In Touch Ministries

Guest (Male): The Bible says that God is the God of all comfort. Jesus said, "I am coming to comfort those who are hurting," and the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit is comfort. God has chosen to work in your life and my life as the comforter so that you and I are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Somebody says, "I want to see God. If there is a God, I want to see Him." Listen, He's too big for your eyes. God's too big for your eyes. You can't see Him. He's living on the inside of you.

Guest (Male): The Apostle Paul lived through some incredibly difficult circumstances, yet he still described our heavenly Father as the God of all comfort. Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, we turn to 2 Corinthians chapter one and see that God is attentive to a believer's every need. Here is Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: It's interesting that when I hurt and sometimes when you hurt, we'd like to say, "God, you know what I'm going through. I can't handle any more of this. I want out. I'm going to walk away." We tell Him all these things. You know what is interesting? I have never heard God say to me, "That's right, Charles. You're exactly right. Absolutely poor you. You're having a terrible time. Things are bad. You feel like the pressure is on and you're in a valley and you're in a vise, and nobody appreciates you and nobody cares. No, I've not been..."

God has never responded that way. You know why? Because God doesn't participate in pity parties. He's never participated in a pity party, and therefore, He's not going to say to us, "Yes, you poor thing, you." God could never participate in somebody's pity party. Secondly, God knows that to do that wouldn't do me a bit of good. It would only hinder me because what I would do is keep magnifying the problem instead of focusing upon Him.

So, God always takes us in our difficulty, our hardship, our trials, and our troubles and magnifies Himself when we will allow Him to do that, which brings me to the title of this message and brings me to the theme of it. It's what I want to talk about. It's a title given by God about Himself through the Apostle Paul, that all of us who hurt once in a while, we need to hear Him, and that is the God of all comfort.

Now, when you go back in the Old Testament, there are lots of verses in the Old Testament about God being our comforter. For example, what is the one that all of us know by heart? The 23rd Psalm. You remember that part that says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me"? And listen to this, "Thy rod, thy staff," symbols of His presence, "thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they what? They comfort me."

All through the Old Testament, you find God comforting His people. Let me take you for a few verses just in one book primarily of the Old Testament. Turn if you will to Isaiah. Isaiah and the 40th chapter, this is a book indeed of comfort, though it speaks of lots of judgment. But look at these chapters that I want to take us through just for a moment here.

Look how this chapter begins. "Comfort, oh comfort my people, says your God." He's a God of comfort. Look at the 49th chapter and the 13th verse. Look at that. He says, "Shout for joy, oh heavens, and rejoice, oh earth. Break forth into joyful shouting, oh mountains, for the Lord has comforted His people and will have compassion on His afflicted."

Isaiah 51, look at that if you will, 51st chapter and the 12th verse. He says, "I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you're afraid of man who dies? I'm the one," He says, "who comforts you." 52nd chapter and the ninth verse. Again, He says, "Break forth, shout joyfully together, you waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted His people."

Now I want you to turn if you will to the last chapter of the book of Isaiah. Here is the most precious way God could possibly have described His tender, loving, compassionate comfort for us in the very last chapter, the 66th chapter of Isaiah. Listen to this. Every mother here understands exactly what this means, and probably most of us fathers do. Look at the 13th verse. He says, "As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you, and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem."

Do you remember when you were a kid growing up and you were running and you fell and you skinned up your knee and not only that, but you tore a hole in your new trousers? You came running in as blood was all over it and you were scared first of all that you messed up your trousers and there's blood all over it and you skinned up your knee and it's just really bad and you're crying and you're crying. What does Mom do? She says, "Honey, that's okay. Just come on over here now. Just everything is going to be all right." That is a tender mother doing what? Comforting her son or her daughter.

Do you understand what God said in that passage? He said, "Look, you want to know what kind of comfort I am? I'm the kind who reaches down when you have skinned up your life and you're bleeding and you've torn it apart and you need somebody to put some balm on it that'll take away the pain and blow it until it stops hurting. That's the kind of God I am."

You see, that's not the kind of God most people know. Most people see this God is up in heaven as this awesome judge, just waiting, "Aha! You skinned up your knee. You tore up your pants. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a good dose of strong methiolate so that you'll burn even more to punish you for making your mistake." Thank God my God's not that kind. Amen.

Because the scripture says He is a Father of mercies. Hallelujah. Look at that. He is a Father of mercies and a God of all comfort. Now, I want you to write this down. Get your pencil out. Three words. The first one: God is enough. God is enough. And you see, God would not have designated Himself by the name God is all comfort if He were not sufficient, He's not enough.

