2 CORINTHIANS 1:3-4 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and 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.

THEME OF THE DAY. GOD GIVES SO WE MAY GIVE. The heart of our God is fixed on His people. His desire, His love, His purposes, and His work directs His heart toward their good in all things. And that includes what we read in today’s scripture – His comfort. When we think on His comfort, a couple of things.

First, God being the “God of all comfort” means we are a people in need of comfort. Pain, suffering, affliction, grief, sorrow, trials, and many tears are what we “signed up for” when we became Christians. We do a great disservice, cheapen the call of Christ to would be followers, and actually offer a Gospel lacking Biblical substance if we neglect to lay out the demands upon anyone who desires to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus. Here is how the German theologian/martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer states it in his book The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, He calls him to die.” We need comfort, the only real source of lasting comfort – God’s – because He has ordained we are going to suffer in this life, and that a lot. It is the way of the Master.

Another thing about God’s comfort; it is not to be hoarded in our lives. No blessing of God’s grace is to become a “storage bin” in our hearts. Everything we receive from the Lord is to be shared with others. This defines Christianity in action. We see this on the Day of Pentecost – And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need (Acts 2:42-45). Later in the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul tells us, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ ” (Acts 20:35). We get an immediate assessment on how much we are becoming like the Lord Jesus and modeling true Biblical Christianity by how liberal we are in being sacrificial and cheerful givers of what God has given us – talents, time, money, material goods, His grace, and comfort. There is no such thing as a miserly and stingy Christian.

Yes, God gives comfort to His children and a whole lot more – like everything in life. He does so for our benefit AND to equip us to share what is received to others. Remember, we are not storage bins of God’s grace. We are channels of God’s grace – channels allowing His rich blessings in our lives to flow to others.

PRAYER: “Father, I praise You for being the God of all comfort who does indeed comfort me in all my afflictions.”

QUOTE: “God comforts us in all our suffering not for us to rest in His comfort but to equipped to comfort others.”