Dive into a heartfelt exploration of how God comforts us in our times of need. Join us as we discuss how our divine Comforter, aided by the Holy Spirit, stands by our side to offer peace and reassurance. This episode sheds light on the profound difference between worldly sources of comfort and the eternal solace that comes from a relationship with God.
Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, December 18th. We all know what it feels like to face life’s bumps and bruises, the struggles, the pain, the unexpected challenges. But here’s something incredible. God never lets us walk alone in those moments. He walks with us, offers His peace, and holds us close. Stay with us as we dive into the God who cares enough to comfort us, a source of hope and strength when we need it most.
SPEAKER 02 :
I am persuaded that if most people knew what God was really like, rather than reject Him, they would turn to Him, they would love Him and obey Him. It is our own sense of unworthiness, our sense of sinfulness, our disappointment within ourselves, our own rebellious spirit that causes us to have a very distorted view of God. God is not a God who condemns men and women. He’s a God rather who comforts them. He’s a God who cares. a loving Father who cares for every single one of us. And this is the title of this message, the God who cares enough to comfort us when we hurt. And if you’ll turn, please, to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. And in this 2 Corinthians… Epistle, Paul begins writing to the Corinthians, and he describes God in the most beautiful fashion when he says in verse 3, “‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.'” For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.” all of us go through difficulties and hardship in life and we find ourselves sometimes in despair or feeling close to that wondering if we’re going to make it or wondering if God understands why we hurt the way we hurt why we feel the way we feel he does understand because he is a God who cares and he cares for us not only enough to reveal himself to us not only enough to rescue us from our sinfulness, not only enough to make us like Himself and conform us to the likeness of Christ, not only to build a wonderful, intimate, personal relationship with us, but He loves us enough and cares for us enough to comfort us when we hurt. Now, if you were to look in a dictionary for the word comfort, you would find something like this, a state of mind in which there is ease from suffering or sorrow or despair. But if you look in the New Testament for a word for comfort, you’re going to find something entirely different. Because you see, the way God comforts and the way the world thinks in terms of comfort are entirely two different things. In the 14th chapter of John, which is sort of the consolation chapter, the chapter of comfort, you’ll be surprised if you read through that chapter how many ways and how many times Jesus is endeavoring to comfort his apostles. Now, in the King James Version of the Bible, the Holy Spirit is called in the 14th chapter, a couple of times there, the Comforter. When He, the Comforter, comes, the word is a parakletos, which means the one who comes by our side or stands by our side, the one who comes to our aid. When Jesus identified the comforter or comfort, he used the very term by which he identifies the Holy Spirit, the comforter. In the New American Standard Version, it says the helper, the one who comes to our aid. Because when Jesus said to his apostles there in the upper room the night before he was crucified, he said, now… I’m going to have to go away. But he says, I will not leave you comfortless. I will not leave you alone. He says, I’m going away, but I’m going to send one. And when the comforter comes, he will guide you into all truth. And he will show you the things that I have shown you. And so Jesus identified the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, so that every single believer is indwelt by the Comforter. We do not have to go anywhere else. We do not have to rely on anything else to be comforted in our hardship, our trial, our suffering, our heartache, our despair, our sense of hopelessness. We have one on the inside whom Jesus identified as the Holy Spirit. And what I want us to see in this passage is the way in which God goes about personally to comfort all of us who are his children. Now, you may not be a Christian. You may not have been one of those persons who’s rejected God all of your life. Rather than judge God, wait till you understand what he’s like. Don’t turn him off before you know what he’s like. Don’t decide that you’re going to live your life your own way and one of these days something is going to happen. You don’t know what’s going to happen, my friend. You are living by the grace of a loving Father, a God of mercy and a God of all comfort who wants you for Himself. and wants to help you to become and to enable you to become everything He created you to be. He is a loving God who cares for every single person, no matter what your circumstance, no matter whether you rejected Him or accepted Him, He still loves you, He still cares for you, and He still wants to be a part of your life. Well, how does God go about comforting His children? This is what He says. Look at this. And the first thing he simply says here is this, that God comforts His children personally. He doesn’t send angels to do it. He does it. Who comforts us by God Himself. And you see, this is the reason Jesus said in the upper room, He said, I’m going away, but if I go away, I’ll send the Comforter. He’ll be in you, with you, and upon you. The moment you and I receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, the Bible says… You and I were indwelt by one of the persons of the Godhead. While God the Father and God the Son sit in heaven controlling everything that happens in this universe, God the Holy Spirit is here indwelling the life of every single believer. He came. to be our teacher. He came to anoint us with His Spirit. He came to enable us to serve Him. He came to enable us to do many things, but one of the primary responsibilities of the Holy Spirit, one of the persons of the Godhead, is that He would be our comforter, so that every single believer lives with a comforter on the inside, so that we, unlike the world, do not have to look out yonder for comfort. You see, The world oftentimes goes to drink and drugs and affairs and pleasures and travel and bigger this and larger that and more of the other, trying to escape their hurt and their suffering and their sorrow and their heartache and their trials and their tribulations. God says, the Comforter, the God of all comfort, listen, the God of all comfort, the source of all true comfort, indwells the heart of every single believer. