DEFINING COMFORT

Let's make sure we're on the same page with Paul when we hear him use the word "comfort." Notice, if you will, that in Paul's understanding comfort is something to be enjoyed. He may have been hard pressed on every side. He may have been perplexed. He may have been persecuted. He may have been struck down. In fact he said that all those things are indeed true in 4:8, but that's counterbalanced by this thing called "comfort." He viewed comfort as an available resource even when bad things are going on.

But Paul didn't define comfort as a private resource available to him alone. We tend to read things like this and say, "Yeah, but he was Paul." What do you expect. We need to understand something about Paul and all Bible characters. Bible characters had the same emotions, the same stresses, the same pressures, the same problems that we do. Stanley Shipp in his colorful, colloquial manner, once said, "A Bible character is somebody who just happened to be standing around when the Bible got wrote." Paul wanted to make it very clear that comfort is a resource we can all tap into. Notice how he spoke of the Father in verse 3. He is "the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort." In verse 4, He is the God "who comforts us." You don't have any problem, any trials, so monstrous and so threatening that they are beyond the comfort of God. God's reservoir of comfort is never going to run low. It's impossible to overdraw your comfort account in God's bank.

The word translated "comfort" is paraclete. The term refers to "one who stands beside." If you were in a battle, he was your buddy in the next foxhole. If you were called into court, he was the one who would testify in your defense. If the wind blows the roof off your house, he's the fellow who will come and help you cover up your belongings, so they won't be destroyed by the elements. If you're sick, he's the one who sits all night by your bedside to make sure all your needs are met. Paul used a form of that very same word right here. He wanted to confirm the great truth that God is going to stand beside us come what may. God is going to give us what we need.

We need to concentrate on being God's instruments to extend comfort to others. Sometimes that may be a hand on the shoulder. It may mean a warm embrace. When my mother was dying of cancer, people came to encourage and I appreciate all of them. Some I appreciated more than others. There were those who came to offer a word of advice from the Scriptures. I actually resented that. I knew what those Scriptures said and I hadn't forgotten them and that wasn't really the comfort I needed. There was one lady who came, whom I will never forget. I had known her just about all of my life. At the time she came, her own husband's recent death was fresh in her memory. She put her arms around me and held me for a long a time and said nothing. That was comfort.

There are occasions when we need a kind of comforting that we might not be so quick to recognize as comfort. If my trouble is sinful behavior and if I've been so deceived by the tempter that I don't recognize my problem, then my comforter (my paraclete) is the one who gently seeks to restore me. He is a comfort because he helps me to see my sin, helps me to overcome it, and helps to recognize the danger points, so that I don't drop into that mudhole again.

Still there's another dimension to comfort. In Paul's day, when a man became a Christian, he knew what he was getting into. To choose Christ meant to choose trouble. It's still that way although some of us don't seem to realize it. When Paul says that God is the God of all comfort he's saying that God provides us the equipment to deal with our trouble. He's saying we get help from God to cope with our trials, burdens and responsibilities that stem from our decision to be Christians.

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