Good Grief

Personally, I would rather experience goodness without going through any grief that supposedly contributes to it. However, I’m no different that anyone else when it comes to trials. All of us at some time or other will experience difficult situations. My former boss, Oral Roberts, used to say, “We all have a problem, are a problem, or are married to a problem.” So all of us will face trouble. The difference between us isn’t the absence of trouble, but our attitude towards it, that is, what we do with it.
   There are two things you can do with grief. You can bear it the world’s way, which is the way of bitterness and resentment, especially if you blame God or someone else. On the other hand, you can bear it God’s way. We can learn something about that way in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, and since Paul had suffered a great deal in his missionary career, he was eminently qualified to speak about this subject.
   Paul assures us that we can experience the comfort of God. The word comfort, which is the same that Jesus used in Matthew 5:4, means “standing beside a person in time of need to strengthen and encourage, to defend his cause, to make it his own.” Paul speaks of the God of all comfort, emphasizing the complete adequacy of God’s comfort. It also excludes any other source of comfort. If He is the God of all comfort, there is no real comfort anywhere else. If we turn from God in time of trouble and go the world’s way of bitterness, then there is absolutely no comfort.
   Paul also speaks of God’s comfort in the present tense, showing that it isn’t occasional and spasmodic, but continual. As long as there is a need, a trouble, there is comfort. God’s comfort enables us not merely to endure the grief, but to rejoice in it, that is, to conquer it. Paul supports this fact with his own testimony in such passages as 2 Corinthians 7:4, 6:10 and 4:16.
   Another feature of God’s comfort is that it is the same comfort that Jesus received. Notice in 1 Corinthians 1:5 that the sufferings are Christ’s, which means not our suffering for Christ, but the sufferings of Christ, His suffering through us. But notice also that the comfort, like the suffering, is Christ’s. The entire passage tells us that the same comfort that came to Jesus comes to us.
   Verse 4 gives us the tremendous revelation that God uses our grief toward a purpose, “in order that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble.” If we handle grief God’s way, then we are equipped to minister to those in “any,” that is, every kind of trouble. We are blessed that we might be a blessing. We become the channel through which God ministers to others. God never wastes time or experience. In your grief He gives you enough comfort to pass on to others.