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Nobody knows why you and I hurt the way God knows. No one knows how intensely is our pain. And you and I can be smiling on the outside and almost dying on the inside. And we can be crying out to God, I cannot handle anymore. God, if you don’t do something, I’m not going to make it. And a little whisper comes through our spirit, yes, you will. Yes, you can. Yes, you will. Yes, you can. Because I am going to see to it that you do. And all of our friends and all the things in life that you and I could possess could never do for us, hallelujah, what one whisper of the Holy Spirit can do when your tears are thick and heavy and when your heart is heavy and when you don’t know which way to turn, the solemn, quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit, you’re going to make it. Cheer up, you’re going to make it because I am here. And my friend, that’s why Jesus used the terminology he used. He could have used some other word for comfort, but he used the word referring to the Holy Spirit, which means the one who stands by my side, the one who comes to my aid. And so one thing you and I want when we are in distress and troubles and trials and Standing by someone whom we love dearly and we see their life slipping away. And there’s not anything the doctors can do. They’ve done everything they can do. Nothing anybody else can do. And all the prayers in the world seemingly do not seem to change the circumstance. And they’re slipping away into eternity. And it’s all over in a matter of hours or maybe a few days at the most. And maybe even minutes. No word from anybody. No pat on the back. No hug. Nothing. Nothing. can replace that awesome, solemn, overwhelming, indescribable awareness that Jesus is here. That is the way God comforts. Now, He comforts in many ways, but I want to start out with that one because that is the most important of all. The fact that I know He’s present. And what I want to do is simply introduce you to the God who really cares. The true God of the Bible is a God who cares. Cares enough about you no matter what state you’re in, no matter what your attitude. You may claim to be an atheist and agnostic. You don’t believe the Bible. You don’t believe anything. I want to tell you, no matter how little you believe, you can’t believe little enough to keep a loving God from loving you and caring for you no matter what. He is a God who cares for us very personally. In the 119th Psalm and the 50th verse, he talks about comforting us with his word. And the reason he uses that is because oftentimes God, when he whispers to our spirit by his spirit, he will lead us to a passage of scripture that just absolutely overwhelms us. It meets our need. It satisfies our heart. It’s like God is speaking to us personally. You see, that’s the reason you and I ought to be reading the Scriptures continually, because one of these days you’ll be reading something, you’ll say, well, what in the world does that mean? You’ll move on, and then before you know it, something will happen in your life. God will bring you right back to that passage, and it’ll just like be the Spirit of God illuminating your mind and giving you instruction, clear instruction, exactly what God is saying to you through that passage. He’s a God who loves us enough and cares for us enough in order to comfort us personally. The second thing I want you to notice that the way He says it here is that it’s continuous. He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction. That is present tense. Who is comforting us? That is because the Holy Spirit is within us forever. And that’s what he said in John 14. He says he’ll be in you, with you, and upon you forever. I’m not going to leave you comfortless. You see, there is no time in your life and my life where we can say, well, Jesus used to comfort me, but no more. My friend, because the day you received Christ as your Savior, He sealed you as a child of God. Your name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundation of the world. You are a child of God and dwelt by the Holy Spirit, sealed by the Holy Spirit. And therefore, He made you and me a promise that God could never break without ceasing to be God. He said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And that’s why He sent the Holy Spirit to seal us and also to be our companion. He’s a God who cares, a God who comforts, a God who loves, a God who is genuinely concerned about every single aspect of our life. There’s not anything that you and I face that He doesn’t care about. There’s nothing unimportant to God. There’s nothing that goes through your mind in life on a day-to-day basis that’s unimportant to Him. Every single thing is important. And how do I know that? Because here’s what He said in this passage. Who comforts us in all our affliction. What other people bring upon us and what we bring upon ourselves, it doesn’t make any difference. Who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Which leads me to the next point I want to mention here, and that’s simply this. That God comforts us in our hurts for two reasons. One of them is for ourselves. but also for others. That is, what he’s saying in this passage is this. I want to make you a carrier of comfort that you and I would be willing to so share in someone else’s life that they would feel our love and sense our love. And you see, we don’t understand the power of our presence when God on the inside of us is freed to express his love through us at that moment. And if you offer yourself as a carrier of comfort, you