All of us have been through those times when we thought, "Oh, God, I can't," and then He says, "I'm enough." "Lord, suppose this happens?" And God says, "But I'm enough." "And Lord, suppose they do so-and-so?" And God says, "I'm still enough." "And Lord, suppose it doesn't happen?" And God says, "I'm enough." "And Lord, suppose we come up short?" And God says, "I'm enough."

And our biggest problem when we get in the valley is we don't believe God is enough. And that's what Paul is saying. He says God is enough. Now, so by this title, God our comforter, God of all comfort, what does it tell me? It reveals to me the nature of God. He cares about me. It tells me about His ministry, what He's going to do when I'm walking through the valleys. It also tells me that no matter how deep it gets and how hard it gets and how strong it becomes, how thunderous the clouds and the storms may be, He's enough.

The second part of this I want us to see, look what he says. He says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of what? All comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any or all type of affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted." Here's what I want you to see. Our God of all comfort comforts us with others in mind. He's the God of all comfort, but He comforts us with the comfort of other people in mind.

He says He's going to do this in order that what? So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction. Now, think about this. He allows us to go through heartaches and troubles and trials and tribulations, and what does He do? He reaches down and comforts us. But He's got something bigger than that in mind. Here's what He has in mind, and don't miss this.

It is God's intention to make every single one of us a carrier of comfort, comfort carriers. That's what we are. He says there are two reasons I comfort you. One of them is because I love you and I care for you. And the second one is so that you may be able to comfort others who are in affliction. Listen to this: with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

He says one of the reasons I'm allowing you to go through this hardship and trial is in order that I may comfort you in such a fashion that I equip you to be a comfort carrier, someone whom I can use to carry the same overwhelming, releasing, helping, aiding, cheering comfort to someone else who's hurting so desperately. We are so selfish and so self-centered. "Oh, God, you know how I'm hurting. Lord, deliver me. Lord, free me. God, help me, me, me, me, me."

And what does He do? He lets us get so desperate that we finally say, "How many times have I heard this? God knows. How many times have we said, 'Oh, Lord, if you'll just liberate me and free me, I'll do anything in the world you want me to do. God, I'll tell anybody, I'll tell everybody, I'll give my testimony.'" Well, if we'd have told Him that in the beginning, we could have shortened the valley experience because you see, God is up to something.

And you see, all of us belong to the body of Christ who are saved. So, how does God comfort us? Well, sometimes He comforts us through from His spirit to our spirit and through His word, music, and things like that. But most of the times, does He not use someone else to comfort us? And what Paul is saying in this passage is this: He says God has chosen to make you and me comfort carriers.

Think about this. When Jesus Christ came, He suffered persecution and rejection, finally crucifixion and death. What makes you go to Him when you're hurting really bad? I'll tell you why. Because you're fully convinced He understands just how you feel. He's made us comfort carriers. And I wonder how many of us have said, "God, just straighten this mess out."

And God's waiting for us to say, "And Lord, if you don't straighten it out or if you do, I want you to know I'm all yours. You can do with me what you choose." You see, what we do, here's what we do. We take God's big goals and His standards and we bring them way down here where we can handle them, and when we get them down here in our little pile, we think, "Okay, now we got it, Lord."

I'm here to tell you you can't mess with God's big standard. God's big standard, listen, is holiness. God's great purpose is to build into us such character and such qualities of character that are liken unto Himself. That when you and I walk on the face of this earth, He says we're the sweet aroma, we're the fragrance of the truth of the love of God. We are comfort carriers, speaking truth in love and cheering on those who are discouraged, lifting up those who are downtrodden, reaching out to those who are hurting, comfort carriers.

There's a lot of theology out there today that didn't come out of the Bible. And the reason I know that is when somebody says, "Well, God certainly wouldn't have anything to do with suffering and affliction. Let's talk about joy and peace and happiness and love and prosperity and goodness and all these wonderful traits and this wonderful God."

That's real good until the bottom of your life drops out, and it isn't something that you did wrongly, and you don't have any answers why God's letting you go through the darkest valley of your life and you're walking in it up to your knees and you can hardly make it, and you keep asking, "Oh, God, am I going to make it? Oh, God, am I going to make it?" Where then is this God who only thinks in terms of prosperity and good and healing and all of these things? We know that all of that is controlled by the hand of Almighty God.

And He's made us to be comfort carriers, to carry the message that God who is living on the inside of you will see you through that stuff, that hardship, that heartache, that valley, that storm. He's going to see you through it, and if you will believe Him and trust Him, you'll come out on the mountaintop. But you've got to believe what He says about Himself. And so, Paul says here that all of us are comfort carriers. And he says that God has done all of these things in our life for a very specific reason, that is He's training us to be comfort carriers.

