What is God for? Comfort

Comfort is one of the great benefits of believing. Of all the benefits of God, the comfort is recognized the most necessary. Even companies, hospitals, and police recognize the need for a chaplain knows that he wants to have a chaplain.

But religion is a more than comfort. In fact, the comforting nature of religion, if pushed too far, can actually get in the way of some of the other beliefs.
What's wrong with comfort? The first problem is that most of the time, we don't need it. If things are going well, the last thing we need is someone telling us that it's all right and that we should just take it easy. But to many people, that is the main purpose of religion. Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses. He typifies the unbelievers' view of religion as no good for anything but comfort.
May Christians have bought into this, too. They only go to church when they need comfort. They keep their religion on upper shelf of their medicine cabinet, and only take it out when we are hurting. The rest of the time, they pretty much avoid it.
Young people particularly have a problem with "comfort" religion. They are not so much looking for a comfort as the are challenge. Yet when they go to church, they see a lot of older, hurting people who want to hear about the sweet heaven, while they are looking for some meat to chew on. No wonder they think that God doesn't have anything to say with them. Maybe someday when they get old and feeble, they'll need the comforting of God, but for not now.
Preaching to people's needs is a challenge for any pastor, because their needs are not all the same. Those who need comfort really need to hear the gentle word of God. Those who need challenge really need the challenge of God. So how do you feed both at the same time?
It might help if we understood what "comfort" actually is. It means "to strengthen together." To be comforted is to be fortified for a siege. God comfort us when He comes along and fortifies us to face the challenge of life.
Comfort is not safety from battle. It is strength in battle. Comfort is not ease, it is courage and confidence.
Let me illustrate this by pointing to a passage that we often use to comfort people when they are hurting--Psalm 91. Next to Psalm 23, it's probably used at more funerals and sickbeds than any other chapter. It begins:
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust."
The psalm starts off with exactly what we want and need to hear. If we live in the shelter of the Almighty, we can hide under His shadow. WE are under his protection, and we can hide under his shadow. We can sleep in perfect trust , because we know that He is watching over us.
Then the psalm goes off in an odd direction.
Surely he will save you
from the fowler's snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
And under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be
your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
If you make the Most High your dwelling
— even the LORD, who is my refuge —
Then no harm will befall you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
What wonderful words! No one can lay a trap for us! No disease can touch us. No terror can overtake us by night! No warrior can shoot us by day! Thousands may be mown down like grass to the right of us and to the left, but we are left standing, proud and protected, with the Lord at our side. We may have to see what happens to those wicked people when they get what they deserve, but it won't happen to them us! At the end of the day, we will still be standing!
What wonderful words--If only it were true.
I do not question the veracity of God, or that these words were true when David wrote them. I must point out, however, that these words which were given by God for a specific set of circumstances, do not reflect the reality of what happens every day. Anyone who has had a bit of mileage on them knows that Go does not always shield us from disaster.
Steve Brown in his book When the Rope Breaks tells the trut story ofa woman and her children who were caught in a fire. The fireman told her to take hold of a rope and climb out the window. So she did, with her children behind her. He assured her that the rope would hold, and that they would be there to catch them.
Only the rope did not hold. It broke, and they fell to their deaths.
Last year, three deacons and a pastor from that Baptist church in Georgia, who were coming back from a golf outing with the church men at Myrtle Beach. Here at 903 and Potter Road, somehow the lost control of a car, hit a truck and the were all dead.
I think about the first funeral I ever did--a four year old boy who died of cancer. I think about the missionaries in the '60's who went to the jungles of South America and were slaughtered by the natives.
I think about the countless men and women over they years who have looked at me in times of distress and ask "Why?"
Sometimes we get mowed down with the rest of the grass. Sometimes, trouble does not come near us, and sometimes we're caught right in the middle.
We've all asked the question from time to time--why didn't you do what you said you would do in Psalm 91? If the comfort God promises in times of trouble is based upon His protecting us from bad things, then His promises aren't worth the paper they are written on.
We preachers try to answer this question all the time. Truthfully, we usually don't handle it much better than anyone else.
Our first response is just to repeat the words, only louder. We see the problem here. We know that that God really doesn’t save us from every harm, but we don't want to admit it. So we just repeat it, over and over again. It is comforting to hear someone say that God will spare us from suffering, but we know it isn't the whole truth. So we just assert over and over, and suggest that anyone who doesn't believe it doesn't have faith, anyway, and so they won't be protected. If anyone suffers, it must be because they aren't claiming the promises loudly enough, and with enough sincerity..
Our second response is to change the subject. Liberal preachers (who never believed the Bible is true anyway) do not look for miracles or divine protection. They just say that David was being too simplistic, and that we should not take it literally. Instead, they mumble on about the divine inside us all, and how we should be loving to the poor, and hope that their congregations do not notice that they have basically stopped believing in the comfort of God years ago. The only comfort they offer is the thought that somehow they are smarter and more sophisticated than others.
But neither wishful thinking nor elite dismissal is what the Bible means by comfort. God still protects us most of the time. When He does not, He still comforts us all the time.
Suffering is part of the human condition. God created people with a limited life span. Not everyone will die of old age, or in old age People die of a variety of causes, not just one.
While we ae here, God doesn't expect us to live without suffering. We grow old. We get up in the morning with aches and pains. We get headaches. We get the flu. The weather produces heat waves and hurricanes. This is not because of any sin we have committed, but because we live in a material world which has a beginning and an ending. Sickness and death entered this world at the time of the Fall, and will not cease until our death or Second Coming, whichever comes first.
So if God saved us from every fowler's snare, or every deadly pestilence, or if every arrow missed his mark, we wouldn't be a human life. We might as well be Superman.
This is where comfort comes in. Comfort is being in the middle of this fallible, suffering, human world, but with the power of God at our side, helping us to negotiate the hard parts.
David says this at the end of the Psalm
14 "Because he loves me,"
says the LORD, "I will rescue him;
I will protect him,
for he acknowledges my name.
15 He will call upon me,
and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life will I satisfy him
and show him my salvation."
Where is God when we are suffering? He is with us, giving us just the right amount of help to get us through this tough world.
He does not always rescue us at the moment, but he eventually does, when He it is time.
He does not always protect us, but he eventually does, so that our souls survive.
He does not always give us long life on earth, but it does not matter since we have an eternity in heaven.
But at all times and in all circumstances He is with us.
"I am always with you," Jesus said, Even till the end of the age." God entered into our world. Sharing our suffering, so that we may know that our suffering is not in vain. He took on suffering so that He could comfort us in suffering, too. If Jesus could endure the pains of all humanity, then so can we, with His help. Suffering is not all there is to life, but when we must suffer, we do