When we hit our elbow, scrape our knee, or worse yet break a bone, in the moment we feel pain we think we might not bare.  Then after a few moments, several minutes, or sometimes hours, the pain passes.  Then after a few days, or weeks in some cases, the injury is healed and we are better.  Despite the discomfort we felt in the moment of the blow we ended up getting better in time.  How many times does something happen in our lives that isn’t a physical injury but an emotional injury and we forget that we will, in time, heal just as we do physically?  Sometimes in the moment of the discomfort we think that the pain will last forever, that we will never be the same, we will never heal.

However, despite the discomfort there is a source of healing for whatever discomfort we go through emotionally in our lives. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 "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 have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." (2 Cor 1:3-5 ) Emotional pain may not show, we can’t put a band-aid on it, stitch it, or cast it.  We can’t simply take a pill and make it go away.  It takes a little more effort then that sometimes.  We need to seek the source of the healing in a different way because it is not a physical source of healing just as the pain is not a physical source of pain.  Emotional and spiritual discomfort and pain requires an emotional and spiritual solution.  There is one source for this which will never fail us, one source that heals all these wounds, the God of all Comfort.  If we seek Christ, we can receive the comfort that overflows from Him into our lives.

Like physical wounds, emotional and spiritual wounds will take different amounts of time to heal.  We cannot expect an instant solution like a flash of lightening.  We must be consistent in our seeking, and we must also expect and be looking for what we are asking for.  Luke 11:9-10 tells us "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Lk 11:9-10 )  If we know God is the God of all comfort, and we will be given what we ask for, we know if we ask for comfort when we need it He is capable and willing to give it to us.  One cannot expect to find and receive what one is not looking and asking for.  It is by asking that we receive.  So go today, ask for the comfort and healing you seek.  It is possible to go on despite the discomfort you currently face, however the Lord intends to, and will, give you what you need to heal.  It may take time, but if you are seeking the comfort you need from the God of all comfort, it will overflow into your life just as it is promised.

Doesn’t it seem our life is full of questions we don’t get answers for?  Questions for which we get answers we don’t like?  It sometimes seems like we get more answers we don’t like then answers we do.  We ask and ask and ask but the answer never changes.  My 8 year old will ask for something, get a no, and ask again.  Even after we tell him "the answer is not going to change" he still sometimes asks again.  Then there are the times we tell him "wait not now".  He hasn’t yet learned the patience to just wait, so he wants to know exactly when, or he asks "is it later yet?" to try and speed things along.  Though this is highly bothersome when the question has to deal with an 8 year old getting something, or when we are leaving to go somewhere, the only real consequence it might have is the one his parents are going to give him for not stopping.

When it comes to more serious issues, or bigger questions in life, not being willing to live with the answer God has given us can lead to more serious consequences.  When we have been given an answer from God that we are not particularly fond of we have a choice to make.  We can behave like a child who asks again and again in hopes of changing an answer that won’t change, or understand that God knows what He is doing.  Jeremiah 29:11 says "’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’" (Jer 29:11 NIV )  If God knows the plan, and that plan is designed to prosper us, then we should trust that plan.  Any answer He gives us is going to be in line with the plan He has.  It may not be one we understand, but it is one we can know is for our benefit.  The Lord is not going to harm us, so His decision is certainly not going to do so either.

Another answer we get is to wait.  Wait, not yet.  Should we be like the child who constantly asks and never has patience while waiting?  Does the Lord need reminding that He said "wait, not now"?  To say it sounds ridiculous, that the Lord needs reminding, but we sometimes act like we think its true.  Like the child who says to his parents "is it later yet?", we feel we need to tell God "I’ve been waiting long enough–get to it already".  Maybe not in those words, but in that attitude.  Yet it is better that we wait quietly, seeking Him, knowing the Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him.  Lamentations 3:25-26:

"The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;

it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD."   (Lam 3:25-26 NIV )

If there is an answer you have gotten from the Lord that you don’t like, remember, He has plans to prosper you.  He is not going to harm you.  If the answer was no, remember that even if you don’t understand the plan, it is a plan that is meant for your good.  If it was a "wait", seek the Lord in the waiting.  It is in the seeking that we discover how we need to be molded so that He can change the "wait not yet" to a "yes".  When we allow God to continue to mold us despite the fact that we get answers we don’t like, we show Him that we trust Him, and that we have faith in His promises.