Now, let me ask you something. Are you available to comfort someone else? You say, "Oh, yes! And when I see somebody in need, what I do is I just say, 'Hey, read this book.'" Now, you know when people are hurting and the bottom's dropped out of their life, don't go shoving some book in their face until first of all, they have felt your heart.

Now, how does God make you and me a comfort carrier? Here's how He does it. A fellow came to see me a couple weeks ago and we were talking about something else, and somehow we got off onto relationships and so forth. That wasn't the purpose of our conversation, but the longer we talked, the more we sort of drifted into that area and I began to realize I was talking to a very, very hurting man.

And he began to ask me some questions, and I just began to open my heart to him. The next time I saw him, he put his arms around me and hugged me and he said, "I just want to thank you, thank God." He said, "You gave me hope. Thank God I'm going to make it." When you're hurting, you don't want somebody to say, "I understand exactly how you feel," because nobody does. Nobody.

Nobody understands exactly how you feel because they've not been through exactly what you're going through. But you can say, "Well, let me tell you what happened to me." Or you can say, "I can just tell you what God did in my life. I can tell you my struggles. I can tell you about my failures. I can tell you what God's had to forgive me for. I can tell you that He's sufficient when I thought He wasn't. I can tell you that you will make it if you'll just trust Him."

Sometimes it's a word of comfort. You know what it is sometimes? The silent presence. There are times when somebody's hurting, they don't need to hear one word. Just be there. That's all. Sometime it's a song that carries with it great comfort, and my favorite one, "It Is Well With My Soul." What that does for my spirit.

Sometimes it's a letter. Sometimes it's a phone call. Sometimes it's a gift. And sometimes as a comfort carrier, God will send you to someone to help them do something physically or manually or in the home or whatever it might be. But the question is this: Are you and I comfort carriers or complainers, critics, crybabies over our troubles? Or do we see the living, loving God building character, making us aware of the greatness of God, His sufficiency?

And we can say to the world, "I tell you, if all hell breaks loose, God is enough. He's enough." And He's enough in your life if you'll let Him. And He begins by forgiving you of your sins. He begins by sealing you as one of His children forever, coming to indwell by the Holy Spirit. And He's willing to comfort you today, no matter what you're going through, if you will allow Him first to be the Savior, to forgive you of your sins, and then put your trust in Him as the God of all comfort.

And it may be that somebody, you're hurting and you're hurting deeply for one of a thousand reasons. It doesn't make any difference what it is because you see, He said He's the God of all comfort. And it just may be that you're suffering yourself in a way that the healing that needs to take place in your life will come when you in your suffering, your hurt, purpose to be a comfort carrier to someone else even before your pain is gone.

Guest (Male): God's unlimited resources are always available to help you face anything. Hear about the confidence that can be yours coming up in today's moment with Charles Stanley.

We're not the first to seek a life of purpose. The Bible tells of many who followed a specific path step by step, with courage, with surrender for a deeper purpose, a stronger passion, a lasting peace. Introducing your path to purpose, passion, and peace, a new 90-day devotional inspired by the timeless teaching of Dr. Charles Stanley, available now at intouch.org/store.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this: that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, wonderful, incomparable relationship with a personal God. Dr. Stanley devoted his entire life to helping us get closer to Jesus as we all want to do. You can learn how at charlesstanleyinstitute.org.

Guest (Male): No matter how daunting your circumstances may be, God's ability to strengthen and encourage you never diminishes. Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: It doesn't really make any difference what kind of circumstances you're in or what your situation may be. There's one thing for certain: we serve a God who is able to deliver you, and to keep you, and to help you, and to strengthen you through any and every circumstance of life. And there's so many people who are facing all kinds of difficulties and heartaches and asking the question, "Is there any way out? Is there anybody who's able to help me? Can anyone show me the way?" And my friend, I want to assure you there is someone and His name is Jehovah God. And the way you understand and the way you experience His help is through the person of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Now, when we talk about the power of God, we describe it as omnipotence, that is unlimited power. That is there is no power equal to the power of God. There is no power like the power of God. And the exciting thing for the believer who understands his relationship in Christ and understands that Christ is his life and we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, that's why we say and the Bible says, "He that is within us is greater than he that's in the world." Because the power that is within the life of the believer is more powerful than all the power of the world put together because you and I are indwelt by Jehovah God who is omnipotent. That means that there's no power equal to His, and nothing can ever thwart the power of God because its finality is in the person who is the ultimate and supreme sovereign ruler and controller of all the universe.

Guest (Male): God gives eternal life and peace to those who trust in Jesus Christ to forgive their debt of sin. Learn more about becoming a Christian at intouch.org. Next week on In Touch, the scriptures teach us to long for God and to hunger to know Him. If you need to stoke the flame of your desire for God, be back with us Monday for Dr. Stanley's message, "The Pursuit of God," on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.