Come As You Are - COMFORT- 2 Corin. 1:3-4

This is Namma for Christ with the seventy-fourth inspirational message dated Saturday, November 21st, 2015. The title of this message is: "Come As You Are:  COMFORT – 2 Corin. 1:3-4". This message is based on the below scripture text from  the second book of Corinthians as found in the New Testament  - where the writer, the Apostle Paul, informs the reader about the COMFORT of GOD and how GOD comforts us to help us be comforters:

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

King James Version (KJV)

3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;

4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

This message is all about "COMFORT" - the COMFORT of GOD and how through HIS helping us to be COMFORTED...we can be COMFORTERS of others. Below is a beautiful meditation from R. Tuck on the subject of  "comforting". 

Personally speaking, when my dear father passed away in January of 2003, I didn't know what I would do. But God...in His love, mercy, comfort, grace, strength, peace and guidance through His Holy Spirit - helped me through the loss of my dad. I pray that this message may comfort someone else. 

Philippians 4:6-7

King James Version (KJV)

6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Remember - Jesus said, He will NEVER leave you, nor forsake you…

Hebrews 13:5King James Version (KJV)

5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

Comforted, And Therefore Comforters

(2nd Corinthians 1:4) by R. Tuck

It may seem strange that the Bible, and Christian ministers following its example, should deal so frequently and so largely with troubles and afflictions. You sometimes half suspect that Christian people must have a larger share of earthly sorrow than fails to the lot of others.

 Our afflictions and our comfortings can become a blessing to others:

 "so that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble." 

Our sorrows have by no means exhausted their stores of blessing when they have dispelled our doubts, delivered us from our dangers, and cultured our characters; they have stores of blessing left in them still, with which, through us, to enrich and comfort others.

But the Christian's experiences are not of griefs only; they are of griefs together with Divine comfortings, and these together bring a peculiar kind of power. 

How different are the consolations offered by stricken than by unstricken ones! The unstricken can find beautiful words, and be truly sincere as they utter them. But the stricken ones can express unutterable things in silence and look. They can also "feel" compassion similarly and express a true, sympathetic "understanding" - because...they've "BEEN THERE".

The plant of healing sympathies grows and blossoms and fruitens 

out of our very wounds and tears. 

It will be reasonable to expect that, if God has high places of work for us, and valuable influence for us to exert, He will need to bring us through great and sore troubles.

Paul recognizes this in our text. How his life was filled with anxieties.

He did not care to be always talking about himself; only once or twice does he lift the veil and show his secret history; but there - in much affliction awaiting him everywhere, and the comfortings of God abounding in all - is the explanation of his mighty and gracious influence. He was "comforted of God that he might be able to comfort them which are in any trouble." The same truth shines out even more clearly from the life and Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is able to succour (or help) because in all points tempted. Lifted up, "He draws all men unto him" gaining His influence by His own sufferings borne in patience and faith. Winning power to save and help the world by dying an agonizing death and knowing, in the uttermost needs of a dying hour, the gracious comfortings of God.

 You may have thought that your afflictions have set you aside from your work. No, they have just lifted you up to the trust of some of God's highest and best work. Tribulation worketh patience, experience, and hope. It matures the finer elements of character. But it does more - it fits us for work, for higher influence on others, enabling us to set before men all the power of a noble example. Our afflictions and comfortings are really our clothing with the soldier's dress, our putting on the soldier's armor, our grasping the soldier's weapons, our drilling for the soldier's service, that we may be good soldiers of the cross. Each one of us can become a comforter, a person of consolation. Comforted of God, let us learn to comfort others. 

Please enjoy the accompanied song and video (including beautiful lyrics), "Come As You Are" as sung with anointing by the Christian artist, "David Crowder".



(I do not own the rights to this song.)


BE BLESSED!