I know the title seems like a very odd statement.  How can suffering lead to comfort? Suffering is a bad thing in the eyes of man, something we would choose to avoid at all costs, we would rather do without our entire lives.  Unfortunately it is not possible for us to go without suffering.  All of us have and will experience suffering to some degree in our lives, and some of us are experiencing it at this very moment.  But the idea that it can lead to comfort might seem like a rather bold statement until we look at what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1.

"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 have received from God."  (2 Cor. 1:3-4 )

God comforts us in all our troubles.  So in our troubles we receive comfort.  In addition to that we can receive comfort from others who have received that same comfort in their troubles.  Once we have received comfort in our troubles from God, we are to be sharing that comfort with others.  So available to us in our troubles is comfort from two sources.  God, the God of comfort, and others who have known this comfort.  The passage goes on to say "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." (2 Cor 1:5 )

When we suffer we recieve comfort in the same measure through Chirst.  God is a God of comfort.  He wants to comfort us in all our troubles.  He is able to do so because He has compassion that is immeasurable.  We have seen this demonstrated when He sent Christ, and we can recieve the comfort we need when we open our hearts fully to Him. Go to God in prayer, allow Him to give you your comfort in your time of trouble.

A blacksmith uses fire to heat the rod to soften it for the hammer to shape it.  That might work well for a rod and a hammer, but fire doesn’t work so well when a person is involved, we get burned far too easily!  Unfortunately however we often feel like we are standing in the middle of the fire when we are going through a trial, because the pressure builds causing what feels like intense heat.   Sure, our trials don’t physically burn us, but far too often we allow them to emotionally and spiritually burn us because we forget how to cool the fire.

When a blacksmith pounds on the rod and nears the shape he intends, he then sticks the rod into water, and the result is steam-a lot of steam.  The heat is absorbed by the water, and the result is that the water evaporates rising as steam leaving the rod cooled.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just jump into a pool of water when the fire of a trial seems too hot to bear and allow the water to absorb the heat and rise as steam?  We do have a pool of water available to us that makes this possible.  God supplied us with living water, a refreshing stream that restores our soul in a way water cannot.  In John 7:37 Christ says "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink." (John 7:37 NIV )  Christ is telling everyone that He is available to all who can admit "I am thirsty, I need to drink of living water, not of water that only quenches for a time then leaves me thirsty again".  This living water is the forgiving grace of Christ that is given to all who admit their need for a savior, believe that Christ died for them, confess their sins, and trust Christ as their Savior.

For those who have trusted Christ there is a refreshing stream that restores the soul when the trial seems so hot.  Often we feel this heat because we are longing for something.  We are longing for refreshment.  Psalm 42:1-2 says this:

"As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?"

Our soul is built to long for God, to desire Him, to want to meet Him.  Though there is coming a time when those who have trusted Christ will be with Him (Rev 21:3 ), right we now need to be seeking Him to find refreshment while we wait for that day.  In Jeremiah 31:25 the Lord says "I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint".  The answer to the longing and the thirst.  The refreshment we seek.  Now we need to act.  We need to be a people who seek the Lord.  Again in Jeremiah the Lord says "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart". (Jer 29:13 )   If we seek Him we will find Him, and He will refresh us when we our weary.  The fire will not seem so hot if we are refreshed by the one who is capable of giving us more then a simple drink of water.  Go to the Lord in prayer, let Him know you feel hot in the fire of the trial, lifting your needs to Him like steam rises when the rod cools.  He will refresh you and satisfy you in a way that only He can.

We know God is always molding us on His anvil, He is always doing that even when we are not facing trial, He is consistent in that endeavor.  He is going to mold us into the people He wants us to be.  So what are we gaining in trial that we would otherwise not gain?  Perseverance, and it is possible to gain joy.  That we learn from James 1:2-3 .  Why do we need this perseverance?  And is it really possible to gain joy in a trial?

