Trouble and Comfort

The words “trouble” and “comfort” stand out repeatedly in this passage, and the two always go together. Trouble is what we today would probably call pressure or stress.

It is what you, perhaps, are feeling right now when you think about going to work. It is whatever ties knots in your stomach and makes you feel anxious or frightened about what lies ahead. It is what makes for hectic days and sleepless nights. It gnaws continually at your mind and threatens your well-being. It refuses to go away and leave you alone.

It depresses you and darkens the future with forebodings of disaster.

Strengthening of God

Comfort is more than just a little cheer or friendly word of encouragement. The word basically means to strengthen.

What Paul experienced was the strengthening of God to give him a peaceful, restful spirit to meet the pressure and stress with which he lived. It is amazing to me how many Christians dread facing their daily lives because they feel tied up in knots and never avail themselves of God's provision for that kind of pressure. These words are not addressed to us merely to be used for religious problems. They are to be used for any kind of stress. God's comfort, God's strengthening, is available for whatever creates stress in your life.

Escaping Problems

I say that many do not avail themselves of it. The reason I say that is because they give every evidence that they behave just like anybody else who is not a Christian—they try to escape their pressures. Or, if they are Christian, they are praying that they will be rescued from their pressures, that the problems will be taken away. Invariably they pray to have their problems taken away or to be completely shielded from them. All their hopes are for escape somehow, and all their reactions are either worry; a murmuring, complaining spirit; anger; or fear. This is not Christianity in action.

Listen to Paul from the Bible: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:3). He praises God for the circumstances of his life, even though there are afflictions. He calls God the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. He sees God's hand as having sent these things into his life; therefore, he doesn't pray to have them removed so that he might escape from them. He sees them as opportunities for the release of the strength of God.