allow the Holy Spirit to do the talking. Here’s what he said. I will teach you in the same hour what you ought to say. You don’t have to worry about what to say. It is just presence. And sometimes all that person needs is for you to take their hand in both your hands and say, you’re going to make it. You’re going to be okay. I want you to know I’m praying for you. And sometimes it may be that God wants to just hug you through someone else. And someone walks up and hugs you in a right, holy, pure manner. They put their arms around you and just simply say, I want you to know I’m going to be with you through this, through thick and thin, no matter what happens. You can count on me. I’m going to be here. You see, that’s what God would say. It’s what the Holy Spirit says. You can count on me. I’m going to be here. I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. I know exactly what you need. The Spirit of God is the one who is responsible for the comforting that goes on as you and I serve as ambassadors or comforters, carriers of comfort. He says I’m going to comfort you for two reasons. He says first of all because I’m going to ease your hurt and your suffering and your sorrow and your pain. He says secondly I’m going to make you a carrier of comfort. Then The one thing he says in this passage, it so blesses my heart. He says, Listen to this. That is, he says, not speaking of the atoning death of Christ on the cross, but all the things that Jesus suffered by the hands of men. He says… Just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. That is, we hurt because of our Christian faith and we hurt because of our mistakes and our sins. And he says, just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. That is, here’s what he’s saying. No matter how deeply I may hurt, the comfort of God is going to be adequate. No matter how much I hurt and how much despair I feel, Jesus Christ of the Holy Spirit will always prove to be adequate to meet that need no matter what it is. And my friend, I know what you mean when you say you can hurt so deeply and with a pain so intensely that it appears that you cannot stand the weight of it. I want to tell you. You can’t. God knows you can’t. And that’s why the Holy Spirit isn’t out yonder. He’s on the inside keeping all the weight, at least an eighth of an inch, off your shoulders. And whether it’s an eighth of an inch or a million miles doesn’t make any difference. He does not intend for us to face anything in life apart from Him. And no matter what you’re going through right now, the Comforter, The Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit who said in his day, come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I’ll give you rest. He’s saying the same thing. Don’t reject me. Don’t turn me off. Don’t turn away. Don’t doubt me. Just trust me and allow me to love you and allow me to care for you and allow me to forgive you and allow me to stand by your side and allow me to walk with you and allow me to provide your needs and allow me to answer your prayers and allow me to cheer up your heart. And He’s willing and ready if you and I are willing and ready to allow Him to do it. You see, He’s adequate for every single thing you and I face. And when people stand by the bedside of someone who’s slipping away and there’s not anything they can do, there are not many things in life as helpless as watching life slip away and knowing that only God is the one who’s in control of life, not doctors and hospitals. Or watching your life’s fortune suddenly go crashing in and there’s no more left. Or watching a son or daughter turn away and say, I’m leaving. The pain and the ripping, tearing, shredding of each other’s emotions. All you need to do is to allow a loving father. The Bible says a father of mercies and a God of all comfort. Allow him to do in you and through you and for you what he is ready, willing, and reaching out to do. He is in absolute and perfect, complete control. And He’s not going to allow us to hurt any more than He knows we can stand and any more than He Himself is willing to bear in us the intensity of that pain and that hurt. So He’s always saying to us, I’m here. And when you think I can’t handle it any longer, here’s what He’s going to whisper to you. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You know why He’s going to say that? Because He’s the one who intends to control us the thermostat, and keep his eye on the emotional thermometer in your life, and he’s the one who is going to control how much hurt, how much pain, and how much suffering you have to endure. He is an all-sufficient, adequate, loving God who cares enough for us to comfort us in our hurts. And Father, we love you and praise you this morning. that you not only are adequate, but always available. You said in every hurt, in every affliction, every time, all times, without fail. And we humble ourselves before you and to say, Lord, thank you for being adequate. Thank you for being sufficient. And we pray that each one of us will be a carrier of comfort. available to listen, available to speak, available to be quiet, available to touch, available to hold, available to give, available even as the Spirit is to us, that we will be vessels, ambassadors of comfort, no longer condemning but comforting, reaching out, giving of ourselves, in order that you, Lord Jesus, may walk in the flesh once again in our bodies to carry out your work. and to say to an unbelieving world that feels condemned that our God is a God who cares enough to forgive us of our sins, to comfort us when we hurt, and to enable us to face life victoriously. For we ask it in His name and for His sake. Amen.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to today’s podcast titled, The God Who Cares Enough to Comfort Us. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
Dive into a heartfelt exploration of how God comforts us in our times of need. Join us as we discuss how our divine Comforter, aided by the Holy Spirit, stands by our side to offer peace and reassurance. This episode sheds light on the profound difference between worldly sources of comfort and the eternal solace that comes from a relationship with God.