Maybe we say I don’t want perseverance. If this is what I have to go through to get it I can live without it!  The first part of that answer as to why follows in verse 4 .  We also find out in Hebrews 12:1-2 that we need that perseverance to run the race that we are running.  Perseverance gives us the ability to keep running, to endure the race.  Better yet, we receive what we need as we run, as we are enduring the trial.  God will give us what we need to persevere through it if we ask it of Him.  This we learn from Matt 21:22 .  If we are asking God for things that we know He desires us to have, He will give them to us, and perseverance is one of them.  Along with that He desires for us to experience joy in the trial.

Back to James 1:2, where James tell us to "Consider it all joy my brothers when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." (Jam 1:2-3 NIV).  God intends for us to have joy in the trial.  He does not want us to be defeated. If we are getting the very thing God knows we need to run the race and endure it to the end–that is our source of joy in the trial.  God is giving us what we need!  We need to view our race as Paul did when he wrote to the Philippians.  He said "but one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Phil 3:13-14 NIV).  With that goal in mind, we will see that God is giving us what we need to get there, the very thing that we need to endure the race, to make it to the end.

It is not an easy task to view things from that perspective, but with God we can.  We need to be asking Him to give us what we need, asking Him to give us what He desires for us, not what we desire.  For this to happen we need to be spending time with Him in prayer doing what 1 John 5:14 says, asking God for things according to His will, not ours.

Trusting God while we are afraid of what is going to come next in our lives, afraid of what might happen, is a difficult thing to do.  How do we manage to overcome fear in a very real trial, a very real dilemma, a very real situation?  Is it possible to trust God when we don’t know what might happen in the next month, week, day, hour, or even minute?  In yesterdays post we discovered that God knew what was coming next, even when we did not.  He is aware of what is going to happen even when we plan for something completely different in our lives.  So how about when the possibilities are scary?  Scary situations in our lives do not change God, often however it changes our response to God.

God does not change, His attributes do not change, and His promises do not change (Mal. 3:6 , Jas. 1:17 ).  When we are in a situation that is outside of our plan, different then we expected, we react.  That reaction is going to effect every area of our life including our relationship with God.  There is no way to avoid our human reaction, no way to to turn off our human emotions and feelings to what is going on in our life.  How we deal with God while we are having that reaction is going to determine whether the trial strengthens our relationship with the Lord or scars our spirit, making it difficult to heal in the end.

The initial reaction is often fear.  Fear of the unknown, the known, the news, how we’ll handle it, how others will react to the news, how we will get through it.  Then come the mights, the maybes, the what ifs.  We began dwelling on the things we don’t even know about yet.  As humans we start to wonder about all the unknowns.  That is our very nature because we want to control what we can’t control.  If we trust that God knows what is happening next and he intends it for our benefit, fearing the unknown and the mights the maybes and the what ifs moves our focus to the wrong place.

Psalms 56:3-4 says "When I am afraid, I will trust in you.  In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid.  What can mortal man do to me?" (NIV)

We need to be sure we are praising God because we trust Him despite our situation, the fear we feel is not where our trust comes from.  Our trust comes from the knowledge that God is the same despite our situation (Heb 13:8 ), that He is trustworthy (Psalm 33:21 , 2 Sam 7:28 ), and that He is with us (Deut 31:6 , Deut 31:8 , Josh 1:5 ).  Our fear does not change those facts.  We need to base our trust on that solid foundation which we can prove to ourselves every day despite the changing conditions we are enduring.

Might, maybe, and what if is not very mighty and God is a mighty God.  I don’t find much strength in dwelling on what might happen next.  As a matter of fact it swells the fear.  What I have discovered is that if I spend time with God, in His word, and in prayer asking Him to mold me while we lay on His anvil into who He wants me to be in the trial, I am able to withstand the trial easier.  Why is this?  Because the more time we spend focused on God, where we should be, the less time we have to dwell on our temporary circumstance.  After all our focus doesn’t belong on our temporary situation.  That emmediate reaction of fear is normal, but to rely on that reaction as our means of determining how much we trust God is not how we should run our relationship with Chirst.  Our relationship with God should be determined by what we know to be true.  And those facts do not change based on our temporary circumstance and our emotional reaction.   God is going to use the Anvil to mold us and help us see His purpose in the trial if we trust Him to do so despite the fear, and He will take that fear away as we trust Him to use the circumstance towards His purpose in our lives.