through. God comforts the suffering through fellow-sufferers. Paul says that this is one of God's plans for our pain: "What a wonderful God we have - he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the source of every mercy, and the one who so wonderfully comforts and strengthens us in our hardships and trails. And why does he do this? So that when others are troubled, needing our sympathy and encouragement, we can pass on to them this same help and comfort God has given us. You can be sure that the more we undergo sufferings for Christ, the more he will shower us with his comfort and encouragement" (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).
Through suffering your life becomes the hospital where God will teach you the divine art of comfort. Take the story of Joseph, for example. Joseph experienced his share of suffering in his early years. He suffered the spitefulness of jealousy from his brothers. He was sold to slave traders, then falsely accused of rape by Potiphar's wife, and wrongfully jailed for a crime that he didn't commit.
Through all of this, God wasn't absent from him. God was ever present in his life. He suffered being in prison, but God place him in charge of the whole land of Egypt. The evidence of the Spirit of God was in his life. God's Spirit bore the fruit of righteousness through Joseph in Egypt. Could such fruit have been produced without the suffering? Probably not. "When your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything" (James 1:3-4).
So do you wonder why you are facing a special sorrow? When this special sorrow has passed, you will find many others that are experiencing your type of special sorrow. You will tell them how you suffered and how you were comforted. Then as your story unfolds, you will tell them how God wrapped His arms around you. You will tell them how He gave you a gleam of hope and how He chased the shadows of despair from you. "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1 Peter 1:6-7).
God comforts us so that we can comfort others.
God grants us mercy so that we can be merciful to others.
God helps us in our suffering so that we can help others in theirs.
God would never leave us alone in our suffering, so we shouldn't leave others alone in theirs.
When we are affected and have to suffer, God is allowing us to have the experience so that we can be helpful to others. Our suffering is a character builder. In suffering, God can make us fruitful. When we are fruitful, we can be ready for anything.
God didn't promise us that He would make us comfortable in this life, but He does want us to comfort the comfortless.
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